By Raffique Shah
August 10, 2017
“I’ll share with you a personal secret…I. Don’t. Like. Pone!” said Malcolm Jones, emphasising every word he uttered. I couldn’t believe what he revealed: a Trinidadian who did not like pone, that cassava sweetbread whose taste and texture are sinfully irresistible to natives of this country? We eat pone by the slabs, not slices. “Malcolm,” I responded, “what kind of Trini are you?”
“Let me explain,” he said, with a wistful smile on his face. He related a story that touched my heart, but one that I understood because it was not uncommon among people of our generation, he being a few years older than I, and of similar social and economic background.
His mother made and sold pone to supplement the family income when he attended primary school-in Marabella, I think. She did that several times a week. Like most parents then, she did not like to see food-or pone, I imagine-go to waste. So what she did not sell, Malcolm had to eat. “Boy, I remember eating pone until I got sick,” he said. “I grew to dislike it…as an adult, I hardly eat it.”
That conversation took place many years ago, maybe in the late 1970s or early 80s, when he was the boss at Tringen, the country’s first State-owned nitrogenous fertiliser plant. We were more than likely reminiscing about our humble beginnings when the pone issue cropped up. It stuck in my memory, and I remembered it most times I saw or listened to him speak via the media as he moved up and around the energy sector, ending his career, and, last week, his life, unceremoniously, at State-owned Petrotrin.
Malcolm, a highly qualified and experienced engineer who knew the energy sector inside-out, was among the hands-on pioneers of the downstream industries that today form the Point Lisas Industrial Estate. Professor Ken Julien was the architect of the usage of natural gas for manufacturing fertilisers and methanol, and for powering electricity and other heavy industries. His “officer corps” included Jones, Kerston Coombs and Trevor Bhoopsingh, to name just three of that elite squad that did Trinidad and Tobago proud.
Not everything they touched turned into black or gaseous gold: the billion-dollar steel mill, ISCOTT, was a financial disaster, such that by the early 1990s, it was first leased, then sold for US $70 million, a fraction of its construction cost, to Lakshmi Mittal’s Ispat. It was that plant that propelled Mittal into the global steel magnate he eventually became. To show his ingratitude for what T&T did for him, Mittal put the plant into receivership last year, sending hundreds of employees on the breadline, and forcing the closure of several smaller downstream steel operators.
An illustrious career that saw him serve at the highest levels in energy companies came crashing down at the very Pointe-a-Pierre oil refinery where he started out back in the mid 1960s, then owned and operated by Texaco.
Appointed executive chairman of Petrotrin in 2002 by then Prime Minister Patrick Manning, his personal friend, a factor that likely worked against him given the nature of politics, Jones oversaw a multi-billion-dollar refinery upgrade and gas optimization programme that experienced punishing cost overruns and a decade-long timeline. More controversially, he pursued the establishment of a gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant with an unknown company (World GTL), a project that cost Petrotrin more than one billion dollars, and which was abandoned by the international partner.
All of the above saddled Petrotrin with a burdensome $13 billion-plus debt.
The upgrades have been completed, but with depressed petroleum product prices, they add little value to the company’s bottom line.
These latter failures, some say misadventures, made Malcolm’s name mud, especially when the People’s Partnership Government persecuted and prosecuted him. Ask the average Trini about Jones, he is likely to respond: he is ah old t’ief from Petrotrin.
Malcolm knew he would take the fall for the GTL disaster although the critical decisions will not have been his alone. The GTL plant was a good idea that backfired because of a bad choice of partner. Even as the project crumbled, Shell constructed a huge GTL plant in Qatar that is operational and profitable.
Regarding the upgrades at the refinery, not dismissing the cost overruns, had petroleum prices remained buoyant, Petrotrin would have reaped rich rewards and Malcolm would have been a hero.
It was the PP administration that attempted to prosecute Jones for the billion-dollar loss in the GTL project, which was clearly a bad business decision. Using their logic, who should the State sue for the contractor-abandoned, billion-dollar Beetham wastewater plant? Or the similarly-abandoned Hochoy Highway extension? The former Prime Minister? That is donkey logic.
At Petrotrin and other State enterprises, the potent cocktail of politics and business has proved to be highly toxic, even fatal.
In Malcolm’s case, and here I paraphrase Shakespeare, the mistakes he made, and poor choices, will live after him; the good he did will be interred with his bones.
A sympathetic, one-sided view of Malcolm’s energy misadventures. Enough said.
Shah you clearly knew the man. He is no different to the one leading NGC and the other leading Petrotrin. All three are political picks, pull strings or square pegs in round holes all who never performed. From Tringen 1 a give away plant that was never designed to use 50000 gpm of sea water but instead fresh water in Oklahoma USA was a Fluor failure. I redesigned the plant in the 90s. The Tringen 11 was section 34 as Ish was the major contractor who knew nothing about the ammonia industry but had both PNM and UNC engaged in corruption. UNC was formed out of Tringen 11 left over 70 million million USD re club 88 when the project to build the plant was frustratingly closed by the bank but the left over monies by the project (70 million USD)signed up by Malcolm Jones in the early 80s when PNM never expected to lose the 86 election to Robbie and Bas in NAR. Project was estimated at 250 million USD. But God doh sleep. And they did share the loot. After this was NGC which was poorly designed as the heavy liquid hydrocarbons proved too difficult for them and their PNM. Then came Pheonix Park where I was hired to manage for Conoco but Malcolm had other ideas to make this his money maker not T&T. When the plant ESD was wrongly designed and malfunctioned we would lose our electricity supply as in the PPP days as the letdown valving was not designed for multiphase flow patterns. And possibly still is. Thank God our natural gas supply is much lower these days. I do not have to talk about Atlas or Petrotrin where he also messed up. But I can write a book on Malcolm. He taught he could remove me from this life but I believe in God and took my licks from both he. Julien and the Bull Moose. They destroyed all our success in the Oil and Gas sector. God also doh like ugly.
This article should be captioned “forgetting Malcolm Jones-a legacy $12.5 billon Petrotrin debt”. Nuff said.
Warren Buffet’s first rule of investing: Never lose money.
In this regard, Malcolm Jones apparently did not fully research the upgrade project where billions of taxpayer money was thrown at Petrotrin. He did not properly research the contractor hired to construct the GTL plant. Where was his margin of safety? Did he factory in the potential decrease in oil prices? Why wouldn’t he? Oil has been a cyclical industry for decades. If he had done due diligence, those decisions may have gone differently. Maybe if it was his own money and not ours being spent, then due diligence would have been done.