Trinidad: Head of Petrotrin spinoff getting US$425,000 per annum plus benefits

(Trinidad Guardian) (US) $425,000 a year—plus hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and health.

That re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age is what Mike Wi­ley, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd in the re­struc­tured Petrotrin, is get­ting.

The salary alone works out at ap­prox­i­mate­ly (TT)$2.9m an­nu­al­ly.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley gave Wi­ley’s re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion whip David Lee.

Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed the re­struc­tured Petrotrin’s new com­pa­nies: an Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny (the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Co Ltd), an­oth­er for fu­el trad­ing (Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd) and an­oth­er where the re­fin­ery as­sets will be placed (Guaracara Re­fin­ing Co Ltd.)

On Her­itage CEO Wi­ley, PM Row­ley added: “So far Petrotrin used in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruit­ment process­es to hire one per­son of the high­est cal­i­bre be­cause it’s the in­ten­tion of Petrotrin to use in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark­ing so that the oil com­pa­ny would be en­gaged in oil com­pa­ny pro­duc­tion,”

“To date Petrotrin has hired Mike Wi­ley to head the E&P of the new Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny. That in­di­vid­ual was hired in Au­gust 2018 and is now ac­tive­ly en­gaged in the re­cruit­ment process. We’ve hired no-one for the Paria com­pa­ny but the search has be­gun and very soon we can re­port when it’s done.”

“With re­spect to the (Wi­ley) re­mu­ner­a­tion, be­cause of the na­ture of the as­sign­ment, in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark­ing and the run­ning of an oil com­pa­ny of the size we in­tend to, I’m ad­vised Mr Wi­ley’s pack­age in­volves US$425,000 per year plus hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and health.”

UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal asked if Gov­ern­ment was pay­ing Wi­ley “….Quar­ter mil­lion (TT) a month as a salary and if so could we not have sourced that lev­el of per­son­nel with­in T&T?”

Row­ley replied, “The salary is com­men­su­rate with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the na­ture of the busi­ness and our ex­pec­ta­tions to op­er­ate the new com­pa­ny at in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.”

Mooni­lal lat­er told the T&T Guardian the quar­ter mil­lion dol­lar a month fig­ure was what Wi­ley’s (US)$425,000 an­nu­al salary worked out when con­vert­ed to TT cur­ren­cy and cal­cu­lat­ed on month­ly ba­sis.

When Lee asked for the for­ma­tion and reg­is­tra­tion date of the her­itage com­pa­ny Wi­ley will head, Row­ley said he didn’t have the date.

“But the com­pa­ny Petrotrin has been in ex­is­tence for decades and in an­tic­i­pa­tion of pop­u­lat­ing its sub-units un­der the hold­ing com­pa­ny (in the re­struc­tured en­ti­ty) it would have been pro-ac­tive in find­ing such per­sons,” Row­ley said.

He added, “The rel­e­vance of when the her­itage com­pa­ny was formed or reg­is­tered “wasn’t a big” is­sue be­cause it was al­ways the in­ten­tion in the com­pa­ny re­struc­tur­ing to hire a CEO to head the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion as­pect.

He said peo­ple would al­so be sought to head the Paria com­pa­ny and even­tu­al­ly the Guaracara com­pa­ny.” As soon as the busi­ness de­ci­sions were tak­en the com­pa­ny (Petrotrin) would have been proac­tive in seek­ing staff,” the PM said.

Row­ley stressed he didn’t say Wi­ley was do­ing re­cruit­ing, “The com­pa­ny has put in place a team of per­sons of rel­e­vant skills and re­quire­ments and is us­ing that team to re­cruit em­ploy­ees to pop­u­late the new com­pa­nies,” he added.

Row­ley said Petrotrin was in the process of invit­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est­ed par­ties/peo­ple to re­spond to re­quests for pro­pos­als re­gard­ing the re­fin­ery as­sets which will be in the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny.

He said RF­Ps haven’t gone out yet. A da­ta room will be opened at the Pointe a Pierre re­fin­ery so in­ter­est­ed par­ties can view what will be avail­able and re­spond to RF­Ps.

“Hold your hors­es ‘til the process gets there,” he told the Op­po­si­tion.