Wan Zul’s mission to change Petronas

It would be difficult to find a group of people who are more profoundly immersed in their beliefs than the 1,000-odd staff at the operations centre of the Formula One team of Mercedes AMG Petronas (Petroliam Nasional) in Brackley, outside London.
After each race, everyone involved – from the driver of the truck holding all the computers to race engineers – work out the details on how to further fine-tune the cars.
Technology is used extensively to the extent of studying tyre marks and testing samples of lubricants.
The overall objective is to win the next race in the high-profile F1 World Championship.
For Petronas’ president and chief executive Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, the high-performance culture coupled with cutting-edge technology at the operations centre in Brackley are values that he hopes will eventually transcend into reshaping the culture of the national oil and gas (O&G) company.
“We need to have a quantum change in the cultural beliefs of the whole group to be a high-performance company.
“We are talking about inculcating a sense of belonging, taking ownership and sharing success.
“A change in the cultural beliefs will translate into actions that produce results we would want to see in the future years,” he told a group of journalists during a visit to the Mercedes AMG operations centre in London.
Taking over the helm of Petronas at a time when oil prices were in a free fall, Wan Zulkiflee has not had it easy.
He had to take the scalpel to the operations of the company that employs 51,000 people, including 11,000 non-Malaysians, as the price of oil fell to less than US$30 per barrel.
Now, crude oil is hovering around $46 per barrel, coming off its recent high of just above $50.
For the first time in its 42-year history, the national O&G company laid off employees and froze increments. Critics feel that Petronas can do more in cutting down staff.
On the change in culture and inculcating a sense of ownership, the critics say the culture in Petronas, as in many government-linked companies, is that everybody wants to take ownership of only successful projects.
“When it comes to less successful projects, nobody wants to take ownership,” says a former executive of Petronas.
“Wan Zul”, as he is fondly known, had been earmarked for the top position of Petronas since 2010.
After former president and CEO Hassan Marican’s contract was not renewed, Wan Zulkiflee was tipped to take over.
However, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak recalled Shamsul Azhar Abbas, who had then retired from Petronas, to head Petronas.
Before assuming the top position in March last year, Wan Zulkiflee, who has been with Petronas since 1983, was the group chief operating officer and chief executive in charge of downstream operations.
Equipped with experience in both upstream and downstream operations, Wan Zulkiflee focused on a six-pronged strategy to reshape Petronas. Three were short-term measures to cope with the changing environment of low oil prices.
They aimed to maximise cash-generation activities, focus on delivering projects such as the massive development in Pengerang within cost and reduce operating cost by the simplification of operations.
By merely collaborating with production-sharing contract partners, Petronas has reduced costs by 3.4 billion ringgit (Bt28.7 billion) over one year.
Its major capital commitments in the next few years include the 60-billion-ringgit project to build a refinery and integrated petrochemical hub in Pengerang, Johor, and the completion of the second floating liquefied natural gas vessel.