Turn Malaysia into a nice place; help Petronas.

If anybody is a fan of Petronas, it's me, so I'm glad to see it finally coming out of its shell and defending itself in the face of misguided public criticism. Even if it isn't as cutting edge as some people might want an energy company to be, it's still a pretty great company for having taken care of our petroleum resources so competently all this while. In other sectors of the Malaysian economy, businesses talk about technology transfer but don't really know how it's done; Petronas, on the other hand, has gone from nothing to something by learning almost everything there is to know about the oil business from the world's biggest oil companies, and applying what it's learned to good effect. In recent years, it's matured to the point where it is sharing its know-how with companies in other, poorer nations, which is a good measure of how far it, and us, have come.

Petronas is a business entity with a strong public service component, which is probably my most favourite thing about it. It has an attitude of wanting to give back to society, not just in ours, but in all the 30-plus countries it's working in. We don't hear about it because it's never talked about, since the leadership at the company is humble to the point of obsessiveness. But around the world, as at home, Petronas has educated hundreds of thousands of children, built entire cities, and come up with novel ways to... well, deliver petroleum products to everyday people. The much maligned, yet so necessary, petroleum -- without which we couldn't derive the fuels to cool our homes and drive our cars. And without which (as a raw material) factories wouldn't be able to make things like plastic, tar and various lubricants to, literally, grease the wheels of our economies.

If anything, we Malaysians need to egg Petronas onward, not throw eggs at it. As a business, it's starting to get somewhere; but this friendly giant faces an uncertain future, especially with global warming and oil starting to run out. For that reason, we need to lend it more encouragement than ever. It needs to be encouraged to venture outside of petroleum and into clean, renewable energy; to start building a brand in powerful countries, not just the world's backwaters; and to reach out to stakeholders that other oil companies don't even notice, like indigenous people, from whom we might learn a thing or two about environmental preservation.

Above all, we need to help turn Petronas into a glamourous and sexy place, where clever people from the developed world want to come and work. Unfortunately, Petronas is in Malaysia, which is a nice place for us Malaysians because it's home. But we need to make it even nicer for our friends from the richer countries -- and that's going to be difficult. For that, we need leaders not just with intelligence but flair. Anybody up for the job?