Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Mark Lo­quan, the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) is step­ping down from the com­pa­ny when his con­tract comes to an end on Au­gust 31.

The an­nounce­ment was made to staff to­day.

Lo­quan, 63, as­sumed du­ties at NGC in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

Lo­quan, who has over 40 years ex­pe­ri­ence in the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, was the for­mer pres­i­dent of Yara Trinidad be­fore he de­part­ed to take up the po­si­tion as pres­i­dent of Up­stream Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment-An­go­la/Sub-Sa­hara Africa at Yara In­ter­na­tion­al and then chief ex­ec­u­tive at Yara Pil­bara in Aus­tralia.

Dur­ing his tenure at NGC, Lo­quan man­aged NGC in a pe­ri­od of gas cur­tail­ment for the down­stream­ers. He al­so dealt with the rene­go­ti­a­tion of ex­pired con­tracts.

Un­der his watch, NGC has ex­pand­ed its role and got a big­ger stake in the LNG busi­ness in the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG.

And yes­ter­day, as part of his com­mit­ment to see the com­pa­ny be­come more sus­tain­able, the NGC launched NGC Green, which will fo­cus on in­vest­ments in re­new­able en­er­gy. To this end, the NGC will take a 30 per cent eq­ui­ty stake in the so­lar ini­tia­tive, Project Lara.

This month, the NGC post­ed prof­its of $2 bil­lion for its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.