Ex­act­ly one year af­ter he joined the State-owned gas com­pa­ny, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) Derek Luk Pat has re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Luk Pat, a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my spe­cial­ist, busi­ness con­sul­tant and en­tre­pre­neur joined NP on No­vem­ber 1, 2023.

He re­placed one of NP’s gen­er­al man­agers John Gor­mandy, who had been act­ing as CEO since 2020.

He’s now been re­placed by NP’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of Avi­a­tion and Ma­rine Fu­els Chester Beep­ut as in­ter­im CEO.

Beep­ut has been em­ployed at NP for 24 years and has pre­vi­ous­ly held the role of in­ter­im CEO.

Be­fore join­ing NP, Luk Pat was ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS).

He’s al­so worked in sev­er­al in­dus­tries across a spec­trum of mar­kets in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, im­port-dis­tri­b­u­tion, re­tail, ser­vice and qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

Last year, NP praised Luk Pat for bring­ing ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in busi­ness man­age­ment, strate­gic plan­ning, and process re­design which it said cre­at­ed sus­tain­able rev­enue growth, in­creased prof­itabil­i­ty and op­ti­mal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny briefly said he re­signed with­out giv­ing any ex­pla­na­tion as to the rea­son why he on­ly last­ed one year.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he re­signed for per­son­al rea­sons.

When asked about sus­pi­cions of his per­for­mance or any falling out that may have oc­curred which led to his res­ig­na­tion, one NP of­fi­cial said, “there’s no ‘some­thing’ there”.

How­ev­er, the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PDA) be­lieves Luk Pat may have been pres­sured in­to leav­ing.

Dur­ing Luk Pat’s short stint as the head of the gas com­pa­ny, NP was un­der much scruti­ny by both PDA and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) af­ter be­ing ac­cused of with­hold­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials and al­leged cor­rup­tion.

In Au­gust, NP ad­mit­ted that its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments were late.

This was re­vealed af­ter PDA pres­i­dent Robin Narayns­ingh crit­i­cised NP for not pub­lish­ing its fi­nan­cials in the last three to five years.

NP then re­spond­ed by say­ing the com­pa­ny’s con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2020 were in fact pub­lished in the news­pa­per on Fri­day, No­vem­ber 10, 2023.

As it re­lates to the oth­er years, NP said its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2021 were com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted to the Fi­nance Min­istry.

How­ev­er, its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2022 were al­most com­plet­ed at the time while its 2023 state­ments were still in progress at the end of Au­gust this year.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Narayns­ingh praised Luk Pat’s good char­ac­ter and said he sus­pect­ed he may have been pres­sured in­to re­sign­ing.

Narayns­ingh said, “He (Luk Pat) is a good man. He’s a fo­cused man. He want­ed to do some­thing bet­ter for the coun­try be­cause NP is a State en­ter­prise which was formed for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. When he took the po­si­tion, I asked him, ‘Why would you take on a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at this com­pa­ny?’

“This com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed a cul­ture of wastage. They don’t care whether a gas sta­tion has gas, whether com­mu­ni­ties are out of gas. As long as they could ex­tract mon­ey from the com­pa­ny, the work­ers are cor­rupt­ed in­side of there.”

“If he’s re­signed, I think they tried to rail­road him. The fi­nance de­part­ment of that com­pa­ny needs a com­plete shake-up. There are peo­ple in po­si­tions that do not know how to run it be­cause they have been mis­led through­out the last ten years,” he claimed.

Mean­while, OW­TU’s chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer/trea­sur­er Ozzi War­wick, said Luk Pat’s im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion as CEO raised more ques­tions about the board.

Speak­ing dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view, War­wick said, “The OW­TU has been rais­ing con­cerns about NP for some time now. I think the pub­lic is quite aware of that. I think this im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the CEO rais­es more ques­tions now for the board and for the chair­man... the CEO falls un­der the board. If your CEO re­signs with im­me­di­ate ef­fect then what does that mean?”

In Ju­ly, OW­TU, led by its pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, pick­et­ed the home of NP’s chair­man Sahid Ho­sein over al­leged nepo­tism and cor­rup­tion at the com­pa­ny.

Yes­ter­day, NP thanked Luk Pat for his ser­vice and wished him all the best in his fu­ture en­deav­ours.

At­tempts to con­tact the En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on the mat­ter were fu­tile up to late yes­ter­day evening.