The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to keep An­drew Jupiter on as pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC) for an­oth­er year as it tries to avoid los­ing his ex­per­tise at a cru­cial time in the sec­tor, said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. Speak­ing at last Sat­ur­day's gala cer­e­mo­ny at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) to cel­e­brate Jupiter's re­tire­ment from the NEC, Ram­nar­ine said: "I am pleased to an­nounce that we have de­cid­ed to ex­tend the term of Mr Jupiter for one year be­cause this is a time of tran­si­tion in the sec­tor and we feel we need his ex­per­tise for at least an­oth­er year." The an­nounce­ment was met with loud ap­plause by the au­di­ence as Jupiter has for three decades worked in the ser­vice of T&T. The an­nounce­ment al­so came at a time when there is a new pres­i­dent at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the NEC, and al­so when the com­pa­ny's chair­man Lar­ry Howai has de­part­ed to be­come Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. The NEC was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1979 to mon­e­tise the coun­try's nat­ur­al gas re­sources, de­vel­op and man­age in­dus­tri­al and ma­rine in­fra­struc­ture.

The NEC's is now re­spon­si­ble for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion and pro­mo­tion of nat­ur­al gas-based de­vel­op­ment in­clud­ing:

The con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion, pro­mo­tion, de­vel­op­ment and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of new en­er­gy-based and down­stream in­dus­tries in T&T;

• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of new in­dus­tri­al es­tates;

• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of new in­dus­tri­al deep wa­ter ports to fa­cil­i­tate these es­tates;

• Own­er­ship and op­er­a­tion of ma­rine and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al as­sets to fa­cil­i­tate all gas-based petro­chem­i­cal and met­al plants;

• De­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment of La Brea and Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tates.

A pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer by train­ing, Jupiter worked at the Min­istry of En­er­gy for 26 years, ris­ing to the po­si­tion of per­ma­nent sec­re­tary. He has been in­volved in many of the ma­jor ini­tia­tives in the sec­tor for the last two decades, in­clud­ing the At­lantic ne­go­ti­a­tions, the move away from tax­es and roy­al­ties to pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts (PSCs) and at­tempts to open up the deep­wa­ter for ex­plo­ration. In a video pre­sen­ta­tion at the NA­PA func­tion, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Fin­bar Gan­ga spoke about how Jupiter was there to bring ad­vice and knowl­edge to him dur­ing the dif­fi­cult days of ne­go­ti­at­ing the agree­ments with At­lantic's part­ners. His tenure was not with­out con­tention. In 2004, Jupiter was forced to leave af­ter a fall­out with for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. He was trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Works.

Jupiter, how­ev­er, nev­er ac­tu­al­ly worked a day in Works and In­fra­struc­ture as Prof Ken Julien in­ter­vened and Jupiter was sec­ond­ed to the NEC as the vice pres­i­dent busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and then even­tu­al­ly be­came pres­i­dent of the NEC. He said he learnt from for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ru­pert Mends that he must nev­er speak ill of one min­is­ter to an­oth­er and that his fo­cus must al­ways be on the work, his staff and fam­i­ly.