Dr Priya Mara­jh has been se­lect­ed as the in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, step­ping in­to the role as the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­gins a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of long-serv­ing pres­i­dent and CEO Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver.

Mara­jh con­firmed her ap­point­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, in­di­cat­ing she will sup­port the board dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od while a per­ma­nent CEO is re­cruit­ed.

“I’m hap­py to step in­to that role to as­sist the board in the tran­si­tion,” she said, adding that she would al­so wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take on the po­si­tion on a per­ma­nent ba­sis if se­lect­ed.

“I am re­al­ly hap­py for that vote of con­fi­dence, and I would wel­come that op­por­tu­ni­ty as well if it should present it­self.”
The re­cruit­ment process for a sub­stan­tive CEO is ex­pect­ed to take ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months, though Mara­jh not­ed the time­line is tied to the com­ple­tion of that process rather than a fixed in­ter­im term.

Her ap­point­ment comes as Dr Dri­ver pre­pares to demit of­fice on March 31, bring­ing to a close more than two decades at the helm of the Cham­ber.

In a state­ment, the board ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his tenure, not­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to both the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the wider en­er­gy sec­tor.
It “ex­tends its sin­cere thanks to Dr Dri­ver for his 24 years of ser­vice to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the wider en­er­gy sec­tor” and con­firmed that a for­mal tran­si­tion plan is un­der­way.
Dri­ver has led the Cham­ber since 2002, a pe­ri­od marked by sig­nif­i­cant shifts in T&T’s en­er­gy land­scape, in­clud­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets and evolv­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion chal­lenges.

Mara­jh brings ex­ten­sive in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence to the in­ter­im role. She cur­rent­ly serves as a board di­rec­tor at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc and TOSL En­gi­neer­ing Ltd. She al­so pre­vi­ous­ly held the po­si­tion of vice pres­i­dent of ad­vo­ca­cy and mem­ber en­gage­ment at the En­er­gy Cham­ber, where she was re­spon­si­ble for stake­hold­er re­la­tions and pol­i­cy en­gage­ment.

Her fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its mem­ber­ship base is ex­pect­ed to sup­port con­ti­nu­ity dur­ing the tran­si­tion.

“I’ve been here for a re­al­ly long time,” she not­ed, sig­nalling her long­stand­ing in­volve­ment with the Cham­ber’s work.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber rep­re­sents com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing across the oil, gas, and en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tors, and plays a key role in pol­i­cy ad­vo­ca­cy, in­dus­try co­or­di­na­tion, and en­gage­ment with the Gov­ern­ment.

Mara­jh in­di­cat­ed that main­tain­ing val­ue for mem­bers will re­main a pri­or­i­ty dur­ing the tran­si­tion, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion nav­i­gates lead­er­ship change and on­go­ing in­dus­try chal­lenges. An­drea Perez-Sobers