Vin­cent Pereira has been ap­point­ed as the chair­man of the Point Fortin-based LNG pro­duc­er At­lantic, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, At­lantic said Pereira is a known leader, with over 41 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in se­nior po­si­tions in the en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing as Pres­i­dent BHP T&T. His strate­gic in­sights and guid­ance will be in­stru­men­tal as the At­lantic con­tin­ues to build on its lega­cy of safe­ty, re­li­a­bil­i­ty, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny said.

It not­ed that Pereira serves as chair­man of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and he holds an MBA from Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty, a post­grad­u­ate diplo­ma in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Hons) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph, On­tario, Cana­da.

As he as­sumes the role, Ian Welch con­cludes his four-year tenure as chair­man of At­lantic. Un­der his stew­ard­ship, At­lantic strength­ened its po­si­tion as a key play­er in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor and was in­stru­men­tal in guid­ing the com­pa­ny’s jour­ney to world-class op­er­a­tions, the com­pa­ny said.

“At­lantic ex­tends its deep grat­i­tude to Ian Welch for his out­stand­ing ser­vice and com­mit­ment and wish­es him all the best as he em­barks on his next chap­ter,” the re­lease fur­ther added.

The com­pa­ny cel­e­brat­ed the 25th an­niver­sary of its start up in Sep­tem­ber.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges of op­ti­mis­ing the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture amid de­plet­ing nat­ur­al gas re­serves.

He re­called that, in 2015, when the new gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice, it im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan work­ing on how to se­cure the fu­ture of gas pro­duc­tion as At­lantic’s Train 1’s li­cence was set to ex­pire in 2018. In­tense dis­cus­sions took place with key share­hold­ers, bpTT and Shell, over price re­struc­tur­ing, seek­ing bet­ter val­ue for cit­i­zens.

“And there be­gan the task of how we es­tab­lished and se­cured an en­er­gy fu­ture for To, where At­lantic LNG is ar­guably one of the sin­gle most im­por­tant pil­lars for the fu­ture of the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor. It was in 2018, when I ac­com­pa­nied the Prime Min­is­ter to Lon­don for talks with Shell and BP, that the con­cept for the fu­ture of At­lantic LNG was con­cep­tu­alised, and the de­ci­sion was made by the heads: we need­ed to re­struc­ture it,” Young ex­plained.