Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) Ger­ry Brooks has re­signed.

This was con­firmed by the com­pa­ny on Thurs­day evening af­ter Guardian Me­dia broke the sto­ry.

In a me­dia re­lease the NGC said: “Chair­man of The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed and its group of com­pa­nies, Pro­fes­sor Ger­ry Brooks has ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion as Chair­man of the NGC Board and all of the Group Com­pa­nies on which he served as Chair­man/Di­rec­tor. He has al­so re­signed from all state com­pa­ny boards on which he served. All res­ig­na­tions be­come ef­fec­tive 30th June 2019.”

This means he will no longer be the chair­man of Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T, La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, T&T NGL Ltd, and NGC CNG Ltd.

Brooks’ ex­it from the or­gan­i­sa­tion comes af­ter three and a half years of what was of­ten de­scribed as a con­tro­ver­sial tenure at the State en­ter­prise. He was of­ten ac­cused of act­ing as an ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and in us­ing strong-arm tac­tics in his ne­go­ti­a­tions with the down­stream sec­tor.

Com­pa­ny sources say over the last few months Brooks’ role in the NGC had been re­duced with the gov­ern­ment turn­ing more and more to the com­pa­ny’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan rather than its chair­man.

But in an in­ter­view with CNC3 News last night, Brooks said: "That is en­tire­ly in­cor­rect. The role of the board is not to en­gage in di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tions. With the ap­point­ment of a Pres­i­dent, it is the Pres­i­dent who with the sup­port of the board has con­tin­ued to sup­port NGC's thrust in terms of its ne­go­ti­a­tions and oth­er de­lib­er­a­tions and that has con­tin­ued. The man­age­ment's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­gage in di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tions. The board sup­port­ed that ap­proach."

Brooks was Chair­man when for the first time in the coun­try’s his­to­ry nat­ur­al gas was shut off from a com­pa­ny on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate while ne­go­ti­a­tions had stalled.

He was not on the Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est en­er­gy trip to Eu­rope and the USA and was in­creas­ing­ly side­lined in his role at the NGC group.

In re­sponse to his ab­sence on the re­cent over­seas mis­sion, Brooks said "I en­joyed a very close work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Gov­ern­ment and I al­so en­joyed a very close and very pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship with the board. So hav­ing ap­proached the Gov­ern­ment I felt it was im­por­tant for me to say to the Gov­ern­ment on any del­e­ga­tion that would be trav­el­ling that I would wish to stand down."

In re­la­tion to re­ports that his re­la­tion­ship with down­stream com­pa­nies not be­ing the best at times, Brooks said: "That is not en­tire­ly true. In fact, it is the board dur­ing the last three and a half years that was able to sit and to en­sure that gas sup­ply cer­tain­ty at a time when gas sup­ply was di­min­ish­ing."

He said un­der his tenure the down­ward spi­ral of gas in 2015 im­proved in 2017 and 2018 and gas sup­ply cer­tain­ty had re­turned and sup­ply had be­gun to in­crease.

He said the com­pa­ny was al­so able to re­duce sig­nif­i­cant­ly mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar claims from $4.2 bn to less than $2 bn as well as com­plete sev­er­al out­stand­ing con­tracts.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease from the NGC Brooks in­tends to turn his at­ten­tion to build­ing his fam­i­ly’s le­gal prac­tice, the fo­cus of which will in­clude me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion. He said two of his sons are lawyers.

“Prof Brooks al­so in­tends to sup­port The UWI’s re­gion­al thrust in en­tre­pre­neur­ship and in­no­va­tion, which is crit­i­cal to the coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts. He was ap­point­ed Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice by The UWI in En­tre­pre­neur­ship and In­no­va­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2018,” the re­lease read.

Brooks ap­point­ment at UWI was the cause of some stir at the NGC since ques­tions were asked on what ba­sis the pro­fes­sor­ship was made es­pe­cial­ly in the con­text of the NGC hav­ing as­sist­ed the UWI.

Brooks, the re­lease said took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the Cab­i­net and the Gov­ern­ment for the priv­i­lege to have served the coun­try in these ca­pac­i­ties over the last three and a half years. He al­so thanked the pro­fes­sion­als on the var­i­ous boards with whom he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work.

“In thank­ing the man­age­ment and staff of the com­pa­nies in the NGC group, he in­di­cat­ed that their com­mit­ment and sup­port has en­abled NGC and the coun­try to make im­por­tant progress on a num­ber of crit­i­cal coun­try is­sues in­clud­ing im­proved cer­tain­ty of gas sup­ply, im­proved prof­itabil­i­ty, ac­cel­er­at­ed com­ple­tion of sev­er­al im­por­tant up­stream and down­stream agree­ments, sub­stan­tial re­duc­tion of mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar claims prof­fered against NGC, suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of TTNGL IPO and APO as well as strate­gic re­gion­al and na­tion­al ex­pan­sion. Equal­ly im­por­tant, he not­ed that good gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty have again char­ac­terised the op­er­at­ing fab­ric of these com­pa­nies,” ac­cord­ing to the NGC re­lease.

The com­pa­ny said it ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tion Brooks made to NGC’s growth and trans­for­ma­tion and wished him well in his fu­ture en­deav­ours.