Last Thurs­day, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) an­nounced that pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan would step away from the com­pa­ny when his con­tract comes to an end on Au­gust 31.

The NGC said that Lo­quan will not re­new his con­tract with NGC and his ap­point­ment as di­rec­tor on the NGC board and its af­fil­i­ates will al­so cease. The news took the in­dus­try by sur­prise giv­en the com­pa­ny’s sta­bil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty.

In this ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Lo­quan ex­plains why the time was right to step aside.

Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Mark Lo­quan was clear that he could not present at to­mor­row’s En­er­gy Con­fer­ence on be­half of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and its fu­ture know­ing he won’t be a part of it.

So he opt­ed to break the news be­fore the con­fer­ence to keep the in­tegri­ty of his pre­sen­ta­tion in­tact.

But why, af­ter eight years, is he step­ping away?

He jok­ing­ly replied that he had al­ready re­tired (he is 63), so he was just end­ing his present con­tract.

He felt it was time.

When he start­ed the NGC in 2016, it was in tur­bu­lent times–claims and cur­tail­ments were af­fect­ing the com­pa­ny’s per­cep­tion, prof­itabil­i­ty and pur­pose with the view that it was just a pipeline busi­ness.

The NGC Group was on a mis­sion to in­ter­na­tion­alise its busi­ness foot­print, seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter new mar­kets and bro­ker new part­ner­ships across the world.

In his eight years, Lo­quan has dealt with claims from the down­stream­ers, man­age cur­tail­ments, re­duced li­a­bil­i­ties to the com­pa­ny to “al­most ze­ro”, post­ed a $2 bil­lion loss for in­vest­ments be­fore his time and then last year re­bound­ed to a $2 bil­lion prof­it, saw the NGC grow in­to an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny, made strate­gic in­vest­ments–NGC now has a big­ger stake in At­lantic LNG and sought to make the com­pa­ny sus­tain­able–through its newest sub­sidiary, the NGC Green has 30 per cent stake in the coun­try’s first so­lar park, and ex­pand­ed re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

NGC came un­der neg­a­tive scruti­ny by the me­dia and the Op­po­si­tion for some of their in­vest­ments–par­tic­u­lar­ly, the de­ci­sion to spend mil­lions to main­tain and then idle At­lanc­tic’s Train 1 when it was a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er.

“I’m on­ly hu­man, right, and I didn’t have to do this job, as you know, I am re­tired, I was re­tired. I would say that there have been many times when dur­ing that tur­bu­lence I would ask my­self, what am I re­al­ly do­ing here? Why am I do­ing this?” he ob­served.

He ex­plained that if he had opt­ed to leave at the time, not on­ly would it have af­fect­ed NGC but the en­tire en­er­gy sec­tor.

“The on­ly thing that brought me back was that the coun­try would have prob­a­bly been a lot worse off, if I re­al­ly de­cid­ed for my­self, to just take care of me. In hind­sight, I am hap­py I didn’t do that be­cause there was a lot that had to be ac­com­plished, which I think the or­gan­i­sa­tion has now done. We have a foun­da­tion that we can build on, there is a lot more hope than when we start­ed. Yes, we still have to do a lot of hard work to get things across the line, Drag­on still has to be built and so on,” he said.

“There was al­ways a high­er pur­pose, which is val­ue for the peo­ple of T&T, and we hadn’t fin­ished what we re­al­ly set out to do. And yeah, I think it felt in­com­plete to me. So much bet­ter this way to leave when things are done right.”

Work­ing for a pri­vate multi­na­tion­al for most of his ca­reer, Lo­quan was not ac­cus­tomed to pub­lic scruti­ny.

“I am not used to that. I have al­ways played a tech­ni­cal role and been in a pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ment that didn’t sub­ject me to all of those kinds of things. I have to ac­cept that in T&T, some of these things do hap­pen and it de­pends on elec­tion sea­sons or all kinds of things go­ing on. I tried, per­son­al­ly, to re­main fo­cused on what we had to do, the big pic­ture–we knew we need­ed to get At­lantic re­struc­tur­ing, we knew we need­ed to get Drag­on, we knew we need­ed to get con­tracts in the Es­tate done for con­ti­nu­ity, claims re­moved. With­out those things, NGC prob­a­bly will not be sur­viv­ing and this is such a cen­tral, I will say, cog in the wheel, for the whole econ­o­my,” he said.

Chal­lenges ahead

He’s cog­nisant that the in­dus­try still faces chal­lenges–the en­er­gy busi­ness is vul­ner­a­ble to vol­umes, there should be a greater grav­i­ty to green and hard de­ci­sions need to be tak­en with re­gard to elec­tric­i­ty.

He not­ed that nat­ur­al gas vol­umes would still be down for some time un­til Man­a­tee and Drag­on are com­plete.

As for prices, T&T has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of wars and the cycli­cal prices as­so­ci­at­ed with glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty.

“When it comes to the prices ... where we don’t have con­trol of prices, but at least we could pre­pare our­selves by hav­ing a strong in­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

“We do keep plants alive. We do keep plants run­ning. Yes, some­times we have to shut down plants be­cause it gets very un­sta­ble. But if NGC wasn’t do­ing that, well what would hap­pen? What would hap­pen with the pow­er sup­ply? At the same time, the pow­er sup­ply is an in­te­gral part of your mol­e­cules. So we do have to keep the pow­er com­pa­ny run­ning and this makes sure the pow­er is al­so dri­ving plants and all of these things too. So it’s all in­te­grat­ed,” he ex­plained.

In his view, if T&T is not ef­fi­cient with the mol­e­cules, the coun­try will be “more and more chal­lenged over the years.”

Lo­quan added, “There is an in­ef­fi­cient use of gas when you put it in elec­tric­i­ty and you need to get the re­turn val­ue in the Petchem and LNG. So the more we use in that space (elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion) it’s not good for us.

“So if you look at the de­mand side, we waste en­er­gy, and we have a long way to go when it comes to mak­ing sure every house­hold, every school child, every adult starts to think in a man­ner that says, you know, I bet­ter think twice be­fore I do this.”

He ob­served that rate changes tend to al­ter those be­hav­iours but it does re­quire tough de­ci­sions.

“That’s not an NGC de­ci­sion as re­al­ly the Cab­i­net makes those kinds of de­ci­sions. But that would go a long way,” he said.

On the whole, the sec­tor is “not where we’re sup­posed to be.”

How­ev­er, he posit­ed that the ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing done and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the en­er­gy ma­jors were be­ing worked through.

“What dri­ves in­vest­ment in up­stream is al­so tak­ing away some of the un­cer­tain­ties. Like with the At­lantic re­struc­tur­ing–up­stream has de­cid­ed to put mon­ey in the up­stream so they could feed the LNG trains. The At­lantic re­struc­tur­ing now gives you a long-term pre­dictabil­i­ty with a li­cense, it gives you a sim­pli­fied op­er­at­ing own­er­ship train. NGC has a big­ger part in it. It al­so gives you a door­way for ex­ter­nal gas out­side of the share­hold­ers. So it means, deep­er wa­ter gas can now be part of that arrange­ment. So I will say the ve­hi­cle is there, you have to dri­ve it and make sure it gets to the right place, where we weren’t be­fore,” he said.

As for the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, Lo­quan be­lieves T&T needs to move a lot quick­er, and we need to be much more pre­pared not on­ly as a com­pa­ny but as a coun­try.

Pos­si­bil­i­ties

In his view, he has sta­bilised the com­pa­ny, cre­at­ed a stronger in­sti­tu­tion and pre­pared it for the fu­ture with re­spect to the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

“I can’t help cer­tain things like hav­ing the mol­e­cule (nat­ur­al gas) in­creas­ing, for ex­am­ple. So we are still go­ing to be short for some time, but hope­ful­ly, the ac­tiv­i­ties that we have done now will yield some fruit in some years,” he said.

Lo­quan said when he start­ed at NGC, he be­lieved the best val­ue for the peo­ple of the coun­try was along the gas val­ue chain.

“We had some forces that were dri­ving us to do things out of ne­ces­si­ty be­cause of the lack of gas and you have an in­dus­try to main­tain. While we tried to be more ef­fi­cient, the world was chang­ing in a way that we need­ed to pre­pare our­selves al­so, to get in­volved in the whole not on­ly the gas val­ue chain, but the re­new­ables and the green en­er­gy chain so I would say that is that is part of the evo­lu­tion. The cul­ture that was need­ed to get that done was re­al­ly around sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” he said.

In his 40th year in the en­er­gy busi­ness, Lo­quan is of the view that it’s time “for a fresh batch of en­er­gy to come in and take this for­ward.”

In his time, he fo­cused on build­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and strate­gic di­rec­tion of what an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny en­tails.

“We have a di­rec­tion, we know where we are go­ing. Do I have to be the one do­ing that? Prob­a­bly not. Yeah, we have a good team that has been built and so on. I think I’ve done my part,” he said.

As for the fu­ture?

He’s open to pos­si­bil­i­ties.

He point­ed out that he was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed to the board of Re­pub­lic Bank Fi­nan­cials Hold­ings (RFHL) board which is a new but in­ter­est­ing sec­tor for him.

“ You might see me tran­si­tion­ing in­to oth­er sec­tors, but I’m still there to pro­vide more in­di­rect sup­port,” he said.

Asked about whether the tim­ing of his an­nounce­ment was too ear­ly, he ex­plained that it would take a few months to source the ide­al can­di­date and then have them tran­si­tion in­to the job.

He not­ed that he’s pre­sent­ing at the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence on the NGC be­ing an in­te­grat­ed com­pa­ny along the gas val­ue chain and he want­ed to keep the in­tegri­ty of the pre­sen­ta­tion know­ing that he will not be there to fin­ish the plan he first en­vi­sioned for the com­pa­ny.