NGC’s ‘Firsts’ For T&T’s Jubilee Year

This issue of Gasco is highly significant to me and the NGC family. I have always admired the depth and quality of this news magazine. Gasco not only charts NGC’s achievements, but also the development of the energy industry as a whole. It is as good an historical record of this significant aspect of our nation’s industry as you can get.

Our Part in the 50th Anniversary Celebrations

If this editorial has a theme, it is “firsts”, beginning with the many that the 50th anniversary of the nation’s independence brought for NGC, through our significant involvement as a proud and supportive corporate citizen. Some of the projects were brand new; others saw us increase our contribution so that the organizers were able to achieve more meaningful results. The scope of our involvement is staggering.

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is a good example of the kind of legacy project that we like to sponsor. It is unique in our country’s calendar of events because of its focus on rewarding good writing, and promoting the pleasure of the written word. Returning literature and the notion of reading for pleasure to the forefront–as it was not too long ago–has the potential to stimulate a culture of reading once again.

We supported the inaugural SteelFesTT in May. The world is deepening its interest in the evolution of the steelpan and in Trinidad and Tobago, its birthplace, and SteelFesTT prepares our pan industry for the opportunities of globalization through different avenues–concerts, workshops, and workmanship. The state-of-the-art NGC Couva Joylanders Pan Theatre, for which NGC provided financial backing, will be ready for residence by the NGC Couva Joylanders Steel Orchestra. The Theatre benefits central Trinidad as a whole, as a place of learning, performance and entertainment. It is not just a first for the country, but a first in the way that it deepens the meaning of corporate sponsorship.

Thousands of people visited “India: A Culture of Science” an exhibition we co-sponsored with NIHERST, at the Divali Nagar site. It covered 7,000 years of India’s history and the diverse contribution that the country has made to global, scientific understanding and technological progress. The enthusiasm of the young people was heartwarming.

August was a busy month. NGC’s 50th anniversary pennants flew from poles along Rivulet Road in Couva and circled the Savannah in Port of Spain. They captured the faces and things that make us uniquely Trinbagonian, and remind us of why our love of country runs so deep.

There were full houses at most of the showings of The Independence Film Series, which took local films and documentaries to venues in communities especially in Tobago, San Fernando and Point Fortin. NGC’s sponsorship helped this Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival initiative.

NGC also doubled the quantum of our partnership with the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board. For the 50th anniversary, we expanded our involvement with the most exciting of events: the “TTwenty for 50 Cricket Festival”. Cricket superstars Ramdin and Lara rubbed shoulders with Latapy, Hasely Crawford and the young, gold-medalist Olympian Keshorn Walcott. It was the experience of a lifetime and NGC helped to make it happen!

And then it was the 31st of August. We lined the streets or gathered with family and friends to share that moment in history with our fellow citizens. NGC was still playing a big part, as fireworks burst high over the celebrating streets, and sparkling streamers were visible from the hills far away.

We can confidently and proudly say that NGC is poised to enter a Golden Age of opportunity. It comes through our natural gas product; capitalizing on our own marketing of LNG from our investment in Atlantic’s Train Four; continued expansion of our pipeline network; development of industrial parks or projects and CNG conversion in the local transportation sector and export of our business model to countries which are just developing their own. I sincerely wish you, the readers of Gasco and fellow countrymen, a happy 50th anniversary of independence to Trinidad and Tobago.

by Indar Maharaj, President, NGC