Mr. Mark Loquan, O.R.T.T. скачать в хорошем качестве

Mr. Mark Loquan, O.R.T.T.

Born in 1960, our sixth inductee is the youngest of the 2025 cohort, which itself speaks volumes about what he was able to accomplish. He attended St Mary’s from 1972 to 1979 where he was not only outstanding academically in the sciences, but also displayed a talent for music. He pursued a degree in Chemical Engineering at UWI and followed by an MBA from Duke University. He then went to work in the downstream petrochemicals industry, rising to become the first local president of the Norwegian company Hydro-Agri (later known as Yara Trinidad). His work for that multinational company subsequently took him to postings in Australia, Africa, and Europe. As one of the executives of the companies on the Point Lisas estate, he was engaged in ensuring the highest standards of safety across all the plants operating on the estate. However, his major contribution to the energy sector of Trinidad and Tobago was to come later when he was appointed CEO of the National Gas Company in 2016. The circumstances of the energy sector had changed markedly. Natural gas production was declining, long-term gas contracts were expiring, and the Paris Climate agreement required countries to pay attention to carbon emissions in the service of environmental protection and also demanded that remedial action to be taken to reduce emissions. He saw the need to move the local energy sector toward sustainability and to secure cross-border gas supplies to reverse declining production levels. As CEO of National Energy, he assumed a leadership position advocating for change. He did this through his work and influence on the board of the Energy Chamber and the Point Lisas Energy Association (PLEA) as well as his contributions to the annual energy conference. He guided the NGC through the difficult period of gas curtailment and renegotiation of gas supply contracts and was instrumental in the restructuring of Atlantic LNG to secure greater participation for NGC. He also played a leading role in getting the entire industry, (upstream and downstream), to develop and accept one uniform health and safety prequalification requirement. That became the award-winning ‘Safe to Work’ programme known as STOW. His ability to bring stakeholders together and to encourage them to work cooperatively for the greater good of the overall industry was important to the success of these initiatives. Even while he worked in the energy sector here and abroad, his involvement in the arts and culture never wavered. He had learnt to play the pan in the 1990s and performed at Pan is Beautiful IX in 1998. He started to produce pan music in 2000, beginning two decades of collaboration with some of the top calypsonians and writing pan pieces for the annual Panorama competition, thirty-four of which have been performed on the Panorama stage. He believed that for the steelpan to fulfil its potential, it was critical for pannists to become musically literate. He founded the Music Literacy Trust in 2004 to document the arrangements produced for the Panorama competition and to teach young people to read music and provide scholarships for their further music education. In 2021 he founded PanNotation, a website platform for preservation, education and securing the future of the steelpan industry. Mark also produced four well received documentaries on the steelpan. Such was his commitment to pan music that during the periods when he worked abroad in Australia and Norway, he found ways to take the steelpan to those countries. For his significant contributions to the development of the energy sector and for his great impact on the advancement of the steelpan artform, Mark Loquan is hereby inducted into the St Mary’s College Hall of Fame.