Alastair Painter is Business Development Leader and a Principal Consultant for DNV’s Energy Solutions business in North America. Alastair has more than 20 years experience in the energy industries, the last 12 of which have focused on assisting major energy operators with reliability and asset performance issues. Alastair has an honors degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom. He is widely recognized...more

Rick Birnbaum is a chemical engineer and has over thirty years experience in the use of amines to remove acid gas contaminants from natural gas, refinery gas and flue gas process streams. In 1974, he began work at Union Carbide’s plant in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he supervised operations in the alkanolamine and fine chemicals production units. From 1981 to 2005, Rick worked for Union Carbide and then the Dow Chemical Company to provide sal...more

Lisa works with Van Ness Feldman's electricity, natural gas, biofuels, and public policy practices. With a background that traverses the full spectrum of energy issues, including infrastructure siting, biofuel mandates, oil and gas policy, and renewable and nuclear expansion, Lisa assists clients in developing sound energy policies with a keen awareness of the political realities that face the industry. Lisa has spent the last decade in key ...more

Robert Jones was appointed vice-president of Keystone Pipelines in June, 2006. Prior to this appointment, he provided leadership to the Keystone project team for more than three years while developing the project from the conceptual stage. Mr. Jones has overall accountability for the development and construction of all phases of the Keystone project including securing land and permits, engineering, procurement and construction management of...more

Pat Swafford is a Solutions Consultant for Spiral Software with deep expertise in crude oil quality, refinery planning and scheduling, and refinery performance monitoring. Mr. Swafford has over 20 years of refinery economics, optimization and scheduling experience in operating companies, consulting and software firms. He also has an extensive knowledge of the markets for crude oil and refined products and the economic effects of these on refinery...more

Dr. Jonathan Trent spent nine years studying the open ocean and was among the first so-called “blue-water divers,” who developed SCUBA techniques to explore the surface waters of the open ocean, hundreds of miles from shore in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In addition to his own SCUBA research, he worked with Navy Saturation Divers to explore water column depths beyond the range of SCUBA and used the research submersible “Alvin” to explo...more

Shunlan Liu is program director, bitumen upgrading for AERI. She is responsible for strategic planning and project management of AERI’s R&D investments on bitumen upgrading technologies. In 1992, she joined China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) as an assistant chemical engineer at CNPC’s Oilfield Chemicals Company. After a few technical and operational assignments, she became a manager supervising the R&D of oilfield chemicals. In 1999, sh...more

Gerhard Abel is Vice President at TÜV SÜD America Inc. with joint responsibility as President of TÜV SÜD Industry Services, Inc. and PetroChem Inspection Services, Inc., both divisions of TÜV SÜD America Inc. He has been with TÜV SÜD for seventeen years, fifteen of which have been spent in the United States in various roles and numerous offices nationwide. Mr. Abel holds a Mechanical Engineering degree and is a Certified Welding Engineer. He beg...more

Based in Calgary, Robert oversees a number of TD Securities' senior energy relationships and heads its oil sands business in Canada. Over the past decade he has executed over C$8 billion of oil sands related equity and debt financings led by TD for each of Western Oil Sands, UTS Energy, OPTI Canada, Petrobank, Value Creation, Synenco Energy, North American Oil Sands, Oilsands Quest, Shell Canada, Pembina Pipelines & E-T Energy. Robert has also ...more

Dr. M Rashid Khan was selected as the Distinguished Lecturer by the Society of Petroleum Engineering for 2006-2007, and is a member of MIT Energy Club. Dr. Khan provides leadership in developing and commercialization of Intellectual Properties for Saudi Aramco and was instrumental for licensing the first technology for the company. Rashid served 13 years with Texaco prior to joining Saudi Aramco where he received numerous International Innovatio...more

José Carlos Cosenza is the Executive Manager of the Refining in Petrobras Downstream since June, 2008. He is also currently Member of the Board of Downstream Participações Ltda., Member of the Council of Alberto Pasqualini Refinery and Member of the Council of Abreu e Lima S.A. Refinery. Mr. Cosenza has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He has also attended several technical and managerial traini...more

Dr. Whitman is a Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy and International Affairs of the Department of Energy. For the last 15 years, he has been involved with energy policy analysis and forecasting, including analysis of restructured electricity markets and climate change policies for the Energy Information Administration. He also has performed market analysis for the Independent Market Monitor of the Midwest ISO, an electricity regional transmi...more

Jim Wasas is chief science officer, executive vice president for SWAPSOL, Corp. During the last several years he has spent his efforts along with his co-inventor Ray Stenger on developing the Stenger-Wasas Process, a unique process which enables a reaction between hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. He has spent much of his career engaged in corporate management, chemical research as well as chemical product and process development in the United...more

Steve Whittaker is the Senior Project Manager at the Petroleum Technology Research Centre in Regina, Canada where he oversees the management of all research programs, including the IEA GHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project, JIVE, Aquistore and the EOR Program. He comes to the PTRC from Canadian Capital Energy Corporation, a Saskatchewan-based oil exploration company. Prior to this Steve was a Senior Research Geologist for the Ge...more

Sherman Glass is President of ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company and Vice President of Exxon Mobil Corporation. In this capacity, Mr. Glass is responsible for ExxonMobil's global refining, supply and transportation activities. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Glass was Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil Chemical Company, responsible for Exxon Mobil's global olefins, aromatics, intermediates and synthetics businesses. He joined Exxon in 197...more

Tom Botts was appointed Executive Vice President for Shell’s Global Manufacturing portfolio March 2009, having previously held the role of Executive Vice President for Shell’s Exploration and Production activities in Europe. Tom joined Shell Oil Company in 1977 in Ventura, California, as a production engineer in the upstream. After various onshore and offshore engineering assignments he became Division Engineer in 1982 and then com...more

Robert Jablonski is General Manager of Metegrity, an asset management company for the process industry. Its flagship product Visions Enterprise is considered the leading and most-proven lifecycle management software product on the market. Mr. Jablonski has over 18 years’ background in business management, Information Technology and software development and is the author, designer and developer of the premier Visions Enterprise product which...more

Karim Essemiani is the Business and Marketing manager of Oil and Gas division of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies North America. Mr Essemiani has about 10 years experience in the design of industrial process and waste water technologies, with core expertise in refineries and onshore produced water. Mr Essemiani has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is the co-inventor of Veolia’s proprietary...more

Carmen Difiglio is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Analysis in the Office of Policy and International Affairs (U.S. Department of Energy). He is responsible for DOE’s analyses of energy policies. Carmen Difiglio previously served as Head of the Energy Technology Policy Division at the International Energy Agency (IEA). There he, and his staff, developed a new world energy model and publication series (Energy Technology Perspect...more

Mr. Simon is the Director of the Compliance and Innovative Strategies Division of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His role includes managing the certification, registration and compliance activities associated with all engines and fuels sold in the United States. Some of the major activities he has been extensively involved in are the 2004 Clean Nonroad Engine and Fuel Program, the Natio...more

Rob has extensive experience in the security industry. Prior to his position at Siemens he spent two and a half years as Vice President, Business Development at Adesta. He held a similar position at Convergint Technologies, LLC. Prior to those positions, he was Senior Vice President at GVI Security, Inc. Throughout his career, Hile has been responsible for P&L management, corporate sales and marketing strategy, forecasting, bookings, revenue ...more

Mr Mourtada joined Pcubed in 2003 and currently heads the energy practice focused on delivering value to customer through program & portfolio management. Walid has worked with major global energy organizations on diverse projects from optimizing multi-billion dollar project portfolios, to streamlining global initiatives that maximize value while minimizing business disruptions. Walid joined the management consulting field in 1999 after earn...more

Dr. Mat Malladi is a Refining executive with more than 30 years' experience in Refining technology transfer, business development, acquisitions/alliances, and strategic planning. With Reliance Industries, Dr. Malladi serve’s as the President of Corporate Business Development. As part of this effort Dr. Malladi program managed Reliance's petroleum retailing implementation at 1200 sites across India with state-of-the-art automation. Recently,...more

James Randolph (Randy) Armstrong, Jr., Environmental Issues Director for Shell Oil Company, began his career with Shell 1975. Randy has over 30 years environmental experience and has held various technical assignments in operations, engineering, health, safety and environmental. Randy has compliance and engineering experience in air, water and waste He has been involved in environmental issues ranging from the Great Lake's Basin study in the m...more

Robert W. Pease is President and Chief Executive Officer of Motiva Enterprises LLC, based at corporate headquarters in Houston Texas. He was elected to his current position in November 2008. Most recently he was President of Shell Trading (US) Company. Prior to that he was Vice President of Supply for Motiva Enterprises LLC. Previous to these assignments he spent 15 years in leadership roles within downstream refining and marketing joint venture...more

In his current role, he is responsible for part of the CO2 programme in the Royal Dutch Shell, with focus on the CO2 efficiency of the company. Dr Lestak has 25 years experience with the oil and gas industry, he started his career as a lecturer at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology. He spent nearly ten years with front-end design of refinery, LNG, ammonia and ethylene plants at MW Kellogg Ltd. in London, wh...more

John Fox is President and Chief Executive Officer of Innovation Fuels. He has been building businesses and product offerings for the past 15 years, seven years of which have been in US energy industry. Mr. Fox started a renewable energy project development company, Homeland Energy Resources Development, Inc. in 2001, and subsequently its biodiesel division in 2005, which was merged into Innovation Fuels. He led Homeland Energy to an average 50...more

Wolf Koch has managed technology development programs for over three decades on environmental, safety and intellectual properties issues related to petroleum product distribution. He managed petrochemical and petroleum processing technology development for a major oil company and has collaborated with regulatory agencies at the Federal, State and local levels and with industry groups and associations. He is the inventor or co-inventor on 26 paten...more