Gas & LNG
Significant talent moves
Talent search and competitive intelligence specialists
We begin our summary of Gas & LNG moves with a piece that admittedly could just have easily have been slipped into the power section: Helle Østergaard Kristiansen moves up from CFO to CEO at Danske Commodities. She takes over from company founder Henrik Lind. Her eight years with Danske Commodities have included being CFO since 2015. The appointment of the new CEO coincides with Danske Commodities (now part of Equinor) reporting record-high financial results for 2018 with a 28% increase to 72 million euros for before-tax earnings.
Macquarie Group have made Pierre Courant their MD-Physical Gas Europe after recruiting him from Koch, where he had been Head of Trading for European physical gas. Pre-Koch, Pierre was with Global Energy Trading in Switzerland and with RWE.
Joining TrailStone in London as Senior Gas Trader is Richard Wilson. In reverse chronological order, he has traded gas for RWE, Statoil and EDF.
Brian Hodges (ex-Exelon) moves to Detroit-based DTE Energy to be Manager-Gas Origination & Marketing. Earlier, DTE Energy had announced a number of leadership changes, including the promotion of Matthew Paul to President/COO of DTE Gas from VP-Plant Operations for the company's electricity generation. Matthew replaces Mark Stiers, who takes on the role of President/COO-Power & Industrial. David Ruud was formerly President-Power & Industrial and becomes Senior VP-Corporate Strategy & Development. Renee Tomina is promoted to VP of Gas Operations, from Executive Director.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
Zug is now the workplace of Tobias Munk, newly at Ezpada as Senior Options Trader. Tobias ran his own commodity options trading company over the past year after being Head of Options Trading for Czech utility ČEZ in Prague between 2015 and 2018.
Paul Smith is in Baltimore to be a Natural Gas Trader for Hartree Partners after joining from Exelon company Constellation. As Constellation’s lead basis trader on north-east gas, Paul held the title of Senior Natural Gas Trader. He had been a Macquarie associate director of the NYMEX/volatility portfolio.
The vacancy for a West Natural Gas Trader at Six One Commodities in New York has been filled by Drew Dabrowski, previously Baltimore-based for Constellation as their senior trader in west natural gas.
Engie next, which has given the Brussels posting of Gas Portfolio Manager to Kevin Lietar. The position is within the Engie business unit, Global Energy Management, that manages a diversified energy portfolio in Europe. Kevin was a project manager taking care of business development while at Belgium’s BDE Group.
The team at Mitsui’s Houston office is newly enlarged by adding Ronnie FaJohn. He arrives as Senior Trader-Natural Gas. Among past trading slots for Ronnie have been in natural gas with Vitol and in energy at Lochridge Investment Advisers.
Adam Sweeney becomes a Structured Gas Trader at Gazprom Marketing & Trading, following his cross-London move from Citi. Adam was employed there for nearly eight years, initially providing logistical support to the physical commodities business for gas and power. Latterly he spent four years in Citi’s origination and sales of gas, power and emissions.
PGNiG is Poland’s largest player in gas and oil exploration that is also the country’s biggest importer of natural gas. Marlena Stuglik is the company’s latest portfolio manager, from a stint specialising in commodities and energy at Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv.
From being Director-Gulf Coast Marketing for OneOK until 2011 to Senior Fuel Specialist for Entergy had been the story in Texas so far for Brad Clausen. But that changed lately as he takes the Senior Gas Trader chair at Venture Global LNG. The company’s profile notes it has two Louisiana-based export projects servicing the global demand for North American natural gas.
Amine Alaoui describes himself online as a physical and financial natural gas trader in the Midwest, Rockies, and West U.S. markets. The description can now also include being Associate Portfolio Manager at Citadel, which he has joined from Constellation where he was Senior Trader Natural Gas-West/Rockies.
JV of EDF Trading and Jera Group leads to string of employer changes
Becoming a Trader in Natural Gas for Morgan Stanley in London brings Alex Hogg from a position in Zug trading gas across European markets at MET International. Alex was once at British utility SSE as an energy trader developing models for UK/European gas, global LNG and crude oil.
Vineet Arora’s new employer is SmartestEnergy in London. He joins to be a European Trading Analyst who can point to a track record of being an originator/trader of power and gas at Green Frog Trading and a European scheduling manager for power and gas while with Noble Group.
Back to Houston for a note about Roger Cheng, appointed Senior Asset Manager by EDF Trading. In 2009 he was trading natural gas for Iberdrola. Then came energy marketing with BG Group, followed most recently by being a Trader with Pacific Gas & Electric for California gas transmission.
Castleton Commodities International has upgraded Jack Pellegrin to Trader-Northeast Natural Gas after his first year with the company as a natural gas scheduler. Jack had been involved in gas scheduling while previously at Sequent Energy Management.
Natural Gas Trader at BKW Energie in Bern --- that’s Freddie Sizer’s new role following his move from Hamburg and two years as a natural gas portfolio manager covering Western European markets for Vattenfall Energy Trading. Freddie had been in Switzerland previously, when working on analysis and logistics for the gas trading desk of Koch S&T in Geneva.
Next, an opportunity to recognise Piotr Rzeczko for becoming Energy Optimisation Manager at chemical company Synthos, now privately-owned as part of the Michal Solowow Group in Warsaw. Piotr traded natural gas, oil and soft commodities for Polish company OSTC until 2010, later joining PGNiG as Trading Director and then Deputy Director responsible for transactions by the gas sales, trading, origination and crude sales divisions. Over the past three years he has been with AOT Energy, rising from head of gas supply in Poland to MD-Poland and Ukraine.
Brett Annis exchanges Spire for Mercuria in Oklahoma. At Spire (which reckons to be America’s fifth-largest natural gas company) Brett managed business development in its mid-continent region, having formerly traded natural gas for Continental Resources. Today, his official job title at Mercuria Energy America is Midcontinent Trader.
We start our LNG moves with a string of employer changes from EDF Trading to Jera Global Markets in the wake of the decision by the two companies to form their Jera Trading (Jera) joint venture for optimisation and trading in LNG. Sophie Ducoloner in Singapore was managing EDFT’s origination of LNG and LPG; she is now Jera’s GM Origination-LNG. Also in Singapore, LNG originator Antoine Monod becomes LNG Portfolio Trader. London-based Alex Orlans was a senior origination manager and is now Head of LNG Portfolio Trading. Marcos Henry Roitberg in the UK changes from being a senior LNG trading operator to LNG Commercial Operator in the new order.
One newcomer at Jera is Patrick McGrath as Head of Operations and Shipping. Patrick switches to Singapore from being Global Manager-LNG Operations for Shell in Dubai, but until 2016 he had been BG Group’s Singapore-based fleet operations manager.
Centrica has brought Jerry Guo from New York to London to be LNG Global Business Developer. Stateside, Jerry had managed Centrica’s US wholesale gas trading, origination and producer services.
In San Diego, Octávio Simões has left Sempra Energy in order to be Senior Adviser to the CEO of natural gas producer/trader Tellurian. Octávio was President/CEO of Sempra LNG.
Tejas Voralia is named Commercial Manager-LNG Supply & Trading for Energie Baden-Wűrttemberg (EnBW) in Germany. It is a first time in Karlsruhe for Tejas, who has previously worked with Gazprom in London (as LNG commercial analyst) and with Yamal LNG in Moscow as marketing manager.
Now a Senior Manager at PetroChina International (Japan), Takuichiro Ito has previously held managerial roles with Sumitomo in Tokyo and Singapore. His latest was GM of Sumitomo’s upstream LNG business. While in Singapore he had also managed Sumitomo natural gas/LNG company Petro Summit.
Media reports from Singapore say Vopak Terminals MD Tan Soo Koong has taken up his new post as CEO of Singapore LNG, which owns and operates the state’s LNG terminal. SLNG’s Sandeep Mahawar reverts to being VP-Commercial after acting as interim CEO since January.
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation of Singapore brings in experienced freight manager Stefan Beukeveld to be Commercial Manager-LNG Shipping and also take charge of its Mozambique LNG project. He is a long-time employee of BHP Group, which produces crude oil and natural gas liquids as well as its involvement in minerals. During 11 years with the group, Stefan co-ordinated logistics and traded freight for iron ore, copper and coal. By the time he left he was BHP’s Principal in chartering and procuring the ocean freight for the group’s shipped commodities.
Tim Lukin joins ExxonMobil in Singapore as Marketing Manager-PNG and LNG. It follows his most recent four years with Santos GLNG in which he managed LNG marketing for the Australian energy group. Santos has lately announced what it termed a “significant” gas resource at an appraisal well of its fully-owned Corvus-2 offshore project in Western Australia.
WE ARE CO-HOSTING THE 2019 GENEVA COMMODITIES SOIREE WITH ALESSANDRO SANOS AND ALL OUR FRIENDS AT REFINITIV LATER THIS MONTH!
This is merely a snapshot of some of the recent people moves and associated trends observed by our Gas & LNG research team at Commodity.
For further information about our intel offering and headhunting capabilities, please make contact with our CEO Jakob Bloch here 