Faculty

DR CARLOS BLANCO is an expert in energy, commodity, and financial risk management and modeling. He has been a faculty member of the Oxford Princeton Programme since 2004, where he teaches the Derivatives Pricing Hedging and Risk Management Certificate Programme as well as courses on Counterparty Risk Management and Gas and Power Trading and Risk Management.

He has published over 100 articles on financial, energy, and commodity trading, hedging and risk management. He is the founder and managing director of a risk management advisory firm with clients in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Carlos is a former VP, Risk Solutions at Financial Engineering Associates. There, he worked over six years as an essential contributor in the development of the energy derivatives valuation and risk management models of the firm. He also provided leading-edge risk advisory and educational services to over 500 energy and commodity trading firms and financial institutions worldwide. He also managed the world-class support and professional services department within the firm. Prior to FEA, Carlos worked for a hedge fund in the Midwest and an asset management firm in Madrid, Spain. He is a former regional director of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA).

Chris Brown has over 20 years' experience in the petroleum industry, both in downstream operating companies and in business consultancy. He has particular expertise in the downstream oil sector economics including market and production analysis, strategic planning and investment analysis. He has run numerous training courses covering refining operations and economics and on the downstream oil industry in general. He has undertaken a wide range of consulting assignments around the world, reporting at clients' executive board and senior management level. These have ranged from high level strategic analysis and corporate planning, industry restructuring, support to privatisation and M&A, asset and operations optimisation. He also has substantial experience in petroleum product pricing issues. Chris started his career at Exxon’s Fawley refinery in England, having gained a BSc in Chemical Engineering at Edinburgh University.

Robin A Burley is principal consultant with Kennet Oil Logistics, a company established in 1990 providing expertise in the international supply, trading and transportation sector. During his 30 years experience in the oil industry he has worked with BP including Marine and Supply Departments, and Gulf Oil including Trading and Transportation, Refining and Marketing functions. Besides the day-to-day management and negotiation of oil supply, trading and transportation deals, he has been involved in a variety of oil logistics projects throughout the world. He has lived in the USA, Europe and the Middle East, and is a contributing author to the Oil Trading Manual (pub. Woodhead 1995).

Scott Carter operates his own independent consultancy specializing in oil trading and marine fuel projects in Europe. He has over 25 years experience in oil trading including the management and responsibility of risk, supply and trading, refinery optimization and P&L. Mr. Carter was initially employed by P&O Shipping evaluating and executing group bunker purchasing. He moved into cargo trading in 1986 and joined Phibro Inc in 1991 where he became fuel oil desk lead and traded physical and paper fuel oil and feedstocks globally. Mr. Carter later took the position of Managing Director of Tosco Europe and Product Trading Manager and was instrumental in the company move into European trading and asset acquisition. On the purchase of Tosco by Phillips Petroleum and the subsequent merger with Conoco in 2002, Mr. Carter was appointed European Product Trading Manager of ConocoPhillips where he created a supply and trading operation of significant size and activity. Mr. Carter left ConocoPhillips in 2007 to move into consultancy and is studying an MSc in Environmental Management.

Adrian Clark is Principal of Clark Strategic Solutions, a consultancy in the energy industry. Prior to setting up this consultancy in 2009, Adrian worked for over 30 years in Oil and Gas with BP. He began his career with BP in London before moving to Australia where, over a ten year period, he held a number of different roles at both of BP's oil refineries. The roles initially technical in nature, had more of a commercial focus as time went on. He was accountable for all planning and scheduling for the Brisbane refinery and progressed to Operations Manager, deputy to the Refinery Manager and accountable for the safe, efficient operation of the whole refinery. He then moved to Singapore, acting as BP's shareholder representative for its joint venture refinery there at a time of significant expansion of the site. Adrian returned to Australia three years later where he was then responsible for the development and implementation of strategy for BP's refining and supply business in Australia and New Zealand. In 2001 Adrian became Head of BP's Supply and Trading team for the region. Concurrently, he was Director on the Board of the New Zealand Refining Co Ltd. In 2004, Adrian returned to Singapore as a key member of the Asian Trading business's leadership team. In his last role he was accountable for development and implementation of the strategy for that business as well as the provision of analytical support for the commodity trading benches. Adrian holds a B.Sc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh.

Alan Fisher manages a consultancy company based in the UK serving the Catalysis and the Chemical and Petrochemical Industries.  Prior to this he was Europe and Middle East Commercial Director for Engelhard’s Chemical Catalyst Group (now BASF) and managed Europe and the Middle East for CRI.  His earlier career was as a process engineer for both Exxon and Monsanto.  Alan studied Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University and is a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Randall Funk has 30 years of extensive risk management and trading experience in the full range of energy products including all NYMEX energy futures and options, OTC ISDA energy derivatives, as well as cash products. He has a proven track record of identifying and managing complex enterprise portfolios across the spectrum of energy products. Specifically he has traded and managed large scale corporate portfolios with crude oil and refined products, natural gas, electricity, coal, emission allowances, uranium and some foreign currencies. He has established new risk management departments, functions, and products in companies such as Coastal Corp., Heartland Energy, Arizona Public Services, and TOSCO/ Phillips and his career includes the front office roles of Vice President, Senior Portfolio Manager, Senior Energy Manager, Senior Risk Manager, Director of Risk Management, Manager of Futures Trading, and Futures Manager.

From 1985 to 1989 he managed energy futures/options activity at Coastal Corp. He then moved to Arizona Public Services where he prepared the utility to for the commercial demands of deregulation in the late 1990s and managed through the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000-2001. Mr. Funk has a BA from the University of Minnesota where he also did graduate work in Applied Economics. He has also been on several advisory boards for the NYMEX.

Dr. David S Glass is a former director of ChemSystems Ltd (now part of IBM UK Ltd) in London. He directed the Petrochemical Practice and was responsible for studies in the petrochemical and polymer field with particular interests in marketing, competitive analysis, strategic planning and business profitability. He joined ChemSystems in 1982 after spending fifteen years in ICI in the Petrochemical Division, where he held posts in marketing and purchasing. For many years he was Marketing Manager for Olefins, and subsequently became Marketing Manager for Aromatics. Prior to this he was responsible for fuels purchasing for the ICI group.

Dr. Ian Holdaway is an international consultant in the downstream oil industry and Partner / Technical Director of Cambrian Marine Reprocessing, a company specialising in the on-site reprocessing of contaminated petroleum and petrochemical cargoes. After graduating with a PhD in industrial chemistry, Dr Holdaway joined Esso working in Research, Marketing and Corporate Planning before transferring to Refining, where he was responsible for Refinery Operations Planning and subsequently Supply Logistics, where he was responsible for the management of import and exports to Esso's two UK refineries and the transportation of refined product to Esso's mainland marketing terminals. In this role Dr Holdaway was also responsible for product tanker chartering, including, when necessary, outchartering of Esso's five GP product tankers. After 11 years he joined J Aron, the commodity trading division of Goldman Sachs, where, as Trading Operations Director, he was responsible for all aspects of J Aron's International Trading Operations within the European and Far Eastern Offices.

Stuart Howell is Principal of the Castle Hampton Management Consultancy, former Head of BP's retail business in the UK and the industry's representative on the Government's Deregulation Task Force. The consultancy was established five years ago following 30 years service with BP which included senior posts in policy development, marketing, sales, network property management, investment and engineering. He currently advises oil companies, retail and city institutions.

Malcolm Johnson has more than 30 years experience at Shell in the natural gas/LNG sector. He was Strategy and Planning Manager in the United Kingdom and Germany during the period of gas liberalisation in Europe. Malcolm has been involved in the development of a number of LNG projects including over 13 years on the Sakhalin LNG project from its inception to final investment decision involving the full range of commercial activities including governance, marketing, LNG contract negotiations and technical/ commercial interface management. He has also provided commercial advice on the Elba LNG receiving terminal expansion, floating LNG, LNG contracts and project development assurance. He is a recognised subject matter expert on commercial LNG matters. Malcolm is now a Director of eMJay LNG Limited providing expert advice and consulting services to the natural gas/LNG industries.

Richard Johnstone is an independent consultant, providing expertise in all areas of oil supply and trading, in particular in the negotiation and operation of commercial contracts for oil and gas production, processing, transportation and sales. He has had over 30 years' commercial and management experience in major oil industry organisations, where his responsibilities have included sales and marketing, supply and trading, and transportation. Richard is a graduate of Oxford University; before becoming a consultant in 1997, he had worked for BP in London and Milan, the British National Oil Corporation, the Oil and Pipelines Agency (BNOC's successor) and BG Exploration and Production.

Larry G. Lawrence, President of Enterprise Risk Consulting, LLC, has 25 years of experience in energy risk management and trading. His experience includes financial trading in energy and equity markets, risk management and trading consulting, derivatives portfolio management, technical and options analysis, corporate education, advisory service publishing, and institutional sales.

Mr Lawrence has extensive experience in trading and risk management implementation for energy companies. His experience includes hedge strategy development, tactical trading assistance, the development of trading and risk management policies, procedures, and control structures, the review and assessment of risk management programs, risk and performance measurement, risk assessment, trading and risk system selection and implementation, transaction structuring, real option valuation and modelling, market structuring, development of forward price curves and term structures of volatility, credit risk management, and trading and risk management education. His work includes the evaluation and development of risk system functionality to support internal and external compliance with risk policies. He has developed and delivered educational material covering derivative instruments, option valuation, hedging with options, the development of a risk management program, trading controls, value at risk, technical analysis, technical trading, and basis trading.

Mr Lawrence has worked with many public power agencies in the South Central, North Eastern, and Western regions of the U.S., assessing and developing hedging strategies and risk management policies and controls, conducting trader training, and advising on the use of financial hedging instruments. He has assisted industrial energy consumers in assessing their energy-related risks, in developing strategic hedging frameworks, and in implementing supply procurement programs.

Mr Lawrence worked extensively with investor-owned electric utilities during the late 1990s and early 2000s, implementing hedging programs; developing and implementing hedge optimization models, asset valuation models, risk models, and performance measurement models; developing risk management and business strategies for retail providers; implementing credit risk management programs, and training power and fuel traders. Mr Lawrence holds the BS in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. He is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association (NFA) as a
Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA), and with the State of Texas as an Investment Advisor.

Charles Lawrie is a founding partner of Richardson Lawrie Associates, an independent firm of international maritime economists and business consultants established in 1987. He is responsible for the firm's consulting and retainer services in the crude oil, petroleum products and gas transportation sectors. He has spent 30 years in the oil and shipping sectors, more than 20 of which have been as project manager or senior consultant on shipping, economics, investment appraisals, feasibility studies, transportation strategies and business studies within Europe, the Americas and the Far East. He is a specialist in the development of: investment appraisals, business plans, strategy reviews; commercial/contractual advice, project implementation; evaluation of the transportation economics of varying routes, ports and cargo handling techniques; commodity trade flow analyses and forecasts; modelling and forecasts of short, medium and long term shipping traffic, shipping demand and shipping supply; and modelling and forecasts of shipping charter rates and vessel costs.

Rob Parry is an Executive Account Manager with BASF Catalysts (formerly Engelhard) with experience in technical and commercial catalyst applications and supply to the Petrochemical and Refining Industries for 20 years. Rob has a BSc joint Hons. in Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry from UCW Aberystwyth and is a Chartered Chemist with the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Jeffrey Plotkin is the Director of Nexant Chem Systems' Process Evaluation/Research Planning (PERP) program. Managing this activity involves working closely with technology developers, including operating companies and engineering contractors. His interests are in all phases of process R&D, with special emphasis on gas-to-chemicals processes, selective oxidations, alkane activation, and biocatalyzed routes to chemicals. His prior work experience with ISP and Exxon Chemicals provided an excellent background for his interests in commodity and specialty chemicals from both a technology and marketing perspective. He holds over 30 U.S. patents and has co-authored 28 peer-reviewed publications. He received his B.S. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Oneonta, a Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from Pace University. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Ohio State University.

Les Priestley is a director of Springtide Management Consultants Ltd. He carries out international training and consultancy on commercialising and developing gas field discoveries. Before that he was Managing Director of the consultancy and technology transfer companies of Essex University. His 25 years experience with KUFPEC, Total and BP included assignments and projects in many countries around the world. He has held senior management posts in engineering, project management, contract negotiation, market development, project economics and planning.

Richard Prince has almost 30 years of experience within the downstream oil industry, covering both marketing and refining businesses. Most recently responsible for marketing planning across the BP group, he has been an independent consultant since 2007. Richard has an MA in chemistry from Oxford University and began his career with BP in refinery process research and development, before gaining plant commissioning & operating experience. He joined Castrol in 1989, then part of Burmah Oil, as a manufacturing and supply chain advisor, before broadening his experience into marketing by managing the central business intelligence team. With subsequent management positions at BurmahCastrol in Strategic Projects and Corporate Development, he was a key contributor to the BurmahCastrol Board's decision to sell the business to BP in 2000. Returning to BP after the sale, Richard was appointed to the integration team set up to plan and manage the merger of the BP and Castrol lubricants businesses. Following a period in the downstream strategy & planning group, he took on a new role with responsibility for all planning activity in the global marketing function and was additionally responsible for developing these capabilities across the BP Group.

Mr Jeff Pym is currently affiliated to the US consulting firm, LECG. Until 2003 he was Director General of the Institute of Petroleum, a position he held following departure from BP in 1999. Sixteen years of his management experience were spent in BP’s Gas businesses, mostly abroad negotiating contracts as diverse as the Australian North West Shelf LNG Sales and Purchase Agreement and gas sales agreements, corporate mergers and acquisitions. Having successfully negotiated a European downstream gas merger with Mobil, his final BP position was as Managing Director and Associate President for BP Portugal, retaining responsibility for the combined BP/Mobil Iberian gas business. Among other wide-ranging skills and experience during his career he acquired expertise in communications and inter-cultural management.

Ravi Ramdas started his career at Shell’s Singapore office in 1993 where he held several roles in Finance and Trading; his last role managing a scheduling group and liaising with his London counterpart. He then moved to Koch, also in Singapore, where as a trading analyst, he devised trading strategies in the Asian petrochemical markets.

In 1999, Ramdas moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he opened the oil trading desk of NRG Energy. He then stepped up to head all fuels trading (natural gas, coal, emissions credits and oil). Soon, thereafter, he assumed the position of East Coast gasoline and diesel trading manager at Premcor Refining in Old Greenwich, Connecticut in 2004. There he successfully oversaw the trading transition of the purchase of the Delaware City refinery before taking on the role of feedstocks trader for the whole Premcor system of refineries. Following the sale of Premcor to Valero, Ramdas joined Oklahoma City-based start-up Musket Corporation in 2006 and traded diesel and other clean products in the Gulf Coast, mid-continent and southwestern United States. Ramdas fulfilled several roles including trading distillate products and gasoline on national pipelines and via rail, blending distillates in the Gulf Coast and developing a rail-based business to rail diluent to Canadian tar sands companies.

In 2008 Ramdas formed Peninsula Energy, LLC in Oklahoma City. The company provides various hedging, trading, supply and logistics services to oil consumers and producers. In addition, Peninsula is evaluating a variety of projects including storage “cash-and-carry” plays. Ramdas obtained his degree in Economics and Agricultural Economics from the University of Nottingham in England.

Neil Richardson has career experience spanning 40 years in oil, gas and petrochemicals, acquired in oil refining, corporate planning, public administration, consulting and lecturing. Sponsored at university by BP, he went on to spend 24 years working with BP in both operational and strategic planning roles, which included refinery production planning, long-range financial and corporate planning, project and acquisition analysis, competitor analysis and the assessment of company performance and value. Posted by BP to Brussels in 1990, he went on to join the European Commission there in 1993 at the Directorate-General for Energy, working on EU oil and gas strategy and on EU technical assistance programmes to former Soviet bloc countries involving the setting-up and monitoring of projects. In 1996 he became an independent consultant, still based in Brussels but engaged on oil and gas projects in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as the EU, working primarily as an associate consultant to the consulting arm of Bechtel (latterly named Nexant). This included leading a major study project for the European Commission on the costs to EU refiners of tighter oil product specifications, which won the British Consultant of the Year award in its category in 2000. Mr Richardson returned to live in the UK in 2003 and lectures for The Oxford Princeton Programme on three of their courses.

John H. Shepherd, based in Houston, Texas, has 30 years of experience in the petroleum industry. John began his career with Cities Service Company (now Citgo Petroleum Corporation). His responsibilities included refined product terminal and pipeline engineering, pipeline and marine terminal management, transport truck fleet management, computer information systems management and crude oil supply and trading. Serving as International Crude Supply Manager and Vice President of Cities Service Trading Company, he negotiated spot, as well as long term contracts for the purchase of waterborne crude oil cargos for the supply and optimization of company refineries. He was also responsible for negotiating long term sales contracts with foreign host governments in order to market the company's foreign equity crude oil production. After 12 years with Cities Service Company, he joined the international crude trading group of Transworld Oil U.S.A. as Vice President, and then served in the same capacity for Koch Supply and Trading Company. With both Transworld and Koch, John managed a staff of professional international crude oil traders, dealing in a wide range of international crude oil grades. This work involved crude oil trading for the supply and optimization of U.S. based refineries, as well as entrepreneurial crude trading for profit involving complex arbitrage trading and hedging strategies. He now serves as President of John H. Shepherd Enterprises, Inc., a privately owned Texas corporation involved in energy consulting and residential real estate appraisal and construction work. John holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Richard Sleep is the global director of Nexant’s ChemSystems Online and Petroleum and Petrochemical Economics (PPE) programmes. (Nexant acquired Chem Systems from IBM in 2001). He has 25 years of experience in the petrochemical industry in production, business management, trading and consulting. Prior to joining ChemSystems in 1994 he had been a trader with Metallgesellschaft Petrochemicals Corp. He spent twelve years with BP Chemicals Ltd in a variety of roles, initially in production as a mechanical engineer working at BP Chemicals' steam crackers at Baglan Bay and Grangemouth and subsequently in commercial roles including five years as Propylene Product Manager. Prior to joining BP Chemicals he worked for ICI as an engineer working on polyethylene and perspex plants.

Jeanne Westhoff, based in West Palm Beach, FL, is a professional with over eighteen years of experience in the energy industry. She has held positions with Mobil Oil Corporation as distillate sales consultant and regional trucking manager. As distillate sales consultant, Jeanne was responsible for promoting risk management programs to distributors in the Northeast. These programs included NYMEX based hedging strategies and counseling on the heating oil market. As regional trucking manager, Jeanne was responsible for lubricant sales to truck stops and dealers in New York, New Jersey and the New England states. Prior to her employment with Mobil, Jeanne was sales manager for a distributor in Palm Beach County, Florida. In this position she was responsible for bulk sales and distribution of gasoline, diesel fuels, methanol, lubricants, and additives.

David Whitby, BSc (Hons), MInstPet, is Chief Executive of Pathmaster Marketing, a business development consultancy for technology-based industrial businesses. Prior to this, he worked for BP for 22 years in a number of management positions, including Marketing and Business Development Manager for Kalsep (an advanced separations company), Business Manager for BP Ventures and Project Leader for Industrial Lubricants for BP Research.

DR DAVID WOOD has some 30 years of international oil and gas experience spanning technical and commercial exploration and production operations, contract evaluation and senior corporate management. Industry experience includes Phillips Petroleum, Amoco (Africa, Europe and UK) and Canadian independents (South America, Africa, Middle & Far East), including 3 years based in Colombia and 4 years based in Dubai. From 1993 to 1998 he was UK Managing Director for Lundin Oil & then Morrison Petroleum responsible for a broad portfolio of assets and a staff of more than 100.

David now works as an independent international consultant and expert witness advising international oil companies and governments.  He has published an extensive body of work on diverse energy related topics including: performance modelling of fiscal terms, economic analysis, enterprise risk management, portfolio simulation and optimisation, LNG, GTL and gas supply, deepwater exploration and production techniques, corporate performance, portfolio and strategy management, mergers & acquisitions, negotiations & project management. He is also actively involved in diverse professional training, research and development programmes and is an associate editor of the Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering.