Advisory Board

Stella Farrington has been writing about energy markets for over 20 years, working at Futures World News and Dow Jones Newswires before moving to Energy Risk in 2004. She spent eight years as the editor of Energy Risk and six as a writer, before moving into her current role as Energy Risk’s head of content and a commercial editor with Infopro Digital’s Ignite team.

Christian DE SANTIS

Chief Financial Officer at Vårgrønn AS

Since 2021, Christian DE SANTIS is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Vårgrønn AS which is a Norway-based company with the ambition to reach an installed capacity in the North Sea and Baltic Sea region of 1 GW towards 2030.

Previously, he spent most of his 20+ years international career within the oil & gas trading business of Eni Group. From 2015 until June 2021, he was CFO of Eni Trading and shipping Inc., an oil & gas trading company based in Houston (Texas) along with the same role in Eni Transporte y Suministro México, S. de R.L. de C.V.  based in Mexico.

From 2008 until June 2015, he had various roles within Eni Trading and Shipping SpA, the primary energy trading Company of Eni based in Italy with branches in London, Brussels and Singapore; he primarily supported the Company to implement and streamline the Accounting and Back Office processes. During the same period, he was also the Chief Financial Officer of Tecnomare, a Company providing on shore and off-shore engineering services to eni upstream affiliates.

At the earliest stage if his career (2003), he joined the Eni Advisory Team managing the Eni Group transition from Italian Gaap to IFRS so to became an IFRS and US Gaap subject expert.

For nearly twenty years Ilia Bouchouev has been managing the global derivatives business for Koch Industries, the world second largest privately held company. Koch's derivatives group operates globally with trading desks in New York, Houston, London and Geneva with the focus on energy trading. Ilia also serves as a President of Koch Global Partners, proprietary trading group specializing in trading foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives. Ilia has PhD in Applied Mathematics, and has been a regular speaker at various industry conferences.

Ronan Julien is Global Head of Electronic Sales (e-sales) and Digital Chief Operating Officer for BNP Paribas Commodity Derivatives. He has been with the Bank for 15 years in various functions both in Europe and the US. Ronan currently spearheads the Bank’s digitalization efforts in commodity derivatives, notably through the integration of commodity trading into the Bank’s multi-asset Cortex electronic platform. The Cortex platform for commodities is an award-winning bespoke trading solution available to the Bank’s corporate and institutional clients across a wide range of underlyings allowing customized hedging on less liquid assets. Prior to joining the Bank’s digital efforts, Ronan has worked for over 10 years in Commodity sales with a specialization in energy markets and has assumed managerial positions across commodities in North America, the Middle East and French-speaking markets. Ronan holds degrees in international law and economics from Sciences Po in France.

Earl Burns Jr. is a leading Energy Executive with more than 30 years of experience in the energy sector serving in various operating, financial, trading and supply roles. Burns was previously manager, Americas Distillate Trading in the Commercial organization. Prior to that, he resided in London and held the role of manager, Crude Trading Europe, Africa and Russia for Phillips 66 Limited, where he was responsible for all crude trading and supply activities. He began his career with Mobil Oil Corporation in a variety of positions in the U.S., Africa and Latin America inclusive of financial trading, logistics and sales positions. Previously, Burns served as the crude trading manager for BP in Chicago as well as manager, Global Strategy and Commercial Development (Commercial Marine) at ConocoPhillips. Prior to his time at ConocoPhillips, Burns spent five years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, receiving an honorable discharge as Lieutenant.   

Earl is a proud member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC); the most elite organization advancing the cause of Black Executives globally, an active board member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) Energy Oversight Committee, as well as being an incoming (2020) board member and director of the United States Merchant Marine Academy (Kings Point) Alumni Foundation.

Richard is founder and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Matilda Capital Management, a commodity derivatives fund manager specialising in relative value strategies in oil, products and natural gas. He previously worked at Glencore where he was a Senior Energy Derivatives Portfolio Manager and at Shell Trading London where he was the Team Leader Crude Oil Derivatives Trading for over thirteen years and instrumental in building the company’s global crude oil and product options trading business. He was educated in Australia

Elisa Scarpa is Deputy Director Market Strategy & Structuring at Edison, EDF Group.
Her activities concern the development of market strategies on power, oil, gas and LNG markets, the implementation of pricing models for structured energy products and the evaluation of the optionality in Edison portfolio. She has been working for Edison for the last 16 years. Previously Elisa has been involved for four years in several projects at Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei in the International Energy Market Unit. She holds a degree in Economics (DES) from Bocconi University and a master’s degree in Energy Finance and Trading from Politecnico of Milan. She is the author of papers on commodity finance and price forecasting. She conjugates the activity at Edison with lectures on Energy economics and Energy fundamentals and she is part of the steering committee of the European Energy Analyst meeting. She is the Leader of the Topic Energy & Utilities for Bocconi Alumni Community.

Abhishek Deshpande is Vice President - Market Intelligence Strategy, Portfolio & Market Intelligence for ADNOC Group Abu Dhabi. Prior to joining ADNOC Group Abhishek headed up the Global Oil Market Research and Strategy team at J.P Morgan, he joined J.P. Morgan in 2017. Before that Abhishek was Global Head of the Energy Research team at Natixis SA based in London and also worked at Indian Oil Corporation Limited. Abhishek has a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University & is a Fellow at the Institute of Chemical Engineers and Energy Institute UK.

Haibin Sun is the Director of Exelon Corporation’s Transmission Strategy Analytics team. He oversees economic studies, technical modeling and reliability planning for Exelon’s transmission investment business and related policy advocacy initiatives.  

Prior to his current role, Haibin was the Director & Chief of Staff of Exelon’s Commercial & Industry Power business and, prior to that, the Director of the Quantitative Modeling & Deal Review for company’s commodities business, corporate capital projects and risk management initiatives.  Before joining Exelon, Haibin was VP & Head of Constellation’s Risk Analytics team. 

Haibin holds a PhD in Industrial & Systems Engineering specialized in Economic Decision Analysis and a MS in Financial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, a MEng and a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University in China.

Sunil Biswas is chief product officer for ION Commodities, a division of ION which provides comprehensive trading, risk management, and advanced decision-support solutions for commodity management. Sunil has over 25 years’ experience within technology firms and global banks, leading transformational trading systems initiatives to drive business development. He joined ION in 2017 from Bloomberg, where he was head of trading solutions product for six years. Before this, he spent seven years at Morgan Stanley and led the global build of the firm’s fixed income electronic trading platform and introduced automated trading. Sunil started his career at JP Morgan, spending ten years building derivatives trading systems as a front-office technologist. Sunil holds a Master’s in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London. 

Partha S Chatterjee is a digital transformation and technology strategy leader with almost 30 years of experience in the United States. He is the Data and Analytics SME for Shell Energy at Trading and Supply IT. Previously, he was head of market-facing strategy for Product Management at ION (OpenLink) and Managing Director at Capco Energy Solutions. Partha has held technology leadership positions at Schlumberger, Kinder Morgan, Accenture and Sapient among others.

His expertise encompasses energy and trading risk management (ETRM) systems, risk management and trading analytics, regulatory compliance, and governance. He compliments that with deep technical knowledge in enterprise architecture, digital transformation, data and analytics, AI and mathematical modeling, blockchain and emerging technologies. As a global expert on trading and risk management, Partha has worked on think tanks and summits, advising governments, regulatory boards and financial institutions. Partha brings strategic vision and leadership capabilities in driving solutions and roadmaps as a technology executive.

Partha holds a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) with first class in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) (Kharagpur) in India. He came to the United States for graduate studies on a NASA-funded scholarship to work on Computer Vision at the Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of South Carolina and an MBA from Texas A&M University, specializing in finance and MIS.
Partha lives in Houston and enjoys sports and music with his wife, Arpita and children, Ishaan and Trisha.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthaschatterjee/

Aurel Mindrican, Commercial optimisation & market insights director, CEZ Romania 

Aurel holds a license degree in Hydroelectric and environment and a master’s  in Optimisation of Hydro Power Plants operation from Universitatea Politehnica Bucharest followed by another master’s in Energy with FABIZ – ASE, Romania. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of electricity suppliers’ association in Romania (AFEER) in 2006-2008. After 5 successful years as a senior engineer in Hidroelectrica (the biggest power producer in Romania) contributing to the start of electricity market in Romania, he took the position of Trading Director in Romelectro, one of the top 5 trading companies in Romania. From 2008 to 2021 Aurel was Trade Development Manager and General Manager in CEZ Trade Romania, as well as  Trading Manager in Ovidiu Development (CEZ Wind farm) from 2016 to 2021. Since 2021 he has taken the position of Trading and Market Strategies Director in CEZ Romania Group. 

Georges Panaghoulis is the head of price risk and hedging at Island Oil Holdings, a physical supplier of marine fuel headquartered in Cyprus.

He has been working in risk management since 2015 where he has had various roles and been involved in the set-up of hedging procedures & strategies, exposure reports, clearing accounts, implementation of ETRM’s as well as derivatives trading and live price evaluation.

Georges is an engineer specializing in Mechanics Energetics and started his career in 2011 as an area sales manager, and he was in charge of developing sales for a manufacturer of flexible heating elements across various industries and applications.

Domenico De Luca is Head of Axpo Group’s Trading & Sales and has been a member of the Axpo Group Executive Board since 1st October 2014. Prior to this, since April 2009, Domenico De Luca was responsible for the group’s activities in international energy trading, origination and sales within Axpo Solutions AG (formerly EGL). He is also a member of the Management Board. He has worked for EGL since 2000 in several management positions. His career started at ABB.

Domenico De Luca has extensive experience and knowledge of risk management, origination and trading in energy commodities. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from "Università La Sapienza di Roma", a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from STOA', Italy in collaboration with the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). Furthermore, he holds a Certificate in Quantitative Finance from the CQF Institute in London.