Speakers

Mark has in excess of 20 years of energy sector advisory experience, initially with Waterous & Co, where he was a Managing Director before he became a founding partner of Tristone Capital (UK). Following the sale of Tristone Capital to Macquarie Bank, Mark joined FirstEnergy where he was MD of the A&D team and sat on the Executive Committee of the firm and continued in the A&D role through the merger with GMP in 2016 and the sale to Stifel in 2019.  Mark co-founded LAB in May 2021.

Prior to working in the M&A/A&D advisory sector, Mark gained more than 10 years of technical experience initially with Shell, where he held a variety of geological and geophysical roles in both exploration and development teams and later as the Lead Geoscientist at a 3D visualisation facility located within Imperial College, London University, serving both academia and the oil and gas industry.

Mark has managed the full spectrum of advisory services from corporate M&A, asset transactions, buy-side advisory and exploration farm-outs on projects located across the globe but with a particular focus on the North Sea, Africa and the Middle East, onshore Europe, the FSU, Latin America and South East Asia. Mark has also provided support to capital markets initiatives for energy companies listed on both the London and Toronto stock exchanges. Previous clients have included Majors, large Asian players, public and private independents, public juniors, private equity backed companies and private start-ups.

Mark holds an honours degree in Geology and Biology and a Master of Science degree in Sedimentology, both from the University of London. He is a member of the GESGB (Geoscience Energy Society of Great Britain) and sits on the Steering Committee of the EPNG (European Petroleum Negotiators Group).

Imran has a BSc in Petroleum Geology (2018, Royal Holloway, University of London) and a MSc in Petroleum Geoscience (2019, Imperial College London), with his thesis focusing on seismic characterisation of mass transport deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shortly after finishing his MSc, Imran worked as a mud logger onshore Romania for several months. Imran then joined Enverus in October 2020, where he initially started covering North West Europe before starting to cover Continental Europe since early 2022.

Gabor C. Tari is the Group Chief Geologist at the OMV Petrom Group responsible for the geological aspects of the global exploration portfolio across the business. After graduating with a geology and geophysics PhD at Rice University Gabor joined Amoco in 1994 in Houston. After a variety of exploration project assignments with Amoco Romania and Amoco Angola, he left BP Amoco in 1999. At the Houston-based Vanco Energy Gabor was initially the Chief Geophysicist but then became Vice President of Geosciences following closely a numerous deepwater exploration projects around Africa.

In 2007 Gabor moved to Vienna and joined OMV as a Senior Advisor. Later he became Chief Scientist for Geology and worked on a large number of exploration projects in various basins in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia. Besides teaching internal courses at OMV Petrom on seismic data interpretation, salt tectonics and prospect generation, Gabor also takes a keen interest in the education of the next generation of geoscientists externally, for various academic institutions and geo-societies.

Dr. Gehrig Schultz has been actively involved in the Continental European Energy continuously since 2006.  He has worked in the region both as a service provider and as a senior energy company executive.  His experience spans growing former Romanian state owned geophysical and geological enterprise to become a highly respected international geophysical supplier and tripled its annual revenues to over € 100 million, rejuvenating a producing field, starting a cased whole logging and well maintenance company, and technical leadership of several startup companies. Mr. Schultz is currently Director of Business Development at EPI Group where he leads a multidisciplinary team specialized in applying geophysics to geothermal energy, nuclear waste disposal, near surface wind foundation engineering and hydrocarbons exploration and field redevelopment.

Gehrig holds a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Bucharest and graduated with a BS in Geophysical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. 

Varinia Radu is known as a top industry expert and opinion leader, at the forefront of the energy legal work, encompassing 20 years of experience across various sectors within the energy industry, focusing on the electricity, renewable energy, nuclear, oil & gas, and mineral resources sectors. She enjoys a great notoriety and stellar reputation within the energy industry both in Romania and abroad. She distinguishes as a well-versed lawyer in all the energy sector legal matters, as advisor to some of the largest deals but most notably, for contributing to a number of important laws in the sector, such as the Petroleum Law, the Energy Law, the Contracts for Difference support scheme for low carbon technologies, as well as the road map of the law on offshore wind operations in the Black Sea, a key step towards promoting clean energy.

She often writes articles and speaks publicly at prestigious industry local and international events throughout her career to date, highly concentrated around the energy and related infrastructure practice. Varinia has been active in the Romanian energy market through the beginning of market liberalisation and the establishing of a new regulatory framework in preparation for Romania joining the EU (early 2000s). Varinia also plays a regional role in CMS’s Central Eastern practice across seven jurisdictions, being active in coordinating the oil and gas practice, top ranked as well in most of the countries we are active, as well as playing an important role as the deputy head of the Energy, Projects and Construction Sector Group. She not only does local work, but also advises on international deals in Europe, Africa and Middle East.

Kevin Atkins is a partner in the Firm’s Energy, Environment & Infrastructure Practice group. He advises multinational clients in the traditional energy and energy transition sector on corporate and financing transactions. He has extensive experience with complex cross-border acquisitions and divestitures, joint venture structures and project financing energy and infrastructure assets. He has also advised energy companies raising capital across the debt and equity markets. He has represented clients across the North Sea, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the US. 

Mr. Costis Stambolis is a founding partner of the Athens based Institute of Energy for SE Europe (IENE) while he currently serves as Chairman and Executive Director. He also serves as a full member of the Greek government’s standing committee on Energy and Climate Change (NECP). Costis has over forty years’ experience in the broad energy sector having worked under various capacities on renewables (solar and wind), natural gas, energy market analysis and energy policy. 

He holds graduate and postgraduate degrees from the Architectural Association in London and a professional practice license as architect-engineer from the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE). He holds a Master’s Degree from the Said Business School at Oxford University, where he studied Strategy and Innovation. He is also the founder and managing editor of Energia.gr, Greece’s foremost energy portal. He has published extensively on energy issues. Among others he is the Editor of IENE’s flagship publication, ‘’The SEE Energy Outlook”, last published in 2022. The next edition is scheduled for the summer of 2025.

Technical and commercial manager with almost 40 years' experience in geothermal and E&P companies including Enel Green Power (EGP), Enterprise Oil, Shell, OMV and ENI.  He is currently Co-COE of GEN and visiting professor of "Geology of Energy Transition" at G. D'Annunzio University (Chieti-Pescara Italy).

In his last position at EGP he was Head of the Global Geothermal Technological Line for several years. Having the worldwide responsibility of Enel's geothermal portfolio, he had the opportunity to acquire a very wide experience in this business.

Previously, he was VP of EDO (Exploration, Development and Operation) of the Upstream Gas Division of Enel. He was also CEO and later Chairman of Enel Longanesi Development SRL and Enel Trade Country Manager in Algeria.