James English, advises companies in the international oil & gas, LNG, fuel, mining, chemicals, and technology industries as they develop, buy, and sell projects and related infrastructure globally.
James negotiates contracts required for every stage of a project’s life cycle from initial investment, during commercial operations, and through decommissioning. His experience covers a wide range of complex development and commercial contracts, including host government instruments, joint ventures, supply, offtake, tolling, acquisitions, divestment, trades, credit support, site services, facility sharing, transportation, and numerous other industry tailored agreements. James has recently supported major infrastructure projects in LNG (Richmond LNG, SPEC LNG Cartagena), chemical manufacturing (La Porte PTMEG), mining (Grand Saline Salt), and fuels (fuel terminals).
As a project leader, he has supported general counsel responsibilities, including compliance, technology (especially SaaS implementation), dispute avoidance, restructuring, and general M&A.
Prior to joining Clark Hill, James worked at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. His responsibilities included deepwater transactions and new ventures in Asia Pacific, Africa, Australasia, Canada, and the Caribbean. While at Anadarko, James also worked extensively with natural gas commercialization and marketing projects in West Africa, East Africa, Central Asia, Trinidad, Australia, and New Zealand.
Gabrielle Finger, is Senior Commercial Advisor for Chevron New Energies (Houston, TX) working on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) projects along the US Gulf Coast. In that role, Gabrielle engages emitters across industries to develop a robust 3rd party CCS business model along the Gulf Coast.
Previously, Gabrielle was international commercial advisor at Noble Energy for 10 years, working on various west Africa assets in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Her most recent project there were monetizing the Alen gas field through the EG Gas Mega Hub and the Yoyo-Yolanda cross border development. Commercially, Gabrielle has negotiated a wide range of agreements, including farmout agreements, unitization contracts/bilateral treaty, joint operating agreements, condensate/LPG/LNG sales agreements, joint venture agreements, capture and sequestration agreements, and various government granting instruments.
Gabrielle is a 2023 cohort graduate of the Emerging Leaders Program at Chevron, has an MBA from University of Houston, and a BA from Washington University in St Louis. She is fluent in Spanish and knows enough French to be dangerous. Gabrielle is the current VP of New Energies for AIEN.
Nick Fulford, is Gas/LNG and Carbon Management Senior Director – Americas for GaffneyCline, with over 40 years of experience in the natural gas sector working on all aspects of the gas value chain from complex upstream projects, midstream and LNG export projects, LNG imports and gas to power, wholesale and retail market management, regulatory policy and trading. He is renowned as a leading Global LNG expert who has closely been involved in the US gas markets since the late 1980s and again more deeply since 2008 with the rise of the US shale gas boom. In recent years, Nick has engaged with the emerging Energy Transition impacts on energy markets globally, including CCS, offsets and net-zero LNG.
Troy Harder, advises clients in all aspects of corporate and securities law, with an emphasis on corporate finance transactions. He has experience representing both issuers and investment banks in a wide range of capital markets transactions, including initial public offerings, public and private offerings of debt and equity securities, tender offers, consent solicitations and exchange offers. He also counsels clients in connection with SEC reporting and corporate governance and compliance matters, including insider reporting and compliance with the rules of the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. He has significant experience advising boards and conflicts committees in corporate governance matters and related party transactions.
Troy has represented companies involved in all aspects of the energy industry, including exploration and production companies, midstream companies, pipeline joint ventures, oilfield services companies and public utilities.
Monica Hwang, counsels clients on energy-related project development matters, including joint ventures and complex commercial transactions. She has extensive experience working on liquefied natural gas import and export projects, handling the structuring for equity lifting; implementing tolling and sales models; and advising on gas supply and marketing arrangements. Among her vast industry experience is serving an integral role in the development of Freeport LNG—at the time, the largest non-recourse project financing in history—as well a consortium of investors into the Dominican Republic LNG import terminal, for which the joint venture won Latin American Finance Project of the Year.
Monica also advises on midstream and downstream project and commercial matters, including gas and crude oil/refined product terminalling.
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Monica is skilled at helping clients navigate cross-border transactions.
Prior to her legal career, Monica held various managing and contributor roles in upstream production, gas processing and wholesale, and retail energy trading and risk management.
Multiple legal publications have recognized Monica for her work in the oil and gas sector, such as IFLR 1000, who ranks Monica as a Highly Regarded lawyer; The Legal 500 US, who ranks Monica as a Key Lawyer; and Chambers USA, who lists Monica as a “Notable Practitioner” and “Up and Coming” lawyer in its Projects: LNG category.
Steven Otillar, for nearly three decades, has been a trusted advisor to clients seeking to develop, finance and execute acquisitions and divestitures of US and emerging markets oil & gas projects, both onshore and offshore. He has an outstanding track record of handling high-profile and complex projects and transactions worldwide under Texas and English law. In the United States, his work includes asset-based acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures for private equity-backed and publicly traded E&P companies and oil field services companies. Internationally, he has focused on asset-based projects, representing IOCs and NOCs with upstream, midstream and downstream projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, including LNG-to-power, cross-border unitization, host government concessions and PSCs, petrochemical and refining matters. Additionally, his hydrocarbon experience has led him to be heavily involved in energy transition work, helping traditional E&P companies expand into low carbon ventures, including carbon sequestration, waste-to-power and advanced biofuels.
Steven, a frequent lecturer and author on energy-related topics, is the former President of the Association of International Energy Negotiators (formerly AIPN) and currently serves on the Executive Committee for the Institute for Energy Law in the Center for American and International Law.
Dennis Petito, spent over forty years leading the North American Energy platforms of three global corporate and investment banks. He has deep insight applying ESG/Sustainability principles as a governance platform supporting the oil and gas industry’s pivotal role in the energy transition.
As a lead player in over $100 billion of structured transactions, involving every segment of the energy industry, Dennis managed diverse, high-performing teams of seasoned bankers, petroleum and process engineers, Project Finance specialists and M&A and A&D Advisors.
Dennis served 20 years on the board and as Honorary Chairman of the French American Chamber of Commerce as well as Chairing its Energy Committee and was a Founder and member of the Executive Committee of the Private Directors Association’s Houston Chapter, as well as a member of the Houston Producers Forum, Houston Energy Finance Group, several charitable and non-profit organizations.
Dennis has a Master’s degree from Columbia University International Finance and Banking, and a BA from Queens College, with Honors, Economics and Political Science.
Ann Rhoads, has been involved in the oil and gas sector for over 35 years and has 20 years of investment banking experience. She joined Gulf Capital Bank in January 2022. Prior to Gulf Capital, Ann was with Acquest Advisors as a Managing Director in 2019, having previously been Head of U.S. Upstream for BNP Paribas. Prior to BNP Paribas, Ann was Head of Energy & Commodities for the Americas at Natixis and Co-Head of Oil & Gas for EMEA at The Royal Bank of Scotland Bank. In addition to those positions, Ann had several years of oil and gas upstream experience at ABN AMRO and Wells Fargo.
Ann holds an BBA in Finance from Texas A&M University.
Grant Swartzwelder, is Founder and President of OTA Environmental Solutions, a full-service environmental firm focused on the energy industry, and is also President of Kimark Systems, Inc. – a combustion, burner management and automation service provider to the oilfield.
Grant is the Co-Founder and Partner of ESG Dynamics. ESG D provides data and compliance audits for upstream companies. It also benchmarks upstream operators to determine their performance relative to others.
Grant’s experience spans over 35 years in the energy industry as an investment banker, owner/investor, operator and engineer. Mr. Swartzwelder has founded multiple oilfield service companies with successful exits. Mr. Swartzwelder graduated from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering in 1985 and the Harvard Business School with an MBA in 1990.
Albert van den Brink, is a business development professional with international expertise in the energy industry, based in Houston. He has been leading interdisciplinary teams tasked with the delivery of (cross-border) acquisitions and divestments for Shell. Albert has originated, negotiated and delivered $1+ bln of investments in renewable energy and low carbon technologies in the USA.