Andrew Bartlett, Non-Executive Director, Energean plc.
Mr. Bartlett has over 30 years’ experience in the upstream oil and gas industry with most of that time spent in emerging markets. He has spent 11 years as an investment banker in the City and subsequently 5 ½ years in the Private Equity business and was the former Global Head of Oil & Gas Mergers and Acquisitions and Project Finance at Standard Chartered Bank plc.

He currently advises an African private equity group, Helios Investment Partners LLP on their oil investments and sits on the boards of several public and private companies in addition to running his own advisory business.

He currently is a Non-Executive Director of Africa Oil and Impact Oil & Gas. He heads the Audit Committee of the former and sits on the Audit Committee of the latter, while he is a member of the Remuneration and Nomination / Governance committees of both companies. He is on the Advisory Board of Upside Energy, who manage an EU funded initiative to discuss energy security issues for the EU. He was previously Chairman of Azonto Energy (ASX listed) and a NED of Eland Oil & Gas (AIM listed).

Prior to that Mr. Bartlett worked for Royal Dutch Shell for 21 years, having helped to establish Shell Capital after a long international management career as a Petroleum Engineer. Postings with Shell included offshore North Sea, The Netherlands, Somalia, New Zealand, Syria and London. He was a qualified Corporate Finance and Futures and Options Representative with the FSA.

He holds an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London.
 

Stephen Highfield, Head of Commercial & Negotiations, ENI Bacton CCS (part of ENI group)
Steve is a global commercial negotiator within ENI CCS, based in London. He has been working on a number of CCS projects over the last few years, including Bacton in the UK and the L10 CCS project in the Netherlands. Bacton CCS is repurposing the depleted Hewett gas field for storage of CO2 from emitters based in UK and Europe. The L10 area will also store CO2 in depleted gas reservoirs and will tie in to the complex Aramis value chain.

Prior to his current CCS focus, Steve worked for a number of E&P companies negotiating upstream and midstream agreements, primarily in Europe, Asia and Asia Pacific, including expat postings in Singapore. Successful asset and corporate acquisitions and divestments included Neptune’s acquisition of the UK Seagull field, from due diligence, S&PA, ETAP tie-back and export via FPS and CATS culminating in FID and development consent, all within around 12 months. His international work included BG Group’s exit from the Kashagan field in Kazakhstan and its acquisition of Enron Oil & Gas India, just as Enron imploded into Chapter 11! 

Steve has also worked on a number of country exits and new country entries into China, Australia and Romania and bid rounds in Egypt, amongst others, often working with government bodies such as the UK’s NSTA and Singapore’s EDB and MAS.
 

Oliver Stern is a Managing Director in the Investigations, Diligence and Compliance practice and the Head of the Business Intelligence team and Africa Practice, based in London. Oliver specializes in sub-Saharan Africa. He leads a wide range of investigations for corporations and financial institutions and their advisers, supporting them as they consider investment decisions and respond to challenges. His work focuses on detailed pre-transactional due diligence, market entry strategy, competitor intelligence, dispute advisory, and internal corruption and bribery investigations and asset traces.

He also works with clients to identify, mitigate and prevent adverse human rights impacts for companies and investors. 

Oliver joined Kroll in February 2016 after working for the multinational mining company Anglo American for over three years on its London-based Strategy and Business Development team. He is a country risk and business environment specialist with extensive international experience, including three years living and working in Mozambique. 
 

Ben Sulaiman, Partner - Corporate & Finance, Hogan Lovells
Ben is the global head of our Oil, Gas & LNG group and is a member of our Tier 1 (Legal 500 UK, 2025) Infrastructure and Projects group in London. He is a go-to expert in the energy sector and operates both in the UK and internationally on projects, transactions and regulatory matters.  

Ranked by Chambers and Legal 500 for Oil & Gas, he regularly advises energy companies, investors and governments on upstream and pipeline projects, LNG projects, oil & gas M&A, financing arrangements, and sales and trading. 

Ben leads the firm's work advising the bp and SOCAR led consortium on all aspects of the US$45bn Shah Deniz 2 gas project and 3,500km Southern Gas Corridor, described by bp as “the world’s single largest non-military infrastructure project”.