DIANA FRANCE joined HFW as partner in 2001 to lead the firm’s international energy projects practice. Prior to that, Diana spent seven years in-house, including as Legal Adviser for Central Europe & Former Soviet Union for British Gas Exploration & Production Ltd. In that role, she advised on the Kashagan Consortium and Production Sharing Agreements, as well as projects in Poland, the Ukraine and elsewhere in the region.
Diana has over 25 years’ experience of advising on a broad range of oil and gas matters, including host government agreements in most of the major oil producing countries of the world, as well as joint operating, unitisation, farm-in/out, drilling and oilfield services agreements and corporate acquisitions.
Diana has been leading a team of HFW lawyers advising Kuwait Oil Company on its international legal affairs for over ten years. She is also currently advising on a joint venture to establish a drilling business.
Diana has an MA in Law from Cambridge University (Girton College) and is named as a Leading Lawyer in the 2018 Guide to the World’s Leading Energy & Natural Resource Lawyers (and earlier editions). She is noted as being recommended for her upstream oil and gas work by the Legal 500 and was included in The Lawyer list of Hot 100 lawyers for 2015.
Diana is a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.
Rob Maguire is International Consultant and Trainer. He has over 30 years purchasing and supplier management experience in both operational and management consulting roles working for Reckitt & Colman (now Reckitt Benckiser), Black & Decker, Austin Rover Group, Pricewaterhouse and Ernst & Young. His consulting experience extends to Europe, the Middle East and the United States of America. He is a highly engaging speaker with extensive experience of chairing and presenting at conferences.
Rob is co-author and editor of “Good Purchasing Practice Guide” prepared on behalf of the Universities Funding Council for England and co-author of “Procurement Benchmarking for Higher Education”.
Jay Park QC is the Managing Partner of Petroleum Regimes Advisory and Park Energy Law. Jay has practised energy law for over thirty years, with a specific focus on creating optimum petroleum regimes for states, and advising companies and states on upstream oil & gas transactions. He has advised oil and gas producers, marketers, pipeline companies, governments, banks and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. His practice has included drafting petroleum legislation and regulations, oil & gas asset acquisitions and divestments, advising on production sharing agreements and concession agreements, product marketing,gas sales and purchase contracts, pipeline transportation matters, oil and gas pipeline asset dispositions, oil and gas regulatory hearings, and joint venture and participation agreements. Jay’s work has taken him to over forty countries around the world. Jay has assisted governments and state oil companies in the design or amendment of petroleum regimes in twelve countries, whose total resources comprise 49% of world oil reserves and 33% of world gas reserves. Jay is actively involved in legal education and training. He has instructed the “International Petroleum Transactions” course at the Faculty of Law of the University of Calgary since 2007. He co-instructs five day training courses hosted by CWC School for Energy, “World Legal Systems and Contracts for Oil & Gas” and “International Petroleum Joint Ventures”. He has been recognized as a leading oil & gas lawyer by all of the rating publishers, including Who’s Who Legal.
Alan Mayo is an accounting and finance professional with twenty-five years of experience. For the past seventeen years Alan has specialised in consulting and the delivery of in-house and public financial training delivering programmes in IFRS, local GAAP, interpretation of financial reports and financial management. During this time he has worked across many sectors and in many countries. Within the oil, gas and petrochemicals sector Alan has worked on IFRS and financial reporting and performance issues with finance teams from Shell, Eni, Kogas, Petronas and Mubadala Development Co.
Previously as a senior consultant with PwC he led a team of financial training consultants responsible for developing and delivering programmes in financial reporting, business valuation and shareholder value. Alan started his career at PwC, where he worked for eight years in London in their audit and business advisory division where he obtained his chartered accountancy qualification. After qualifying he was seconded for two years to their Paris office. On his return to London from Paris he co-founded the client training business for PwC in London.
Alan now runs a successful financial training company based in the UK and splits his time between managing that business and instructing on IFRS. Alan is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a member of their finance and management faculty and has an Honours Degree in Economics from Bristol University.
Pat Roberts is a consultant in the global LNG industry working across the LNG supply chain, actively advising and assisting with establishing and managing clients’ LNG businesses. Projects range from gas monetisation through to regasification terminals and marketing in the downstream.
Experience ranges from working with established industry players as well as new market entrants and financial institutions.
Additionally, Pat has 6 years of experience in Natural Gas divisions of Shell, where she gained specialist expertise in structuring and completing large complex commercial deals in LNG involving foreign governments and joint venture partners. She designed and implemented a portfolio of short and long-term LNG supply and demand contracts for the Atlantic Basin region (Middle East to East Coast of the Americas) and delivered robust commercial solutions for commercialising new gas streams for producers.
Previously, Pat worked for 18 years in Shell International’s Oil Trading and Shipping Division with secondments to Shell operating companies in Australia and Italy. Pat has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Nottingham University.
Ronnie Tucker is a seasoned Irish business executive and financial and economic consultant with extensive practical experience. He has worked as a corporate business process reengineering Project Director in Helsinki, as a CFO/COO in New York, as a Director of Corporate Risk Management in Brussels and as a Financial Analyst in Silicon Valley, California. He has been a board member in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, UK and USA and has sat on a number of board audit, finance and governance sub-committees. He holds an MBA from Stanford University.
Since 1997 he has trained 4,500+ non-financial and finance managers in multinationals, government ministries and management institutes in economics, finance and accounting. He is a Visiting Lecturer at Hebei Finance University in Baoding, People’s Republic of China. He has taught on the MBA programme at the National University of Ireland. He is an expert at creating, developing and delivering excellent learning experiences for non-experts in economics, finance and accounting. Ronnie also holds Cambridge University’s CELTA qualification for teaching of English as a foreign language, specialising in Business English.
From 2012 to 2016 he was a Divisional Director with the Indecon Group of international financial and economic consultants. Since 2016, Ronnie has been Managing Partner of IMEF International.
Ronnie has a particular interest in the oil and gas industry and has studied petroleum engineering practices. In 2012 he taught MP’s and civil servants from the Ministries of Finance and Natural Resources in Kurdistan, Iraq on production sharing contracts. He has worked for Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil and Schlumberger. He trained government officials in Myanmar in energy project economics and finance. He conducted cost-benefit appraisals of infrastructure projects for the Office of the Prime Minister of Malta. This also involved knowledge transfer to the Prime Minister’s staff. He tailored a finance programme for Solvay corporate lawyers and customised a programme in competitive profitability and shareholder value for high-potential senior managers at UCB Biopharma. Ronnie shares his experience of working in many industries including electricity, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, logistics, retail, forest products, hospitality, ports and others. He has worked in oil and gas worldwide including extensively in the Middle East, Africa and Asia (Algeria, Dubai, Egypt, Ghana, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kurdistan (Iraq), Malaysia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe).
Susan L. Sakmar is licensed to practice law in California and has over 20 years experience working in a variety of legal, corporate, non-profit, and academic environments. She started her professional career as an accountant for Chevron Corporation in San Francisco, California and after being admitted to the California Bar, was an attorney in the commercial litigation department of the San Francisco law firm of Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon where she represented clients in a variety of complex litigation cases. After leaving practice, she taught International Trade Law under the WTO as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and served on a number of non-profit environmental boards, including board chair for the Jane Goodall Institute.
She currently is a Visiting Assistant Professor, Andrews Kurth Energy Law Scholar, at the University of Houston Law Center where her scholarly activities are focused on global natural gas markets with a particular focus on LNG and global shale gas development. Susan has published and presented a number of papers on these topics and her most recent book Energy For The 21st Century: Opportunities And Challenges For Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) was published in 2013 by leading international publisher Edward Elgar, Ltd. (UK).
Susan holds an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, a J.D., cum laude, from the University of San Francisco School of Law, San Francisco, CA., and a business degree (B.Sc.) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
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