This month, we reveal the individuals who will constitute our jury and who will ultimately decide the winners at the Middle East Energy Awards. We have assembled an experienced and highly knowledgeable group of industry experts who represent a broad cross-section of the upstream, downstream and utilities sectors
Abhay Bhargava, director, industrial practice, MEA, Frost & Sullivan
Abhay Bhargava heads the industrial practice in the MEA region for Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company. Bhargava is a business growth specialist with 20 years of experience across diversified industries, and with extensive experience across energy, renewables, industrial, facilities management, and manufacturing sectors. He is passionate about digitalisation, and supports clients in preparing for this evolution. Abhay’s specialisation in the energy industry is backed by sound, in-depth understanding of companies across the entire value chain. He has pioneered many consulting and advisory engagements to some of the region’s leading companies, across business areas like benchmarking, defining and optimising processes and SOPs, geographic expansion, technology adoption, and energy management. He also specialises in advisory around investment promotion, localisation strategies, and mega trends.
Abhay has been an active, sought-after speaker at events such as the World Future Energy Summit, Intersec, PowerGen Middle East, and FM Expo, amongst others. He is also a jury member for the ADIPEC and MESIA Solar Awards.
Ali Al Janabi, UAE country chair; vice president, Shell Upstream, Shell Group of companies
Ali Al Janabi is the chairman of Shell Abu Dhabi, and vice president for Shell’s upstream business in Abu Dhabi. He is accountable for providing governance and support for joint ventures, which have been formed between Shell and Abu Dhabi partners. In his role, Al Janabi also represents the Royal Dutch Shell Group to the government of Abu Dhabi. Al Janabi’s experience in Shell includes project development of LNG plants and regas terminals, new market entry, GTL, pipelines, country master-plans, and integrated upstream and petrochemical projects. His experience also includes mergers and acquisitions, LNG supply and trading, investment banking, as well as project construction and engineering. Al Janabi started his career with Taylor Wood and has worked for Halliburton, and Goldman Sachs. He has done consulting assignments for major clients such as Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, DNO, Petro Masila, PDO, KNPC, First Solar, Vale, and for few energy related polyethylene firms. Raghothamarao has published thought leadership articles on oil and gas/energy supply chain and digital technologies across global and Middle East magazines.
Currently, he is director of energy wide perspectives and strategy at IHS Markit EMEA. In this capacity, Raghothamarao works across upstream, midstream, downstream, power, coal and renewables.
Al Janabi is a graduate of Imperial College London where he obtained a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering in 1996, and in 2000, he earned a master’s degree in strategy and finance from Kingston Business School. Al Janabi also holds a Financial Services Authority Qualification in financial regulation and derivatives.
Bart Cornelissen, energy, resources & industrials leader, Middle East, Deloitte Middle East
Bart Cornelissen is an executive advisor with 18+ years of consulting experience, focused on strategic and operational issues in the natural resources space, covering strategy development and implementation, organisational design, operational excellence and organisational integration projects.
Cornelissen has worked with NOCs and IOCs across the entire oil and gas value chain, with a strong focus on upstream. He has spent many years working in the oil and gas industry in emerging markets, covering among others Africa, India, Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East. Clients worked for are Rosneft, TNK-BP, Total, BP, Gazpromneft, CNOOC, Shell, Sasol, Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and Mubadala Petroleum.
Cornelissen currently leads Deloitte’s Energy, Resources & Industrials practice in the Middle East and is also the managing partner of Monitor Deloitte, its strategy practice in the Middle East. Before joining Monitor Deloitte, Cornelissen was a leader in Bain & Company’s oil and gas and mining groups, leading the practice in the CIS. Cornelissen holds MSc in systems engineering, policy and management from Delft University of Technology and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Joseph J Anis, president and CEO, power services and gas power systems, MENASA, GE Power
Joseph Anis is the president and chief executive officer for GE’s Power Services and Gas Power Systems businesses for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA).
In this role, he is responsible for driving regional growth and execution. He oversees all functions in the region covering new units, project execution, service and operations. He is responsible for developing and delivering a regional business strategy that offers customers the solutions, knowledge and insight they need to manage the entire lifecycle of their power plants, ultimately providing reliable power to communities around the region. Anis has played a key role in strengthening business partnerships, local capacity building and promoting innovation in the power generation sector.
Joe’s GE career began in 1997 as the general manager for GE’s Power Controls business in Cairo, Egypt. In 2000, he joined GE’s Energy Services business in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as the e-Business leader for Africa, India and the Middle East and later became the sales manager for Power Generation in the UAE. He subsequently held several leadership roles, and in July 2010, Joe was appointed a vice president and officer of General Electric Company. He joined GE’s Power Generation Services business in 2012 as the Vice President of Global Sales & Commercial Operations. In 2015, Joe was named vice president, commercial for Power Services where he was responsible for delivering sales growth across Power Services’ portfolio of product lines and commercial offerings, as well as driving sales penetration with customers. He was named president and CEO of GE’s Power Services business in the Middle East and Africa in July 2016.
GE-built technologies generate up to 50 percent of the power across MENASA today.
In the UAE, GE and Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation have reached a public-private partnership milestone by signing a 25 year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA) to develop, build and operate a 1.8 gigawatt (GW) combined cycle power plant located in Hamriyah. Equipped with GE’s HA technology, including the world’s largest and most efficient heavy-duty gas turbine, the flagship project is expected to be the most efficient power plant in the Middle East’s utilities sector upon completion and will enable SEWA to substantially improve the overall efficiency of its operations. The project will consist of three combined cycle blocks, the first of which is expected to come online in May 2021.
In Iraq, GE continues to deliver critical projects to address the country’s pressing energy needs. Since October 2018, GE has signed multiple new agreements covering maintenance, rehabilitation and upgrade solutions to help ensure the reliable operations of power generation equipment at existing plants that can generate up to 5 GW of electricity.
Nicholas Cochrane-Dyet, special advisor to the chief representative, BP Oil International
Nicholas Cochrane-Dyet joined BP Middle East based in Dubai in 1989 as human resources and administration manager. Cochrane-Dyet became the regional business development manager for downstream, covering countries including Iran and Yemen, as well the GCC, responsible for growing downstream businesses. Cochrane-Dyet moved to BP Exploration and Production in Abu Dhabi in 1992 to take up the role of deputy chief representative. With the expansion of the Abu Dhabi office, he became the communications and external affairs manager in 2001. Some of his work includes spearheading the opening of BP’s offices around the region, including ones in both Oman and Iran.
Nick is currently the special advisor to the chief representative, which includes a variety of topics on which to counsel BP’s activities in Abu Dhabi and the region. Outside of his role with BP, Cochrane-Dyet chairs the Middle East Advisory Board of the Energy Industry Council, and acts as the UK co-chair of the Energy Working Group of the UAE-UK Business Council.
Vinod Raghothamarao, director, energy wide perspectives and strategy, IHS Markit EMEA
Having a background in engineering, coupled with MBA, Vinod Raghothamarao is a strategy and management consulting professional with 17+ years of work experience in oil and gas, power, refining and petrochemicals, mining, and heavy industries. Raghothamarao has worked on strategy, supply chain market intelligence, investment, operations, digital transformation, technology, Capex/Opex, HSE and risk advisory management consulting assignments for energy and mining clients across USA, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
