Webinar:
Norwegian gas in Europe – What’s next?

Kari Nessa Nordtun was elected Mayor of Stavanger on 21th October 2019. She represents the Labour Party, and is now serving her first four-year term as Stavangers’s 53rd mayor.
Prior to her election as mayor, Nordtun served for 8 years in Stavanger Municipal Council.
She has been a member of the Municipal Executive Presidency since 2013 and a Municipal Executive Board member since 2015.
Mayor Nordtun is comitted to fighting inequality, and works to improve the lives of her fellow Stavanger residents of all backgrounds and neighbourhoods. As head of Norway’s energy capital she is dedicated to the further development of the oil, gas and growing renewables sector, and is a strong voice for new technology, climate issues and green urban develoment.
Nordtun has a law degree from the University of Bergen, and during her time in university she worked with pro bono legal advice. She also studied European law in Brussels.
She began her law practice at Sjødin Meling & Co, and then went on to work for Elden Law Firm. She is currently on leave from Elden to work as a full-time politician.

Tony Christian Tiller was appointed State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on March 27 2020. He was appointed Political Advisor at the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy 24 January 2020, and served as Acting State Secretary at the Ministry from 13 March 2020.
Mr. Tiller has previously worked in the energy company Equinor, and as a political advisor to the Conservative Parliamentary group and at the Oslo Conservative Party group. He also worked as a political advisor at The Norwegian Society of Engineers and Technologists (NITO).
He has a BA in Political Science and an MSc in history from NTNU. He was a Fullbright scholar at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 2007-2008.

Mr. Arne Sigve Nylund has been an Executive Vice President of Development & Production - Norway at Equinor since January 1, 2014. Mr. Nylund served as Senior Vice President of Processing & Manufacturing for Marketing, Processing and Renewable Energy (MPR) at Statoil ASA from 2009 to January 1, 2014. He joined Statoil in 1987 with the transfer of the operatorship of Statfjord from Mobil. He has a background from a range of operational and leadership positions. He served as platform manager at Gullfaks, operations manager at Statfjord and senior vice president for Statfjord operations and Operations West in DPN. Mr. Nylund has BSc in engineering from the Stavanger Technical College in 1981, BSc in operations management from University of Stavanger in 1988 and a business economist degree from Norwegian School of Economics, 1989.

Ingrid Sølvberg (age 50) is a civil engineer (siv.ing) with a degree in marine technology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTH, now NTNU). She assumed the post of Director of development and operations in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in June 2014. She started off her career in Statoil (now Equinor) in 1995 as a subsea engineer, and she was assigned her first management position in 2004. Sølvberg had a number of management positions, including as Director of platform technology and marine surveys in the period from 2007-2010 and then as HSE director for the company’s midstream and downstream activity.
In 2012, she went to Centrica as commercial manager, before taking the position as the NPD’s Director for the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea in 2013. In January 2020 she started in her position as Director general in the NPD. She has held positions on the board of the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) and the Ship Manouvering Simulator Center (SMSC).

Catharina Sikow-Magny joined the European Commission in 1997 and is currently the Director responsible for Internal Energy Market and the Acting Head of Unit in charge of retail markets, consumers and local initiatives in the Directorate General for Energy. Before that, she was the Head of Unit in charge of networks and regional initiatives. She has as well worked on international transport, trans-European network policy and financing, internalisation of external costs, and strategic policy research.

Before joining the Commission, Catharina Sikow-Magny was a team leader and chief economist in the private sector in Finland. She has also worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a Master of Economics degree from the Aalto University, Finland.

Since 2013 Dr Timm Kehler has been serving as Chairman and CEO of Germany’s leading gas advocacy group “Zukunft ERDGAS e. V.”.

Zukunft ERDGAS is committed to ensuring that the potential of gaseous energy sources, such as natural gas, biogas and hydrogen, and the existing gas infrastructure is used to further drive the energy revolution, both now and in the future.

The advocacy group is the key point of contact for consumers, policymakers and market partners on gas-related matters. Since its foundation in 2013, around 130 leading companies along the gas value chain, such as importers, regional suppliers and municipal utilities, have joined the initiative. Various affiliated industry associations, heating suppliers and vehicle manufacturers support future ERDGAS as partners. To further promote the benefits of natural gas mobility on a European level Timm Kehler was appointed Senior Vice President at NGVA Europe in May 2018.

From 2009 to 2015 Dr Timm Kehler was the CEO of erdgas mobil GmbH, a service provider offering infrastructure, sales and marketing services, which are now operated by Zukunft ERDGAS. Before joining erdgas mobil, Kehler held various management positions at the BMW Group over a time period of 12 years. Among others he served as Vice President Marketing Pre-Development and Innovation, where he was responsible for the marketing innovation think-tank, telematics and online services as well as the hydrogen vehicle initiative “BMW CleanEnergy”.

Dr Kehler studied mechanical engineering and industrial design in Berlin and received his Ph.D. in production engineering from Technical University in Berlin. In 2007 he was nominated "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Peter Zeniewski is Lead Gas Analyst for the World Energy Outlook at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). He was formerly the Product Manager for Wood Mackenzie's European Energy Service and was a Policy Officer at the European Commission JRC Institute for Energy. He is a Chancellor's Fellow of Edinburgh University and holds a PhD from the University of Oxford.

Grete Tveit has more than 30 years’ experience from the oil and gas industry. After graduating from NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, she started working for Hydro and then later Statoil/Equinor. She has held several management positions within the company, incl. SVP for Global Strategy Business Development - Finance & Control, and Head of Staff in London before going into Business Development. From 2014 she was head of the valuation team within Global Strategy Business Development, and later head of the Project Support and Execution Team. From autumn 2016 to autumn 2017 Grete was acting SVP of Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestments in Global Strategy Business Development, and then she went back to her position as SVP in Project Support and Execution from autumn 2017 to end March 2020. From April 1st she was appointed as SVP for Marketing, Midstream and Processing - Low Carbon Solutions.

Ulf Heitmüller studied electrotechnics at Leipniz University, Hanover (Diploma: 1993). Between 1994 and 2004, Mr. Heitmüller has held various technical and management positions with BEB Erdgas und Erdöl GmbH & Co. KG, Hanover. He then joined Shell Energy Germany GmbH (Hamburg) as Head of Operations followed by the position as Convergence Manager at Shell Energy Europe London in 2005. In 2007 he became Managing Director of Shell Energy Germany GmbH and at the same time responsible for gas sales in North West Europe at Shell Energy Europe. In 2010, he became CEO of EnBW Gas Midstream GmbH (Karlsruhe) and later, in 2012, Executive Director Trading at EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG responsible for the central commodity hub of EnBW group for power, gas, coal, oil and emission certificates.

Since 2016 Mr. Heitmüller is Chairman of the Executive Board of VNG AG in Leipzig, a group company active in the field of natural gas transport, storage, trading as well as operator of biogas plants. In 2017, he was appointed Royal Norwegian Honorary Consul for the Free State of Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt.

Richard is Aurora’s Research Director and is responsible for managing and developing Aurora’s suit of market intelligence services across European power markets, renewables, flexible and distributed energy, and global commodities.
Before joining Aurora he was a Director and Head of Energy and Environment at Policy Exchange, where he authored a number of influential reports on energy and environmental policy and regulation. Prior to that he was the Chief Economist at The Crown Estate.
Richard has a first class degree in Economics and an MSc in Environmental Policy.

Alan is the Managing Director with 33 years of experience in the energy industry, where he has served in senior technical roles in BP, and technical management and board positions in the petroleum consultancy sector.
He was also Managing Director of a power and CCS development company within the Petrofac Group. Alan has used his business experience to put together a great team at Pale Blue Dot Energy, with energy expertise and strong collaboration. He has a BSc in Geology.

Marius has been the general manager of ZERO since the autumn of 2012. Since then, he has worked to increase the impact of the specific climate solutions and strengthen ZERO's role as a leading professional environment and premise supplier for Norwegian climate policy.
For a number of years, Marius has distinguished himself as a clear and knowledgeable debater and climate activist. He is a graduate of Cand.Agric. (M.Sc.) in economics and resource management at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (formerly NLH / UMB) in Ås.

Esther Peiner is part of the European Private Infrastructure business unit, based in Zug. She is a member of the Private Infrastructure Investment Committee and of the PG LIFE Impact Committee. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of firm's portfolio company Covage. She has 17 years of industry experience. Prior to joining Partners Group, she worked at Macquarie Group. She holds a master's degree in finance and marketing from Maastricht University, Netherlands.

Audun holds a PhD in chemistry/thermodynamics from NTNU, and has worked 10 years in Equinor with process engineering and project development. The last four years, he has been with Gassnova where he is responsible for the overall CCS chain and interfaces in the Longship project.

René van der Meer studied Mechanical Engineering at the TU Delft University. He worked for 8 years in the dredging Industry for Van Oord in various countries. In 2004 he started at GDF Suez. One of his projects was to build the first fully electrified platform in the Dutch part of the North Sea, the Q13a. GDF Suez was rebranded as Engie and was taken over in 2018 by Neptune Energy. René is now the project lead for all new energy initiatives for Neptune in the Netherlands.

From 2013 till 2016 he served as the CEO of PGE SA, the largest energy utility in Poland, and before that for nearly five years he had served as the President and Vice President of the Energy Regulatory Office.
He had been connected with the Energy Regulatory Office since 1998, that is, almost from the beginning of his professional career related to energy.
In all those functions, he worked actively for the development of European and national energy markets, both nationally and internationally. At that time, he oversaw the activities of the Polish Electricity Association (PKEE); as a Member of the Board of Directors he actively participated in the tasks of the Electricity Industry Union - EURELECTRIC; he served as the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and a member of the Presidium of Energy Regulators Regional Association (ERRA) and in 2011-2012 a member of ACER Board of Regulators.

Education: He graduated as MSc. from the Maritime Academy in Gdynia, from National School of Public Administration in Warsaw, Executive Master of Business Administration from Kozminski University in Warsaw