An energy bull market appears to be a good time to for senior CVC staff to change jobs — at least judging by the number of staff moves at the investment units of oil and gas majors.
In the full energy report:
Energy deals continue to boom despite market downturn
Value of corporate-backed energy deals quadruples
Energy funds are back in vogue
Wave of job moves amid energy bull market
Funding spikes for university energy spinouts
One of the highest-level departures from post we saw in the sector was that of Barbara Burger. After 34 years at US-listed oil major Chevron, Burger, vice-president of innovation and president of its corporate venturing unit, Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV), handed over her role in February 2022. Jim Gable, who formerly vice-president of downstream technology and services at Chevron, replaced her. Burger left Chevron in April 2022, having joined the company in 1987 as a research chemist and taken over leadership of CTV in 2013.
Burger joined financial services firm Lazard as a senior advisor in their energy advisory group in October.
Girish Nadkarni, head of corporate venturing unit TotalEnergies Ventures (TEV), moved back to the US from France, leaving the oil major TotalEnergies in March 2022. Nadkarni, a GCV Powerlist award winner, said he had “handed over charge for TEV to Francois Badoual who, incidentally, was also my predecessor”. TEV saw at least five of its portfolio companies acquired by special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) last year, and another six were under negotiation for SPAC acquisitions or flotations.
Subsequently, in May 2022, TotalEnergies wound down its CVC unit, TotalEnergies Ventures, and opted to focus on its accelerator. The unit chief Francois Badoual told Global Corporate Venturing at the time that the organisation was “changing gears”. The $400m Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures fund pivoted to an accelerator to focus on smaller earlier-stage investments amid rocketing valuations for climatetech companies and later-stage rounds getting crowded out.
Axios had reported that the CVC unit was set to be cut entirely, but Badoual pushed back against this characterisation that the unit would be dismantled. The venture team will still be involved in the accelerator initiative and continue managing relationships with current portfolio companies.The accelerator programme, dubbed TotalEnergies On, will support companies involved in renewable energy generation, distributed energy management, energy storage, power retail, trading and electric mobility.
BP Ventures also saw a series of high profile moves throughout the past year.
David Hayes, formerly a managing partner of BP’s corporate venturing unit, BP Ventures, left the oil and gas supplier’s innovation operations in May. He has now joined Decarbonization Partners, a $600m investment vehicle set up by asset manager BlackRock and Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek, as managing director. Hayes joins his former colleague Meghan Sharp who became global head of the firm in February.
Hayes had been at BP across a variety of roles for 20 years. Before becoming a managing partner, he was chief investment officer and managing director for BP Ventures for the Americas, following stints in roles including senior principal and investment manager at BP Alternative Energy and BP Finance.
Around the same time, BP Ventures promoted Grace Chan to principal. Chan was initially hired by BP in 2008 as a financial analyst for its Wamsutter gas fields. After taking additional analyst and commercial interventions lead roles at the company, she moved over to BP Ventures in mid-2020 as a US-based associate. The role involved Chan handling due diligence and portfolio management activities for the unit, concentrating on the commercial aspects of its investments. She also holds board observer roles at geospatial analytics software developer Sateltyics and Zippity, a provider of mobile car maintenance software.
In September 2022, David Clouse left BP Ventures to head up venture capital firm Energy Innovation Capital (EIC)’s recently launched EIC Rose Rock fund as managing director. EIC Rose Rock was formed by EIC and petroleum producers Devon Energy, Onoek and Williams together with economic development organisation Tulsa Innovation Labs. The move came after 16 years at BP for Clouse, who joined as an investment manager before moving to a principal position at BP Ventures in early 2020. He was named a GCV Emerging Leader in February 2022. Clouse invested out of Houston, Texas and had a background in biofuels.
Abhishek Shukla, who had left Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, moved to lead enterprise and deep-tech investments at Prosperity7 Ventures, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based petroleum and natural gas conglomerate, Saudi Aramco. Shukla announced his departure from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)’s corporate venture capital arm, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, earlier in 2022. HPE hired Shukla in 2018 as senior managing director of global venture investments. He replaced Ray Schuder, who is now leading electronics producer LG’s corporate venturing practice.
People’s moves, however, were not limited to oil and gas majors only.
Santiago Gil y Gil departed from his head of venture capital role at Spain-based gas utility Enagás and joined financial services firm Santander, leading a new renewable energy-focused venture capital fund. The new fund, called Santander Innoenergy Climate VC II, is a continuation of work the bank has been doing with its partner, EIT Innoenergy, the climate innovation arm of the European Institute for Innovation & Technology, since April. Gil had been head of corporate venture capital at Enagás from February 2022, prior to which he was portfolio and investment manager since late 2018, and business analyst for four years before that.
Tyler Durham, a GCV Rising Star winner in 2020 and 2021, left oil services group Schlumberger to join Navigator CO2 Ventures, a carbon capture subsidiary of oil midstream company Navigator Energy Services, as chief development officer. Durham most recently served as a director at Schlumberger New Energy’s carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) business, where he led investment decisions, partnerships agreements and integration, before which he worked as venture principal for Schlumberger from 2017 to 2021. He had previously held a number of roles at Schlumberger across North America and the Middle East since 2006, including field engineer, fracturing service manager, quality operations support manager, planning manager and transformation manager.
Galen Joneja was promoted to venture manager at Schlumberger New Energy, the investment division of the Schlumberger. The move came after Joneja had spent two years as an asset delivery manager, focused particularly on global planning and supply chain. Joneja’s career at Schlumberger spans nearly 15 years, starting off as a field engineer overseeing the creation of cement engineering programs. He will now focus on new energy-based business start-ups and innovation.
Preshit Gawade was promoted to executive director of new energies at the US energy tech group Baker Hughes, after serving a year as senior director of the company’s new energy frontier division. Gawade had worked for more than three years at Baker Hughes. Starting off as the senior manager for strategy and market intelligence, Gawade rose through the ranks, helping find new forms of energy products and energy output. Under the new energies division of Baker Hughes, Gawade will focus solely on renewable and refillable sources of energy.
Earlier this year, Kai Martin joined Baker Hughes’ New Energy Frontiers Team as a corporate development lead. Previously, Martin had handled corporate development for AneCom AeroTest, a Germany-based service provider for the aero engine and gas turbine industry. As vice-president, Luca Maria Rossi set up the New Frontiers unit in late 2020, along with Lauren Burke and Chris Barkey, and its deals include Augury’s $180m round in November that helped push the machine monitoring technology provider’s valuation past $1bn.
