James joined Energy Matrix in December 2022 as a consultant, with 8 years’ experience in the energy sector and a background in Chemical Engineering. He is a senior process engineer and technical leader with broad experience in the oil and gas sector from operations support and process optimization through to development projects and commissioning.

Prior to joining Energy Matrix, James was the lead process engineer and engineering supervisor at APA’s newly built Orbost Gas Plant. At Orbost, James spearheaded the roll out of an asset establishment program incorporating process monitoring routines, change management processes, KPI reporting, risk-based maintenance, and alarm management. James is both incredibly detail-oriented and able to step back and understand the way a system operates as a whole. At Orbost, this was evident is his development and implementation of a structured plant improvement strategy that resulted in 80% production uplift within 12 months.

Between 2014 and 2021, James held various operations support, project, commissioning and development planning roles with ExxonMobil in their Bass Strait operations. In these roles he was responsible for strategic development planning, flow assurance, process safety and optimization for onshore, offshore and subsea assets. He reduced shutdown risk, increased pipeline capacity, developed novel technology, increased plant uptime and debottlenecked facilities that contributed to millions in savings in operational and project costs. James sees problems and fixes them through deep technical, modelling and analytical skills.

While he is precise and detail oriented as a manager and engineer, James is also a creative and innovative thinker. At APA, James led fundamental research into novel bacterial gas processing technology. Energy Matrix is keen to see biological waste processing and similar ‘new energy’ technologies develop further and we foresee James bringing substantial value to these kinds of projects while working here.