A dedicated energy practice across the full chain — oil & gas upstream, midstream and downstream; petrochemicals, bitumen, fuel-emulsion technology and marine infrastructure; and the full power-generation portfolio from combined-cycle and floating powerships to wind, solar, mini-nuclear, hydrogen, coal-to-fuel and biofuels. Built on a third-generation industrial spine and a working partnership with one of the strongest Russian downstream engineering teams operating today.
The Energy desk's capability is organised into three groups: the Oil & Gas chain from reservoir to refinery gate; the industrial chemicals, materials and marine infrastructure that surround it; and the power, clean energy and delivery disciplines that increasingly sit alongside it. The house carries operating depth across all three, backed by direct engineering partnerships and the lender relationships that close projects.
Group I · Oil & Gas
Concession and licensing strategy, field-development planning, reservoir optimisation, partner mapping, crude assay analysis and pre-FID economics. Conventional, unconventional and heavy-oil. Particular depth in the CIS and Caspian, North Africa, and Latin America.
Pipelines, gathering systems, processing and treatment plants, storage and tank farms, LNG liquefaction and regasification, NGL fractionation, gas-to-power, terminal-to-pipeline interconnect. Cross-border transit structuring, host-government interface, and tariff & capacity strategy.
Refinery engineering and revamps, FEED, product-slate and yield optimisation, hydroprocessing and conversion units (FCC, hydrocracker, coker, hydrotreater), debottlenecking, and the underlying process engineering. Backed by partnership with Russia's UFA Petroleum Institute technology stable and former senior LUKOIL Research leadership.
Group II · Industrial Chemicals, Materials & Marine
Steam crackers, polyolefins, MEG/PET, aromatics complexes, methanol, urea and ammonia, fertiliser chains, specialty and performance chemicals. Procurement, off-take and partnership structuring with the international licensor stack.
Penetration- and viscosity-grade bitumen, cut-back, polymer-modified bitumen (PMB), bitumen emulsions, cold-mix, and full pavement chemistry to AASHTO / ASTM / EN / JTJ. Turnkey terminals, refinery emulsion units and PMB plants through the DENIMOTECH industrial legacy. Fuel emulsions — low-emission heavy-fuel emulsion technology including the MSAR precedent delivered with Quadrise across the CIS, Poland, Romania and Vietnam — carried forward into today's emission-compliant heavy-fuel programmes.
Marine terminals, single-point moorings, jetties, FSO/FSRU developments, marine pipelines, onshore tank farms supporting refinery and trading operations. Delivered jointly with the dedicated Marine desk for vessel-side, charter and powership programmes.
Group III · Power, Clean Energy & Delivery
Utility-scale solar, onshore and offshore wind, geothermal, green and blue hydrogen, ammonia, biofuels (HVO, SAF, ethanol, biogas) and low-carbon liquid fuels. Full detail in the Power Generation Portfolio below.
Generation strategy, IPP and PPA structuring, transmission and grid resilience, fuel-supply security and strategic-reserve design, military and allied-forces fuel logistics, dual-use procurement chains. Strong precedent in CIS and Central Asian aviation-fuel security mandates.
Owner's-engineer and PMC mandates from FEED to mechanical completion. Lender-grade tendering, EPC contract drafting and dispute management, schedule and cost control, interface management between owner, EPC contractor, licensor and lender. The discipline behind the practice the founder has been running for three decades.
The Energy practice operates in partnership with Energy & Engineering LLC — a Russian downstream and upstream engineering team formed by the former head of LUKOIL Research Industry, with core backing from the UFA Petroleum Institutes technology farm. The team has been involved in some of the largest Russian refinery and oil-field projects of the modern period, inside and outside Russia. The founder serves as partner for legal & financial structuring on the firm's global projects.
EE LLC carries the proprietary process IP, the chartered process engineers, and the in-country execution. Jakob Schmidt & Sons carries the commercial structuring, lender interface, and international counterparty relationships. The combination is designed for cross-border refinery, petrochemical, and downstream-process programmes from FEED through to commercial operation.
The Energy desk delivers a defined set of work-products on every file. Each is sized and scoped to the mandate, but the discipline is constant: lender-grade, owner-grade, defensible under audit.
Crude and product market analysis, demand-supply outlooks, price-curve scenarios, refining margin and netback studies, regional and country-level market entry studies.
Lender-grade feasibility studies from concept through pre-FID, including CapEx and OpEx benchmarking, configuration screening, technology selection and financial modelling.
Process technology licensor evaluation, EPC contractor short-listing, equipment vendor selection and qualification. Independent of any vendor; loyal only to the owner.
Strategic partner identification — technical, commercial, financial — with structured introductions, joint-venture term-sheets, governance design and shareholder-agreement architecture.
Independent technical and commercial due diligence on acquisitions, refinery rehab targets and concession bids, sized for tier-one lender consumption.
End-to-end PMC on the owner's side: FEED supervision, EPC tendering and award, interface and change management, schedule and cost control through to commercial operations.
Environmental permitting, host-government licensing, local-content compliance, regulatory route-to-market for crossings of refining, petrochemical and clean-energy jurisdictions.
Strategic-reserve design, fuel-supply resilience, refinery and grid programmes for sovereign and state-linked counterparties. Multi-language at counterparty level.
The Energy desk delivers generation programmes across the full technology spectrum — from interim floating power for grids in distress to multi-decade nuclear baseload, from utility-scale renewables to coal-to-liquids and biofuels at refinery scale. Every entry below is delivered as a complete package: feasibility, technology and licensor selection, EPC/PMC, capital stack, and long-life stewardship. Co-delivered with the Capital desk for financing and with the Marine desk for floating assets.
Land-based combined-cycle gas turbine power plants from 50 MW to 800 MW per train. F-class, G-class and H-class turbine technology. Configured as 1-on-1, 2-on-1, or 3-on-1 multi-shaft, with heat-recovery steam generators and a single or twin steam turbine. Black-start, fast-ramp, and ancillary-services capability. Long-life baseload assets with industry-leading heat rates.
Typical scale: 200–600 MW · typical lead time: 28–36 months FNTP to COD · typical Capex envelope: USD 800–1,200/kW.
Simple-cycle gas turbines and reciprocating-engine gas/HFO power plants from 10 MW to 300 MW. Fast-track deployment for peaking, standby and emergency baseload. Multi-fuel capability (gas, HFO, distillate, dual-fuel). Modular construction, container or open-frame design, suited to remote and frontier grids.
Typical lead time: 12–18 months · typical Capex envelope: USD 600–900/kW.
Ship-mounted dual-fuel and gas-fired generation from 30 MW to 470 MW per vessel, deployable to host ports in 60–180 days. Designed to bridge installed-capacity gaps in stressed grids — an interim solution while permanent land-based generation is engineered and built. Operated under host-government PPA, charter-based BOO or BOT structures, with the powership relocated when no longer required. Co-delivered with the Marine desk for vessel mobilisation and the Capital desk for ECA-backed shipbuilding finance and host-government PPA wrap.
Typical scale: 70–470 MW per ship · typical mobilisation: 60–180 days · typical engagement: 2–10 years charter.
Onshore and offshore wind programmes from 50 MW to 1+ GW. Resource assessment, layout optimisation, turbine specification (typical 4–15 MW units), grid-connection studies, EPC and BOP contracting. Offshore mandates include fixed-bottom (monopile, jacket) and floating substructures for water depths beyond 60 metres. Co-delivered with the Capital desk for green-bond and DFI co-financing structures.
Typical scale: 100–800 MW · typical PPA tenor: 15–25 years.
Utility-scale solar photovoltaic plants from 20 MW to 2+ GW. Single-axis and dual-axis tracking, bifacial modules, central-inverter and string-inverter configurations. Co-located battery energy-storage systems (BESS) from 50 MWh to multi-GWh for firming, arbitrage and ancillary-services revenue stacking. Hybrid solar-plus-wind and solar-plus-storage plants for round-the-clock dispatchable renewables.
Typical scale: 50–500 MW · typical Capex envelope: USD 600–900/kW PV · USD 250–400/kWh BESS.
Small modular reactor programmes from 50 MW to 300 MW per unit, deployed onshore or floating. Coverage includes Russian SMR technology — pressurised-water and lead-cooled designs, including the floating-NPP class with the Akademik Lomonosov precedent and successor designs. Commercial, legal and host-government structuring for SMR procurement; IAEA, non-proliferation and host-state licensing strategy. Nuclear engineering content held by vetted licensor counterparties.
Typical scale: 50–300 MW per unit · operating life: 40–60 years · discreet practice line.
Green hydrogen (electrolysis from renewables), blue hydrogen (steam-methane reforming with CCS), and pink hydrogen (electrolysis from nuclear). Downstream conversion to ammonia, methanol, e-fuels, and synthetic naphtha. Electrolyser technology selection across alkaline, PEM, AEM and SOEC. Hydrogen storage, transport (pipeline, LH2, ammonia, LOHC), and end-use integration into refining, fertiliser, steel, and shipping fuel chains.
Typical scale: 10–500 MW electrolyser · co-delivered with the green-ammonia and green-methanol practice.
Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-liquids (CTL) and coal-to-chemicals (CTC) programmes for jurisdictions with coal reserves and gas/oil import dependence. Direct and indirect liquefaction routes; gasification (entrained-flow, fluidised-bed), syngas conditioning, FT synthesis, product upgrading to diesel, jet, naphtha, methanol, olefins, and waxes. Carbon-capture overlay for emissions intensity reduction. Strict host-government environmental and offset structuring.
Typical scale: 30,000–100,000 bbl/day equivalent · capex-intensive, lender discipline essential.
Full biofuel programme delivery: ethanol (sugarcane, maize, cellulosic), biodiesel (FAME), HVO/HEFA renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), bio-methanol, bio-LNG, biogas/biomethane upgrading, and pyrolysis bio-oils. Feedstock supply structuring (UCO, tallow, palm-effluent, agricultural residues, dedicated energy crops), plant design and licensor selection, off-take and certification (ISCC, RSB, RFS, FuelEU Maritime, RED III), and financing through green debt, ECA-wrap and DFI co-investment. The house's reference point in low-emission liquid fuels is the MSAR precedent work delivered across the CIS, Poland, Romania and Vietnam.
Typical scale: 50–500 kt/year · full chain coverage from plantation to refinery to off-take.
The Energy desk's coverage is deep across every sub-sector of the petroleum chain and broad across the clean-energy and power adjacencies. The matrix below describes what we actually do, sector by sector.
Concession and licensing strategy, reserve audit and field-development planning, partner mapping, crude assay analysis, marketing strategy, transportation and storage architecture.
Refinery configuration screens, hydrocracker / FCC / coker / hydrotreater unit design and revamps, product slate optimisation, naphtha and aromatics integration, AGRU and SRU, sulphur balance.
Steam crackers, polyolefins, MEG/PET, aromatics, methanol, urea and ammonia, fertiliser chains, specialty chemicals. Procurement, off-take, and partnership structuring with major licensors.
Gas gathering, treatment, NGL fractionation, mid-scale LNG, FLNG, regasification, gas-to-power and pipeline transportation. LNG SPA structuring and host-government interface.
Bitumen refining, PMB / emulsion / cutback production, turnkey terminals and refineries (DENIMOTECH legacy), pavement and mix-design consultancy, AASHTO / ASTM / EN / JTJ compliance.
Utility-scale solar, onshore and offshore wind, geothermal. Green and blue hydrogen, ammonia, methanol from low-carbon routes. Biofuels (HVO, SAF, ethanol) and low-emission heavy fuels (MSAR precedent).
Generation strategy, IPP and PPA structuring, transmission and distribution, grid resilience and security, BESS, ancillary services, ISO/RTO interfaces in mature markets, single-buyer structures in emerging markets.
Strategic petroleum reserve design, military and allied-forces fuel logistics (with reference to the founder's Manas Airbase and Afghanistan aviation-fuel work), dual-use supply chains, sovereign fuel-resilience programmes.
Process licensing strategy, FEED supervision, owner's-engineer mandates, debottlenecking, energy-integration studies, digital-twin overlays, operator-grade documentation.
The Energy desk maintains technical capacity across the full international licensor stack — major-licensor process technology, mid-tier specialist licensors, and the Russian downstream IP held by Energy & Engineering LLC's chartered process engineers. The desk is independent of every licensor. We recommend what the asset actually needs, not what maximises our scope.
Working coverage includes: refining and petrochemical licensors (Honeywell UOP, Axens, KBR, Topsoe, Lummus / CB&I, Shell Global Solutions, Sinopec / SEI, ExxonMobil Catalysts & Technology Licensing, Chevron Lummus Global, Saudi Aramco T&I), nitrogen and methanol licensors, hydrogen and ammonia process licensors, the bitumen and asphalt-technology field (including the DENIMOTECH legacy), and the proprietary Russian process IP held by partner institutions including the UFA Petroleum Institute technology farm.
End-to-end project-management consultancy on the owner's side: FEED supervision, EPC tendering and award, interface and change management through to commercial operations.
Feasibility studies, technical and commercial due diligence, term-sheet engineering, monitoring during construction and ramp-up. Designed to be underwritten by tier-one lenders without rework.
Energy-security mandates, fuel-supply resilience, refinery and grid programmes for sovereign and state-linked counterparties. Multi-language at counterparty level.
We will not write a feasibility study a tier-one lender cannot underwrite, and we will not put an EPC contract on the table that the owner's lawyers cannot defend. That discipline is the reason our projects close.— The Energy Desk