Panel Discussion: Accelerating to Net Zero – The Race Is On

Mr Gallagher joined Santos as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer on 1 February 2016, bringing more than 25 years’ international experience in the oil and gas industry. Since joining Santos, Mr Gallagher has led significant transformation and growth of the company, delivering a competitive advantage in the energy transition. Under his leadership, Santos is now Australia’s second-largest independent natural gas and liquids producer after implementing a focused strategy to build and grow around five core long-life, producing natural gas assets in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. The strategy has included successful acquisitions of Quadrant Energy and ConocoPhillips’ Australia-West business, and a merger with Oil Search. Mr Gallagher has implemented a disciplined low-cost operating model and strengthened the balance sheet to support the company’s strategy, creating a strong cash-generative business that has delivered a series of record results. This has propelled Santos into the top-20 ASX list and the top 20 companies in the oil and gas sector globally. Mr Gallagher has positioned Santos to leverage the critical role natural gas will play in delivering energy security through the energy transition to net-zero emissions. He has implemented a clear decarbonisation strategy building around the company’s existing infrastructure by developing natural gas projects for backfill and growing new revenue streams and reducing emissions through carbon capture and storage, and clean fuels projects such as hydrogen. Under Mr Gallagher’s leadership, Santos has made the world’s first booking of carbon storage reserves and taken a final investment decision on one of the world’s biggest CCS projects in South Australia’s Cooper Basin. Commencing his career in the oil and gas industry as a drilling engineer in Scotland working with Mobil in the North Sea, Mr Gallagher migrated to Australia to join Woodside in 1998. He was Chief Executive Officer at Clough Limited from 2011 until his appointment at Santos. Having built a strong, low-cost base business supplying natural gas to meet ongoing customer demand and laid out a clear action plan to develop cleaner energy and clean fuels with an ambitious target of net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040, Mr Gallagher is committed to ensuring Santos remains resilient, value accretive and at the leading edge of the energy transition.

For more than a decade Professor Andrew Garnett has led a large multidisciplinary research program focussing on varied aspects of Queensland’s natural gas industry including social and environmental impact, and cost and supply optimisation. He has more than 30 years’ international experience within multinational companies across conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon projects, and is well respected for his contribution to the global transition to a low emissions economy. Professor Garnett began his career in the oil and gas sector, prior to consulting on unconventional developments. Prior to joining UQ, he led the 500MW ZeroGen integrated gasification combined cycle and carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, ultimately closing the project down as CEO. Most recently, as the Director, UQ CCS Program, Professor Garnett led a three-year study identifying strategies to make material emissions cuts in Queensland as well as to enable low carbon baseload power, deliver significant benefits for regional employment, and stimulate the hydrogen economy. He has been a reviewer for the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook (natural gas) and Energy Technology Perspectives.

Vanessa is an Executive Director and Head of Energy Finance (excluding US) in Macquarie’s Commodities and Global Markets Group. Vanessa’s global teams provide clients with debt and equity funding and price risk management solutions to acquire and develop energy assets. The business finances assets in a wide variety of regions including North and South America, Africa, Australia, and Asia with a focus on conventional and transitional energy projects, including CCS and LNG infrastructure investments. Vanessa joined Macquarie Bank in 2000 and has deep experience across the energy and mining sectors as both a lender and principal investor.

Judit Prieto is Senior Vice President for Baker Hughes Enterprise Solutions, Customer Experience & Projects. She is responsible for Baker Hughes’ growth strategy in key regional markets, developing new enterprise projects, and overseeing our strategic customer relationships. Prieto has more than 20 years of multi-industry experience, including more than a decade in oil and gas through various leadership roles. Prior to her current role, she led the digital franchise for Baker Hughes’ Industrial & Energy Technology operating segment. Her responsibilities included incubating the newly business unit created and development and launch of the digital services offering in the Industrial asset management space. Earlier in her career, Prieto served in different finance roles across industrial businesses and in financial services. She started her career in GE’s leadership program where she had multiple assignments in Asia, the U.S., Latin America, and Europe covering business operations, M&A and finance. Prieto holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from EUNCET University in Barcelona, Spain. She is fluent in Spanish, Catalan, English and Italian.

Jacob Greber writes about politics, energy, climate, economics and business from The Australian Financial Review’s Canberra Press Gallery Bureau. He won the Citi Journalism Award for general business reporting in 2015, and spent several years in the US (2018-2021) as the Financial Review's Washington correspondent. Prior to that spent 15 years as an economics correspondent both at the Financial Review and Bloomberg News. He began his career in 1996 after winning a cadetship at The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, where he covered state politics.