Our leadership team, through senior roles in Chevron, Woodside and BHP, have extensive expertise and experience in managing multi-billion dollars industrial projects.
Daein Cha | Director
With over 25 years of oil and gas, energy and resources industries experience combined with extensive for profit and non-profit venture start up and management experience, Daein specialises in small and large scale energy business development, major capital project management, commodity sales and trading, and entrepreneurship.
Daein joined Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd in 1998 and has since served roles of increasing responsibilities including Manager of LNG procurement & trading, and Manager of LNG upstream business development. Daein joined Chevron Australia (Chevron) in 2012 as Deputy Business Manager and in 2014 as Deputy Project Manager for the Gorgon Expansion Project. He also served on the Project Leadership Team to manage the development of Chevron's Gorgon Stage 2 and Jansz-Io Compression projects.
Daein has taken on the role as the Founder and Director for Transborders Energy since November 2016, and as Founder and Director for deepc Store since August 2021.
Daein received his Bachelor’s degree in Management from the International Christian University (Japan), Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Virginia Darden Graduate School of Business Administration (USA), and qualification as Certified Cost Professional (CCP) of AACE International accredited by the Council of Engineering and Scientific Speciality Boards. Daein is also a certified member of the Association of International Energy Negotiators (AIEN) and the Society of Decision Professionals.
Jack Sato | Chairman of Management Committee, Director for Strategy
Jack has over 30 years of experience working in 2 multi-national organisations, Mitsui & Co. and Rio Tinto. He has developed extensive global and Australia specific networks and expertise in commercial, project management, operations and corporate governance. His has a broad resource sector exposure in handling a variety of products including coal, ferrous raw materials (steel scrap, semi-steel products, pig iron, HBI, ferro alloys), iron ore and copper/gold.
He currently serves as Managing Director of AvidSys, an Australian entity of the Indian conglomerate, managing resource/mining assets acquisition, operation, JV management, mining commodity trading and business / management consulting. Previous roles that Jack has fulfilled include Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Oyu Tolgoi LLC in Mongolia, Managing Director of Construction and Contractor Safety for Rio Tinto, COO of the Pilbara Supply Chain for Rio Tinto Iron Ore, and Managing Director of Robe River Iron Ore JV and Pilbara Infrastructure for Rio Tinto Iron Ore.
Jack received his Bachelor of Economics degree from Waseda University (Japan).
Peter Grant | Subsurface Advisor, Geologist and Geophysicist
Peter has over 40 years of experience in the upstream oil and gas industry specialising in geophysics, exploration and international E&P business development.
Peter has extensive work experience in Africa, South East Asia, Middle East, South America and Australasia, and has led successful teams that have made discoveries in the UK, Australia, Algeria, Libya, Sierra Leone and Mauritania. Peter’s experience base is founded in geoscience but has extensively augmented his expertise in corporate strategy, business development, commercial negotiations and portfolio management through his roles such as Exploration Manager for North Australia, Africa and Middle East for BHP Petroleum, and through senior roles in Woodside Energy as International Exploration Manager, General Manager International, and General Manager International Ventures.
Peter has established International Energy Solutions, a strategic advisory company for the energy industry in and works closely with either Governments or oil companies in areas of: strategy and planning, business development, portfolio growth or rationalisation and technical oversight. Peter currently advises clients on growth projects in sub Saharan Africa, China and South East Asia, both petroleum and coal seam methane related. He also provides commercial and political risk advice and has conducted numerous oil and gas training seminars.
Peter has a Bachelor of Honours in Geology from Nottingham University. He is currently a National Board member of the Australia/Arab Chamber of Commerce and their state Chair for West Australia. He was the founding chair of the Australia Korea Business Council of WA. He was the President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) for the Asia Pacific regionfrom 2015 to 2017, and is an active member of Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA), Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), South East Asia Petroleum Exploration Society (SEAPEX) and the Australia Society of Exploration Geophysicist (ASEG).
Chris Hopper | Principal Advisor
Chris has spent the last 30 years bringing difficult commercialisation projects on stream using highly creative and sometimes unorthodox business strategies. These have included the Strathspey, Captain and Galley fields in the North Sea and the Gorgon, Karachaganak and Agbami fields internationally.
Chris has worked on the world scale LNG projects; Gorgon LNG and Angola LNG and has extensive experience contracting FPSO production vessels and negotiating commercial deals. More recently, Chris put together the $2.5 billion development of the Kraken field for Nautical Petroleum, a small market cap company and was also Commercial Development Director for CompactGTL, a start-up company set up to monetise a new compact GTL technology.
Chris has a BSc and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Birmingham (UK), and was a member of the team that developed the world’s first tension leg platform for the Hutton Field. While working in Britoil’s drilling department in the early 1980’s, he helped develop the technology required for deep water and HPHT drilling and subsequently joined Texaco, where he was responsible for their subsea production systems, including the first use of subsea wireline in a live well.
