MVEnergyWeek6This week’s panel: Commercial broker Pat Hemsworth, former regulator Chris Cook, and petroleum geologist Art Berman

  • How can natural gas be in backwardation (Jul-Aug’19) in the summertime, when contango is the norm?
  •  The energy price sell-off has continued even as the stock market has mostly recovered. What’s next for energy prices?

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Arthur Berman

Arthur E. Berman is a geological consultant with thirty-seven years of experience in petroleum exploration and production. He currently is consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. He frequently gives keynote addresses for investment conferences, boards of directors and professional societies.  He is often interviewed about energy topics on television, radio, and national print and web publications including CNBC, CNN, CBC, BNN, OilPrice.com, Bloomberg, Platt’s, Financial Times, and New York Times. He is a Director of ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA). He was a Managing Director and  frequent contributor at The Oil Drum, and is an associate editor of the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) Bulletin. He was past Editor of the Houston Geological Society Bulletin (2004-2005) and past Vice-President of the Society (2008-2009). He has published more than 100 articles on geology, technology, and the petroleum industry during the past 5 years.

Chris Cook

Chris has been involved in the legal design, development and regulation of markets, enterprises, organisations and financial instruments for 25 years, including six years as a director of the pre-eminent global energy exchange, where among other innovations he was responsible for the legal design of the UK natural gas 'Balancing Point' futures contract & market.

In 1998 Chris designed and developed the first shared market transaction confirmation system and database (OilClear) which remains the backbone of leading global energy exchanges.

Since 2011 he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy, Resilience & Security at University College London where he researches and develops institutions & instruments enabling Financial Technology (Fintech) markets in services . As a Director of Nordic Enterprise Trust, Chris is prototyping in communities the risk, cost, surplus, data & knowledge sharing agreements and funding instruments which together comprise Fintech as a market in services.

Patricia Hemsworth

Patricia A. Hemsworth is a SVP at Paragon Global Markets where she works with commercial energy clients to help them devise and execute hedging strategies.  She is particularly involved with the hedging the exposure of refineries and works as well with product distributors and traders and works with the value chain of biofuels as well.   Patricia also has been an official at both the ICE/NYBOT where she was managing director, responsible for product development.  She led a product marketing and research team at Aquila Energy Trade; she was also Director, Power, natural gas and coal product development and marketing at NYMEX.  She has worked in commodity derivatives product development, marketing and consulting over her 30+ year career.  Her experience also includes managing several energy trading/brokerage efforts at several banks.  She can be found on twitter @phemsworth or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..