Daniel Barcelo
Founder & CEO
Has over 25 years in international energy finance and emerging markets and is currently a Director of the Board for FREYR Battery. Mr. Barcelo brings experience encompassing executive management, portfolio management, capital markets, corporate restructuring, valuation, deal origination and structuring. Prior to founding Alussa Energy in 2019, he was a Director of Research and Portfolio Manager at Moore Capital Management from 2008 to 2011 and an equity research analyst with Lehman Brothers from 1998 to 2004, Bank of America from 2004 to 2008, and Managing Director and Head of Oil & Gas at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, Russia from 2011 to 2012. His corporate experience includes small cap E&P start-up and restructuring in complicated geo-markets including executive roles as Chief Financial Officer of Ruspetro plc in Russia from 2012 to 2014, Head Corporate Finance of Lekoil Limited in Nigeria from 2015 to 2016 and co-founder, Director and Chief Financial Officer of Invicti Terra Argentina Limited in Argentina from 2017 to 2019. He is a graduate of Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and is also a CFA charterholder.
W. Richard Anderson
Principal
Since 2015, he has been Chief Executive Officer of SOMA Oil and Gas, with exploration license interests in deep water, offshore Somalia. Mr. Anderson has over 40 years experience in the financial aspects of energy related companies, and started his career in audit with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, followed by 16 years as a managing and tax partner of Hein & Associates LLP focused on mergers and acquisitions, cross-border transactions and numerous initial and secondary public offerings. From December 1998 to August 2007, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of Prime Natural Resources, Inc. an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, active in the U.S., South America and Kurdistan. From 2008 to 2015 he was Chief Financial Officer of Eurasia Drilling Company Ltd (LSE:EDCL), a large oil and gas drilling company in Russia. Mr. Anderson led the company in various executive and director capacities from its initial public offering in 2007 to a privatization in 2015. For the past 25 years, Mr. Anderson has also been a Director of various public companies in the energy, exploration and resource extraction industries, assisting companies with initial public offerings and debt issuances, sourcing of other third party financing, reorganizations, trade sales, pay outs of special dividends, issuing special awards to management teams and conducting internal investigations with the assistance of outside counsel and forensic accountants. His involvement has frequently been on Audit Committees and as Chairman of the Audit Committee. From April 2014 to April 2019 he has served as a Director and Chairman of the Compensation Committee of Gulf Marine Services (LON: GMS); from August 2008 to the present as a Director of Eurasia Drilling Company Limited and member of the Audit Committee (LON: EDCL) and from December 2013 to the present as a Director of SOMA Oil and Gas. Mr. Anderson’s professional qualifications include membership in the AICPA, Texas.
Jesse Peltan
Principal
Mr. Peltan was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of HODL Ranch, a blockchain-based datacenter company, where he led technical research and development. Mr. Peltan was also co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Autonomous, where he designed and built multiple ASIC and GPU-based cryptocurrency compute clusters. He has developed solutions for operating blockchain datacenters in various climates in Texas and demand side management strategies to capitalize on the growth in intermittent renewable energy within ERCOT. Mr. Peltan attended the University of Kentucky pursuing a quadruple major in Mathematics, Economics, Philosophy, and Environmental Sustainability. He has also been recognized by Forbes 30 under 30 in Energy for his work in sustainable energy and Bitcoin mining.
Chi Chow
Principal
Mr. Chow brings over 24 years of capital markets, equity research and corporate finance experience to the Alussa Energy team. Mr. Chow was a top-ranked equity research analyst covering the refining and logistics industry for Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., Macquarie Capital, Merrill Lynch and Petrie Parkman & Co. In 2007, he was recognized as the #1 ranked Stock Picker by Forbes across all industries and #1 Oil & Gas analyst by the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Chow also has prior experience in investment banking at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin and energy corporate finance and strategy at Andeavor and ARCO. He holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas.
Benjamin W. Atkins
Principal
Mr. Atkins was previously a Vice President of Power and Digital Infrastructure Acquisition Corporation, a SPAC which successfully merged with its target in a $4.3bn deal. He co-founded HODL Ranch, a blockchain-based data center company, and Skybox Datacenters, an enterprise data center company. He is a co-founder and partner of Rugen Street Capital. Prior to founding companies, Mr. Atkins served as an equity research analyst at Chilton Capital Management in Houston, Texas as well as an investment analyst at Salient Partners in Houston, Texas. Mr. Atkins earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Texas A&M University.
Ducky Peltan
Principal
Mr. Peltan attended the University of Mississippi pursuing a chemical engineering major. He joined autonomous and assisted in the design and fabrication of ASIC and GPU-based cryptocurrencies compute clusters. He later worked for HODL Ranch, designing blockchain datacenters for use in various Texas climates and ERCOT grid zones.
Luca Barcelo
Engineering Associate
Mr. Barcelo has been an active researcher in energy engineering and aquatic chemistry. From 2016 to 2017 he developed laboratory software for Xenon100, a global dark matter experiment. After winning second place at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for a water-quality ML algorithm. In 2017 he founded Analytics for Water Action (AWA), a crowdsourcing company built upon his proprietary process and software, and led project financing until 2019. Mr. Barcelo worked for the Earth Institute in 2021 performing GIS image & data analytics for a Columbia University x NASA initiative to track real-time human migration around the world. From 2022 to 2023 he developed grid dispatch optimization models on the NYISO system to gauge the impacts of carbon taxes and subsidies on renewable energy additionality. Mr. Barcelo is a graduate of Columbia University with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering.
Truls Oma Erichsrud
Advisor
Mr. Oma is a seasoned institutional equity investor and entrepreneur, currently working with Arctic Securities. Over the course of 10 years, he worked in US institutional equity sales for DNB, leading investment opportunities in clean energy technologies and projects. Mr. Oma is the founder of Oma Group, a business consulting and service company, and Oma Travel. He previously served as the Chief Investment Officer at Hagal AS, leading project financing for the Norwegian smart battery company.