Africa Virtual Energy Forum

As Global Director of Oil Markets, Vera is responsible for crude oil and refined product price assessments and oil market reporting around the world at S&P Global Platts. Prior to that, Vera was Content Director –Metals at Platts, responsible for ferrous and non-ferrous metals pricing, news and analysis globally. Previously, Vera launched a real-time steel news and price assessment service at Metal Bulletin and was named Steel Journalist of the Year 2016 by the World Steel Association. Earlier, Vera worked in pricing, news, marketing and business development roles across different energy markets (power, gas, LNG, coal, emissions, crude oil) for organizations including Platts, Gas Strategies and NYMEX. Vera has worked as a freelance journalist in Germany, the UK and Russia.

John-Laurent leads S&P Global Platts’ cross-commodity editorial engagement efforts in Europe and Africa, based in London. John-Laurent previously led the Americas crude oil and Americas residual fuel oil and bunker fuel teams from Houston. John-Laurent joined Platts in 2010 and has also reported on refined oil products, electric power and natural gas.

Francesco is Associate Editorial Director, European & African Clean Products. At Platts, he has been covering the refined product markets since 2013 and currently leads the middle distillates price reporting team. Prior to joining Platts, Francesco analysed the upstream oil and gas markets, with field postings in Nigeria, UAE, Turkey and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where he followed the nascence and consolidation of the hydrocarbons industry.Francesco holds a BA from the University of Bologna and an MSc from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Luke Cottell is an Analyst with S&P Global Platts Analytics, specializing on the European, Middle Eastern and African gas and LNG markets. Luke focuses on market fundamentals pertaining to both the short and long-term outlooks, developing country level models across the region and ensuring alignment between the global LNG and European gas forecasts. Before joining Platts, Luke was a cross-commodity analyst within the global market’s research team at Natixis. He holds a Master’s Degree in Geology from Imperial College London, receiving first class honors.

Eklavya Gupte is Senior Editor, EMEA Oil News, with a special focus on the African oil markets and is also part of the S&P Global Platts OPEC team. Based in the London office since 2011, he has also covered the crude oil and refined products markets in Europe and Africa. He has extensively travelled to Africa reporting on the changes in the African oil sector in the last five years.

Eklavya has more than 10 years’ experience reporting on the global oil markets. Eklavya has also attended and reported on the OPEC meetings and other major news events. He is also a regular interviewee on global news channels. Previous work stints have been at Dow Jones Newswires, Argus Media, Euromoney, Time Out Mumbai, Channel V India and Percept Advertising.

He has a bachelor’s degree in mass media from the University of Mumbai, India, and a master’s degree in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London, England.