Alumni Profile: Living the Global Life

World’s first converted LNG tanker to a floating
regasification terminal, offshore Brazil, 2008

Blake Blackwell joined the Navy to see the world. Twelve years and an MBA later, he’s left the Navy, but he’s still globetrotting. As vice president of business development for Golar LNG, he chases deals around the globe. Since finalizing a contract with a Dubai government entity in April for a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification terminal, Blackwell (MBA ’99) has fielded more than 15 inquiries from countries interested in LNG projects and is crisscrossing the globe from Egypt to Romania to South Africa to Jamaica looking to deliver the next deal.

“The Navy gave me exposure and sparked my curiosity to live overseas,” Blackwell said. “Kenan-Flagler gave me perspective, the confidence to take risks.”

Blackwell worked in banking in Richmond, Va., immediately out of the Navy. Once he completed his MBA, he signed on with ExxonMobil, interested in the potential for an international career as much as the oil and gas industry itself. In 2004, ExxonMobil assigned him to Qatar, the largest producer of LNG, to work on its LNG marketing team. After three years in Qatar, Blackwell joined London-based Golar LNG. Golar’s small staff of 30 had big plans to develop the world’s first “floating” LNG terminal, and Blackwell wanted to be a part.

“ExxonMobil gave me a best-in-class oil and gas education,” he said. “Now Golar has offered a real proving ground.”

In the LNG business, natural gas is extracted from a gas field and chilled through a liquefaction plant so it can be transported via tanker to a port where it is turned back into gas to be used as fuel. The increased development of gas-fired power generation combined with a decrease in pipeline gas supplies has led to significant growth in the LNG industry. Golar ships LNG, but also offers a floating regasification terminal, which saves time and money. An existing Golar LNG ship can be converted into a floating regasification terminal within two years, roughly half the time it takes to build a land-based terminal.

“We open markets to LNG faster – which is good for that country’s economy and often displaces less environmentally friendly fuels,” Blackwell said. Golar has four committed floating regasification terminal projects: two in Brazil and one each in Italy and Dubai.

Golar also is developing floating liquefaction projects. Hundreds of stranded gas fields worldwide too small to merit building liquefacation plants onshore can produce LNG via floating liquefaction projects.

Blackwell and his wife, Helle, and their two children lived in Qatar for three years and now live in London. Living overseas is a gift that comes with a challenge, he said.

“I always said I’d like to live overseas, but making the decision to move to the Middle East was actually pretty nerve-wracking,” he said. “It’s a life education, but it comes at a price to be away from family and friends for years.”

But global commerce demands going to the customer, Blackwell said. Living in another country pushes him to rethink the view of the world he formed as he grew up. He has to be aware of what is important to the people sitting across the negotiating table from him and understand how they see the world. “How they do business in Romania is different from how they do business in Egypt,” he said.

UNC Kenan-Flagler expanded his world, Blackwell said, and prepared him to transact business in diverse cultures. “Kenan-Flagler gave me a front door to an international career,” he said. “It was up to me to walk through it.”