PrintBarry Posner
Hello, my name is Barry Posner, and I am one of the instructors for the online delivery of EBF 200.
I have been involved in the energy industries, in one way or another, for about 40 years. This began when I became an oilfield brat in my tweens, allowing me to live in several countries before graduating high school. After finishing high school, I spent a few years doing blue-collar work in the oilfields of central Alberta, where my parents settled. Tiring of this, I went to university, and obtained my bachelor's degree (chemical engineering) and master's degree (mining engineering) from the University of Alberta. I worked in several energy-related industries - oil and gas production, gas transmission and distribution, petrochemicals and refining, and finished my engineering career designing pipelines for an international consultant serving the mining industry.
Finding my engineering work to be rather repetitive, I decided to change gears, and enrolled a doctoral program in the old Energy, Environmental and Mineral Economics program at Penn State. After four years, I took a job teaching economics to engineering students in Abu Dhabi, and in 2006, I completed my doctorate, being the very last student to graduate from Mineral Economics at Penn State before the program was phased out. It is during this time that I first encountered an early iteration of this course, developed and taught by Dr. Kleit, my dissertation supervisor and the director of the Energy Business and Finance program.
After three years in the Middle East, I returned to the US, and worked several years for a pair of large electricity generation companies: Exelon in Kennett Square, PA, and NRG Energy in Princeton, NJ. In 2012, I joined Wood Mackenzie, a global energy and metals industry consulting and research firm, and I currently work in Houston as a member of our North America Gas Service team.