About Us
Creating the Hydrogen Economy
BIG HILL's mission is to create solutions for a green energy economy. BIG HILL is working to create the infrastructure, logistics, trading, and operations to make hydrogen power production economical and sustainable.
Our Story
Big Hill, Matagorda, is a characteristic Gulf Coast salt dome and has a distinct salt-dome mound, a subcircular salt core intruded into Tertiary sediments and a thick cap on the top of the salt.
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The BIG HILL Team has been assembled with the best in Energy Market Members and Financial Market Members.
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BIG HILL has over 200 years of combined experience in Energy Trading, Energy Exploration, Energy Production, and Finance.
Meet The Team
Nirav Patel
Nirav Patel has over 14 years of experience overseeing and managing mortgage backed securities origination and trading businesses. He successfully managed large portfolios through market turmoil, including the 2008 Great Recession. Using a bottom-up fundamental approach to investing, Mr. Patel has been able to identify market opportunities that provide outsized returns with low volatility. Mr. Patel was Managing Director of the Agency CMO Business for BNP Paribas. Since joining BNP, the business had steadily moved up in the league tables and has significantly increased its profitability. A broad range of employees reported to Mr. Patel, and he oversaw a portfolio of investments exceeding $5 billion USD. Prior to joining BNP Paribas, Mr. Patel spent 4 years at Credit Suisse where he ran a substantial Agency Derivative business. From 2007 to 2010, Mr. Patel was a trader with Deutsche Bank Capital Management, a proprietary trading desk. While Mr. Patel was trading with DBCM, the desk was one of the top performers in RMBS space. Mr. Patel holds a B.S. in Theoretical Mathematics and a B.A. in Economics from Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Robert McKee
Previously, formed Non-Conventional Energy, Inc., which operated some 400 wells and three gas pipelines at the point of its sales in1998. In 1973, Mr Mckee acquired The Sabine Companies, which he ran for twenty years, operating 3,800 miles of interstate pipeline, 12 public utilities, 500 producing wells, five refineries and gas plants, and trading operations generated around $1.7bn dollars in annual revenue. Mr McKee sold Sabine in 1993, retaining the entity's crude oil and refined products trading business. Mr. McKee currently owns and operates two 25,000bbl/day refineries, 1 rail and 1 barge terminal.
Peter Belmonte
Mr. Belmonte is a trusted executive advisor in the Power Generation and Oil and Gas Sectors with over 29 years of experience. He is a leader in the Carbon Capture space as he has evaluated and/or permitted a number of CCS systems including Futuregen 1.0 & 2.0, Kemper County, and Petra Nova which was the only commercially demonstrated system in the US.. Mr. Belmonte is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New York. Mr. Belmonte is experienced in performing transaction advisory services and risk assessments on numerous power assets throughout the U.S. and has permitted well over 7000 MW of power generation projects in the state of Texas, permitted several hundred MWs of power plant pollution control retrofit projects throughout the US, started up/commissioned SUEZ’s TRAC-10 projects and performed construction management of numerous pollution control projects at waste to energy power facilities. His strengths are Title V permit applications, BACT& MACT analyses and LAER evaluation, emission estimates, dispersion modeling, regulatory negotiations, dealing with stakeholders and property owners, performing engineering and permitting studies, and various other environmental issues related to the development of various types of power projects.
Dharmil Patel
Mr. Dharmil Patel, PE is a geotechnical engineer with 8 years of work experience in Geotechnical design of shallow and deep foundations, retaining walls, slope stability, rock/soil anchor design, and support of excavation (SOE) design. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of New York and Texas. Mr. Patel has vast experience in solar energy, transmission lines, power plants, and infrastructure projects. His experience includes planning and coordinating subsurface exploration and soil laboratory testing programs, performing engineering analyses, developing geotechnical engineering recommendations, preparation of reports, managing construction phase monitoring and special inspections of geotechnical-related activities. His construction phase monitoring and special inspections experience includes coordination, execution, and supervision of geotechnical investigations, non-destructive testing, pre-construction documentation, construction oversight, geotechnical instrumentation installation and data interpretation.
Rick Chapman
Rick Chapman was a Partner at Cantor Fitzgerald for over 15 years trading U.S. Treasury Bonds. During his tenure Mr. Chapman helped build the desk from handling 35% of trades in this market, to over 70% internationally. He was a visionary, capturing missed business by dreaming up the idea for and assisting in the development of ESpeed, Cantor Fitzgerald’s fully electronic trading platform. Starting with his connections forged on Wall Street, Mr. Chapman brings over 30 years of trusted business relationships. His greatest attribute has always been developing and maintaining business rapports within various sectors including financial, technology and oil and gas. Mr. Chapman has a keen ability to connect the right people to help get projects off the ground or move stalled ventures in the right direction. Some might call him the “I know someone who can help you” guy.
Adrian Wu
Adrian Wu has over 19 years of experience in portfolio management, trading and structuring mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and loan products. Mr. Wu was Managing Director/Head of Trading at Madison Paige Capital LLC from 2014 to 2016. From 2011 to 2014, Mr. Wu served as co-head of credit trading at Premium Point Investments, a $2B mortgage hedge fund. In 2013, Mr. Wu helped Premium Point start WinWater Home Mortgage, a conduit for jumbo mortgages. Prior to joining Premium Point, Mr. Wu was a senior trader at Deutsche Bank's Residential Whole Loan, Reverse Mortgage and Special Situation Trading businesses. During the 2008 Financial Crisis, Mr. Wu helped Deutsche Bank manage and dispose tens of billions of illiquid and distressed securitized and unsecuritized positions. Prior to Deutsche Bank, Mr. Wu held trading and structuring positions at UBS Securities and Salomon Smith Barney. Mr. Wu holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a M.S. in Engineering Economic Systems and Operations Research from Stanford University.
Anthony McKee
Anthony McKee worked at Sabine Resources Group in Production, and Pipeline Engineering specialist, Utilities, Refining and Pipeline Division from 1987-1994. Duties include Overseeing Utilities Division Pipeline Operations, Pipeline Planning, Design, and Construction, Oil and Natural Gas Well Production, Well Log Analyst, Well Logging Engineer, and Radiation Safety Officer for Subsidiary Gold Perforating Company Inc., (An Oklahoma Corporation). Nuclear Materials Licenses Held (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Explosives License Held (Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Professional Licenses Held due to work preformed through Gold Perforating Company Inc. Co-Environmental Safety Officer Subsidiary Canal Refining Company Inc., (a Louisiana Corporation.) Qualified in many types of heavy equipment operations. Fully endorsed class “B” CDL Held. 2006 – 2010 accepted consulting engineer position for natural gas, and crude oil processing facility design and construction, and Infrastructure expansion project expansion with DCP Midstream, (Conoco Phillips. 2010 – Present Accepted Director of Engineering position with Canal Companies an Crude Oil, Products and Natural Gas Pipeline common carrier, Refiner and Refining facility design, and construction corporation, with responsibilities over the entirety of the engineering systems for Canal Companies on a multi-national basis.
Roy Carubba
Mr. Carubba founded Carubba Engineering in 1993 and currently serves as the president where he oversees all aspects of engineering design and construction management. He has successfully completed many industrial and marine projects throughout his career. Previously, Project Manager at Wink Engineering where he oversaw various petrochemical projects. Also previously, Facility Engineer at Riverplex International Dry Bulk Terminal.