LEONIDAS P. DROLLAS

Energy economist, specialising in oil and gas

Born in India of Greek and Anglo-Irish parents, and educated at Athens College in Athens, Greece, from which he graduated cum laude, Leo Drollas attended the London School of Economics where he read economics.  Having obtained his B.Sc. (Econ) and M.Sc. (Econ) at the LSE, he then completed a doctorate at the same university, choosing as his thesis a country’s foreign trade sector in disequilibrium.  After leaving the LSE in 1975, Leo Drollas worked in London at the Commodities Research Unit and then joined British Petroleum in 1977 as the company’s first econometrician.  At BP he managed the energy and economic modelling team in the company’s Corporate Planning Department (1980-86) and was responsible for many studies on various aspects of the oil market.  Whilst at BP, Leo Drollas was seconded for two years to the Confederation of British Industry (1986-88), where he held the post of Deputy Director of Economics and completed two major studies — one on the attitude of British business towards exchange rates and the other comparing British and German manufacturing.  In 1989 Leo Drollas joined as its Chief Economist the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), a think-tank founded in that year by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia.

 

Leo Drollas was the Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the CGES from 1989 until 2011, becoming in that year the CGES’ Director and retaining the title of Chief Economist.  During his time at the CGES, which ceased formal operations in January 2014, Leo dealt with subjects as diverse as oil prices in the long run, oil speculation versus fundamentals, oil’s shipping needs, the demand for aviation fuel, US gasoline demand, the relationship between oil inventories and prices, the determination of oil product prices, the factors driving oil production, oil capacity utilisation and oil prices, oil pipeline tariffs, OPEC’s oil-quota policies, Chinese oil demand, US and global demand for natural gas, the connection between desired oil stock cover and oil futures prices, and many more.  Leo Drollas co-authored with David Long of Oxford Petroleum Research Associates a major CGES study on the strategic hedging activities of oil companies and directed the CGES’ work on many aspects of the oil futures markets.

Over a career spanning 40 years, Leo Drollas has written many articles and studies on oil, energy and economics in general, and co-authored a book on oil with Jon Greenman entitled “Oil – the Devil’s Gold” [Duckworth, 1989].  He has spoken at numerous conferences on diverse oil and gas-related subjects, including the oil market in the short and long term, Asian oil demand, the oil futures markets, the world’s gas outlook, global warming, oil fundamentals versus speculation and non-OPEC oil supplies, among many others.  In 2014 Leo spoke at energy conferences in Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Athens, Rotterdam, Milan and London, while in 2015 Leo delivered talks at the Cass Business School in London, at the ESCP Business School also in London, at ENI’s FEEM conference on oil price prediction in Milan and at the Mare Forum shipping and commodity conferences in Athens, Cyprus and Rotterdam.  In the last few years, Leo Drollas spoke at the Athens Energy Forum and at conferences in Abu Dhabi, Rome, Cyprus, Naples and Rotterdam.  Leo has appeared frequently on the business programmes of CNN, CNBC, ITV-1, BBC-1, the BBC’s World Service, Bloomberg TV, Al Jazeera, Sky News, Channel Four and other channels, and has contributed to numerous radio programmes in Europe, the Far East and the US.  Leo Drollas has been quoted regularly on the main wire services and in the world’s leading financial newspapers in the West and the Far East.