C.M. (COSTA) TSESMELIS

Director / Principal Consultant, Protos Consulting 

Costa Tsesmelis has over 40 years technical, managerial and commercial experience in gas processing, LNG, refining & petrochemicals and alternative fuels, including renewables. He has held senior positions with independent refiners, major oil companies, international consulting firms and engineering contractors in Europe, the Middle-East and Australia.

Costa is skilled in process simulation, operations analysis and hydrocarbon processing and energy economics. In addition to oil & gas, he also has expertise in gasification, syngas, IGCC, and Fischer Tropsch technologies including methanol, ammonia and urea synthesis. Since 2020 Costa has been working in the field of large-scale Green Liquefied Hydrogen (LH2) shipping. This includes leading an international Joint Development initiative to “prove” up the key technologies needed for safe, efficient and economically viable, future global Green LH2 Supply Chains around the world.   

He began his career as a process engineer in 1973 working at Conoco’s Humber Refinery in the UK, followed in 1980 by 9 years as Personal Assistant to the Deputy Chairman at Motor Oil Hellas, an independent refinery near Corinth in Greece, where he managed a team of engineers and offsites operators, and provided day-to-day management services for production planning, scheduling, shipping and trading operations. At Motor Oil he also completed design and project management services for major refinery expansions to add FCC, alkylation, MTBE and naphtha isomerisation facilities.

In 1990 Costa joined Bonner & Moore as a Senior Consultant and Business Development Manager with their Plant Systems Group in Europe, where he successfully implemented Bonner & Moore’s software systems at numerous refineries. He followed this work with a year’s assignment as Refinery Co-ordinator in Saudi Arabia with the Kingdom’s joint-venture refineries. In 1994 Costa joined Kaiser Engineers in Perth WA as Oil & Gas Project Manager and Assistant to the CEO for Business Development for gas processing studies and engineering projects. In 1996 Costa founded Protos Consulting International Pty Ltd based in Perth, WA – a chemical engineering consultancy offering operations analysis, project management, expert witness and technical services to clients worldwide.