Protos Consulting – History – Principal Consultant – International Assignments 

Costa established Protos Consulting International in 1996, and from his base in Perth he has developed his consultancy practice and provided services to clients worldwide. He has undertaken expert witness and advisory roles for the WA Government and he has provided evidence at court proceedings both in Australia and New Zealand. He has completed numerous assignments for industry clients, Australian federal and state government agencies and departments, international organisations and overseas governments.

As China developed its refining & petrochemical industry earlier this century, Costa worked extensively with Honeywell & UOP for refinery expansion studies and yield improvement projects at industrial complexes in both the South and North of China. Costa has also directed major software development and information integration projects at oil refineries in Europe, linking advanced blending facilities with management decision-support. He has also completed important business process studies in the Middle-East aligning commissioning of gas plant & pipelines, with sales & production planning systems.

His feasibility study and process design work include a number of CTL, GTL and Biomass-to-Liquids project development opportunities in Australia. In January 2019 Protos Consulting formed the “Australian Hydrogen Export Consortium” (AHEC) together with Australian and Korean partners. The informal association’s aim was to develop the key technologies required to safely and efficiently export Liquid H2 from Australia to growing markets in Asia-Pacific.

Costa presented Collie Synfuels’ modular Coal to H2 + Synthetic GTL technology with Carbon Capture & Storage, developed with South African partners, at the inaugural March 2019 Australian H2 Conference in Melbourne.  

In August 2019 overseas investors ready to invest in the Collie Synfuels’ Coal to H2 + Synthetic GTL Flagship Projects, had to be informed not to travel to progress discussions with Government departments, because new Coal processing “value-add” projects with CCS, were no longer supported by the WA and Victorian State governments.

Collie Synfuels Pty Ltd, set up in 2015 between Protos Consulting and South African partners, as the implementation company to develop the Collie WA and Latrobe Valley Flagship Projects, was voluntarily deregistered in September 2019.