Vice President of Strategy Development / Advocacy
ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions
Erik Oswald is Vice President, Strategy & Advocacy, for ExxonMobil’s Low Carbon Solutions business.
In this role, Erik is leading the company’s efforts to advocate for the appropriate government policies and regulations that will be needed to incentivize the wide-scale development and deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology around the world.
Prior to his current position, Erik was most recently Vice President, Exploration and New Ventures Americas, for ExxonMobil’s Upstream Business Development Company, where he oversaw ExxonMobil’s exploration projects in Guyana and Brazil, among others.
Erik joined ExxonMobil in 1991, and has held a variety of technical and managerial positions in research, production and exploration. After his early years as a research scientist, he transferred to the Exploration Company’s Middle East division, and then to West Africa. Later, he held management positions in the Caspian region, Onshore U.S. Production and Strategic Planning, before becoming a Division Research Manager at the Upstream Research Company.
In 2008, Erik became Middle East Area Manager, ExxonMobil Exploration Company, and in 2009, transitioned to Regional Operations Manager for Exploration in Europe and Greenland, based in London.
Erik was appointed Vice President of Business Development for ExxonMobil Exploration Company in Houston in 2011. In 2014, he was appointed Vice President, Americas, ExxonMobil Exploration Company.
Oswald is a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, The Geological Society of London, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and he is on the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) Board of Directors.
Born and raised in Seattle, Erik holds a bachelor's degree in Geoscience from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His graduate work looked at the stratigraphy, petrography and geochemistry of Miocene Carbonates exposed in Southern Spain and the Balearic Islands.
