Dr Rainer Seele, currently chairman of the board of executive directors at Wintershall Holding GmbH in Kassel, will become the new CEO of OMV in Vienna/Austria on 1 July 2015. He is taking over from Gerhard Roiss, who will be leaving the company.

Ulrich Meesmann, Member of the Board of Directors of the German Social Accident Insurance Institution for the Raw Materials and Chemical Industry (BG RCI), Heidelberg/Germany, was voted president. His term will begin 1 April 2016, when current ISSA Mining President Theodor Bülhoff will retire. Cristian Moraga Torres, General Manager of Mutual de Seguridad CChC, Chile, was voted ISSA Mining Vice ...

Marco Nix will become the new CFO of transmission system operator 50Hertz in Berlin on 1 July 2015. He will take over from Udo Giegerich, who is leaving the company.

Robert Kloos, state secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), has been elected chairman of the Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe (agency for renewable resources) in Gülzow-Prüzen. His deputy is Clemens Neumann, head of the BMEL’s bio-based economy, sustainable agriculture and forestry department.

Michael Heidkemper will assume responsibility for the sales division on the board of management at EWE AG in Oldenburg in autumn 2015. His predecessor is Matthias Brückmann, who is replacing Dr Werner Brinker as CEO in October. Ines Kolmsee took over from Brinker as head of the technology division (which includes generation and infrastructure) on 1 May 2015.

The European Network of Transmission System Operators (Entso-E) elected Peder Andreasen, CEO of Denmark’s transmission system operator Energinet.dk, as its new president during its assembly in March. He will take office on 28 June 2015 and replaces Nick Winser, CEO of the UK’s National Grid.

Klaus Barthel, an SDP member of the German Bundestag, is the new chair of the advisory council at the German Federal Network Agency in Bonn. He replaced Dr Joachim Pfeiffer of the CDU, who stepped down from office in line with an agreement reached between the coalition partners.

In recent months Heidelberg-based Deutsche Rohstoff AG has made a number of new investments in promising natural resource projects. Here the main focus has been in the American oil and gas sector and in copper and gold exploration in Australia. In the USA there are now good entry opportunities, as a number of companies have got into difficulties as a ...

The German Federation of international Mining and Mineral Resources (FAB), the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (GACIC), the Australian Embassy and the Australian commercial agency Austrade organised a nation-specific workshop on 25 and 26 March 2015 in Berlin that focused on Australia’s mining and resource industries and their future. Commodity prices have been almost in free-fall since the peak ...

In an official ceremony held in the Aachen City Ratskeller the Wilhelm Heinrich Sobbe Foundation prizes for the best final theses in raw materials engineering 2014 were awarded for the third time to the Raw Materials and Waste Disposal Technology Division at RWTH Aachen University. The award for the best Bachelor’s thesis went to Violetta Storoschewich for her work ‘Deep-sea ...