Darren has extensive financial modelling experience in various industries including mining and resources, oil and gas, rail, ports, property development, retail and local government. Daren has worked alongside regulatory, management and finance teams in various organisations in both the public and private sector, utilising his skills to assist in business decision making processes.
Being close to the mining and resources sector, Daren was involved in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Minerals Resources Rent Tax and the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. This, together with an understanding of the coal industry, has enabled Daren to provide valuable assistance to clients in the mining and resources, oil and gas, rail and ports industry.
Selected project experience
- Assisting company Directors in their negotiations with the government surrounding the operations and valuation of the WICET Port Terminal Operator Agreement.
- Reviewed Aurizon’s UT4 scope models in preparation for the UT4 process. The models will be used to feed into a master UT4 model and Aurizon needed to ensure that the models are ready for that process.
- Assisted Rio Tinto in understanding the negotiating framework of the proposed Exploration and Production Concession contract by the Mozambique Government’s Instituto Nacional de Petroleos, and the financial viability of the gas/LNG development project in Mozambique.
- Assisted the terminal operators, Port Waratah Coal Services and Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group with the development of a coal terminal expansion levy that will apply to any unallocated costs of all future port expansions.
- Developed a competitor pricing model which seeks to determine the likely pricing strategies that potential competitors may adopt in different coal rail networks in Queensland and New South Wales.
- Developed and maintained the Revenue Cap Model based on the revenue cap framework that was approved by the QCA in the UT2 period. The model calculates the under or over recovery of access charges based on reconciling actual and forecast results and applies the net amount to the calculation of the following year’s access charges. The results are then presented to the QCA for approval into the following year’s access charges.