Fernando Avila-Bavaresco
Senior Legal Counsel
ConocoPhillips Company
Fernando was born in Venezuela and obtained his law degree from the Catholic University Andres Bello in Caracas, with post-graduate studies in Tax Law from the Central University of Venezuela and a LLM from Boston University. Fernando began his professional career in the early 90s as a clerk in the Deputy Attorney General Office in Venezuela. He worked for a brief period in the newly formed antitrust agency (Pro Competencia) and then moved to work in Maraven (and later PDVSA Petroleo) in the new ventures opportunities promoted by PDVSA (Venezuela NOC) to develop vertically integrated projects to exploit the extra heavy oil reserves of the so call Orinoco Oil Belt in the eastern region of the country. Fernando also worked in new ventures projects to develop refinery joint ventures with local and foreign partners in the Paraguana Complex Refinery in the northwest region of the country. Fernando moved to the private oil and gas sector in 1999, when he was appointed Legal Manager in Sincor, a joint venture company formed by Total, PDVSA and Statoil (now Equinor) and later in 2003 moved to ConocoPhillips as a Legal Manager for the Venezuelan and LATAM assets operation. Fernando is currently Senior Legal Counsel for ConocoPhillips working for new ventures opportunities around the globe.
