Mr Brendan Devlin

Brendan Devlin is the EU Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford.
He has a background in the application of political science and international relations theories to
immediate diplomatic problems, and is particularly impressed by the utility of the work of Mancur
Olson and game theory to negotiations. He is willing to assist students in their work and to be
available for discussion and provocation with all political science and IR students and colleagues.
Indeed, anyone.
Previously, he was the Strategy and Foresight Advisor, then Methane, Fossil Fuel Phase Out and
Just Transition Advisor/Diplomatic Counsellor, in the Directorate General for Energy of the
European Commission. His prime job is to provide strategic guidelines for the transition away from
fossil fuel.
At Oxford, he is preparing a diplomatic strategy to assist in the fossil fuel phaseout within the
European Union and the countries from whom fossil fuels are imported, and would welcome inputs
from whatever sources, but especially students.
In addition to giving this strategic advice, his work focuses on methane emissions reduction in
hydrocarbons supply chains, the international just transition, short-lived climate pollutants
reduction, supply chain integrity, transformation of international and national oil and gas
companies, transparency and corruption.
In 2019, he conceived and wrote the EU methane strategy which lead to the Global Methane
Pledge.
He also prepared the policy options that lead to the inclusion of a proposed oil and gas moratorium
into the European Union’s Arctic Strategy
He has Co-Chaired of the OECD working group on fossil fuel phase out in resource rich countries,
sits on the Board of the UN Climate and Clean Air Coalition and is on the working group of the
Task Force on Carbon Pricing in Europe.
He has lead the successful North Sea offshore renewables, islands and diversification teams
between 2012 and 2017. Between 2007 and 2012, he lead the team to connect successfully Caspian
energy resources with the European Union. He guided the negotiation and signature of the
intergovernmental agreements necessary for the Southern Gas Corridor. His work has encompassed
developing the legal doctrines applicable to import pipelines to the EU.
Before 2007, he conceived and guided the negotiation, signature (in October 2005) and ratification
of the Energy Community Treaty, the first multilateral treaty between the states of South and
Central Europe and the European Union (and the only energy Treaty ever signed by the EU as a
legal entity).
He began working in the Commission in 1994 at the Directorate General for Competition leading
major cases looking at the gas market in Germany and the North Sea. Then for three years, he
worked as a note-taker at EU-US Summits.
By training, Mr Devlin is a lawyer and economist. Before the Commission, he worked as a
journalist, writing in the UK national press (specifically the education pages of the Guardian
newspaper) and as an editor on a specialist political/economic journal (Oxford Analytica). He has
also worked in a Fortune 500 company and as teacher of political economy at the London School
of Economics.