Innovative thinkers

Kemal Anbarci says he’s no innovator. However, he does admit to his role as an “enabler of innovation.” As managing venture executive of the investment team at Chevron Technology Ventures, Anbarci says he helps facilitate the necessary means for a start-up company to reach success. He explained, “A lot of people who start companies run into difficulties reaching the stage where they can get venture funding from financial VC firms.”

Kemal Anbarci, managing executive of Chevron’s corporate venturing arm, helps start-up companies succeed in a highvelocity environment.

Growing up in Izimr, on Turkey’s Aegean coast, Anbarci’s father served in the Turkish military as an airplane mechanic before going into business for himself at a machine shop. Although his mother urged him to become a doctor, Anbarci took interest in science and technology; ultimately, pursuing a career in petroleum engineering. He can even recall some of his earliest industry exposure: “I remember taking a field trip to a refinery when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was very impressed by the whole energy complex. Later on, the sense of adventure in oil and gas exploration and production pulled me into petroleum engineering.”

Anbarci attended Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, where he earned his BS degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering. He subsequently moved to the U.S., where he continued his education at Penn State University. After receiving a dual-MS degree in operations research/petroleum and natural gas engineering, and a PhD in petroleum and natural gas engineering, he went on to earn an executive MBA in finance & international business from the University of California at Irvine.

He landed his first position with Chevron in 1991 as an R&D engineer in Houston, and has held many subsequent positions across Chevron since then, including reserves coordinator, reservoir engineering consulting team manager, technical advisor and field development engineer for Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc. In his engineering roles, Anbarci designed and executed oilfield development plans and secondary recovery projects. As a staff analyst, he was part of the team of advisors that expedited the merger of the upstream operations of Chevron and Texaco. He also gained experience in strategic and business planning, as well as technology management for operating units.

Over his more than 25-year career at Chevron, Anbarci has held a number of positions related to business planning, consulting and technology. As a field development engineer for Chevron Australia, he led the subsurface team for the Gorgon project, one of the world’s largest natural gas projects, constructed offshore Western Australia, with facilities on Barrow Island. 

Anbarci says that his diverse professional background gives him the experience and the know-how to help Chevron Technology Ventures’ portfolio companies succeed. With knowledge of technical solutions and business strategy, he—alongside the group’s investment team—can scout start-up companies with emerging technologies that can be integrated across existing operations and, ultimately, generate financial returns. “It’s the best of both worlds,” he says. “I get to be a part of the technical side of things, as well as the financial side.”

Through its Catalyst program, Chevron guides new companies from the seed stage onward, as they develop innovative technologies capable of adding value to oil and gas operations worldwide. “We’ve been doing this continuously and longer than anyone,” Anbarci explained. “With about 35 companies in our portfolio right now, we invest as a syndicate and sit on our portfolio company boards as observers. We don’t manage the companies via director roles, but we bring insight and we help them understand the industry.”