About Us
Who We Are
Sovereign Energy Services is a team of industry experts, innovators, and thought leaders in the industrial gas, petrochemical, and waste management fields. We offer solutions to real-world problems, improving sustainability and profitability.
Our team has decades of experience in the markets we serve, and we know the problems in those domains and how to solve them.
Our proprietary process takes decades-old proven technology and improves on its efficiency, scalability, and flexibility. All of these accomplishments lead to solutions for oilfield cleanup, wet/sour gas enhancement, stranded gas reclamation and repurposing, landfill gas and leachate processing & cleanup, wastewater treatement plant enhancement, including PFAS destruction, and, perhaps more impactful, pyrolysis and gas reformation of carbonaceous recyclable streams from municipal or industrial generators.
Darrell Poteet - Founder, President and CEO, Director
Mr. Poteet is a founding partner and a board member of Sovereign Energy Services. He has more than 35 years of experience in strategic planning, contractual arrangements, profit and loss, operations, business and project development and technical/engineering management within rapid growth, start-up, and international environments.
Darrell has played a leading role in the development and marketing of new products and services supporting high-tech applications.
He holds three patents and has successfully brought innovative and game changing technology to the marketplace.
Mr. Poteet earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University, a Master of Business Administration from Houston Baptist University, and is a Professional Engineer registered in the state of New Hampshire.
Ashley Madray – Founder, Principal, Director
President, Gas Innovations, LLC
Mr. Madray is a founding partner and a board member of Sovereign Energy Services. He has over 42 years of experience in the industrial, specialty, and hydrocarbon gas industry. He spent the early part of his career as an industrial gas sales representative with the Linde Division of Union Carbide Corporation (Linde UCC), now Praxair.
In 2002, along with Jason Willingham, Mr. Madray formed Gas Innovations and since has participated in forming several other related companies. Gas Innovations is now a multinational company serving the industrial gas, oil and gas, petrochemical and related industries. Gas Innovations is a wholesale provider of gases, services, and equipment such as tube trailers, cryogenic iso-containers, and other packages for gases to its distributors.
Casper Hadsbjerg - Strategy Advisor
Mr. Hadsbjerg is an experienced strategy, sales, and business development executive, with a record of accomplishments in various industrial segments including water and clean tech, synthetic fuels, power to x, and heavy industry. He earned a B.BA in Strategy and International Business from Copenhagen Business School, an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Technical University of Denmark, and is an expert in both the technical and business aspects of sustainable ventures.
Casper is a former Haldor Topsoe A/S executive, and was Group Chief Commercial Officer for LiqTech, a Nasdaq listed clean-tech company. During his career so far, Casper has had postings in China and elsewhere in South East Asia, the Middle East, and Houston, TX.
Cliff Knight - Founder, Vice President, Director
CEO and Chief Engineer Advisor, KnightHawk Engineering, Inc.
Mr. Knight is a founding partner and board member of Sovereign Energy Services and serves as a senior technical advisor. He is a cofounder/principal of KnightHawk Engineering and serves as its CEO.
He is a Professional Engineer with more than 40 years of experience. In addition to his corporate responsibilities as CEO, Mr. Knight also serves as Chief Engineer and Supervising Professional for the Engineering Consulting Group.
Cliff has received four US patents for static and rotating equipment while at KnightHawk Engineering.
Joe Reeble – Founder, Independent Director
GasTech Engineering, LLC (former CEO, advisor)
Mr. Reeble is a founding partner and board member of Sovereign Energy Services and serves as a senior technical advisor. He has over 45 years of engineering and executive management experience in energy, oil & gas, computer systems, commercial and military aerospace, and nuclear reactor systems industries. Until the end of 2021, Mr. Reeble was a principal of Gas Tech Engineering and served as its chief executive officer.
Rommel Oates - Independent Director; Hydrogen Market Expert
CEO, Founder of Oates Energy Solutions
Mr. Oates is Chairman, CEO and Founder of Oates Energy Solutions and Refinery Calculator Inc., an energy, chemical, refining and hydrogen market intelligence cloud-based software platform.
Formerly, Rommel held the role of Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for Aquahydrex, Inc. where he led all commercial operations for the company’s disruptive/revolutionary electro-chemical technology.
A recognized industry expert in the areas of hydrogen storage and production technologies, Rommel played a major role in helping Praxair commercialize the industry’s first high purity underground 2.5 BCF hydrogen storage facility and business. He has been issued 10 patents to-date, as inventor or co-inventor, in the area of hydrogen storage technology and has several additional patents pending.
He has more than 22 years of industry experience, a BS (with honors) and MS in Mechanical Engineering, MBA and Master of Finance from Tulane University.
Art DiNicolantonio, PE - Advisor
Senior Process Engineer/Mechanical Advisor, KnightHawk Engineering, Inc.
Mr. DiNicolantonio serves Sovereign Energy Services as a senior process advisor. He has over 45 years of experience in the energy industry. Mr. DiNicolantonio’s engineering career has been focused on the olefins sector and hydrogen production steam reforming reactors. He has concentrated on steam cracking and steam reforming furnaces covering mechanical design, process optimization, engineering and construction, and operational excellence.
He developed most of the cracking furnace technology currently used by ExxonMobil and has carried out a broad range of world-wide assignments for the company.
Art holds 20 US Patents and numerous non-US patents, and is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Exxon Chemicals Most Valuable Patent Award in 1992 and 2009. The 1992 award was for the design of a cracking coil that increased ethylene production by as much as 15% and is now the standard coil design used in all ExxonMobil plants.
The 2009 award was for a method and apparatus that permits the cracking of heavy feedstocks containing asphaltenes, which would normally coke up the convection coils.
Mr. DiNicolantonio earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University, and is a Professional Engineer registered in the states of Texas, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Kobus Stadler – Sr. Mechanical Consultant
KnightHawk Engineering, Inc.
Mr. Stadler has more than 24 years of experience as an engineer in the petrochemical industry. He has significant experience and is referenced as the lead technical professional for major multidisciplinary investigations into industrial static and rotating equipment design, development, manufacturing, commissioning and failure assessments.
Kobus has extensive expertise in computer aided applications as a simulation analyst, and holds two US patents for static and rotating equipment designs.
Before coming to KnightHawk Engineering, Kobus spent 18 years at Sasol Technology, South Africa, where he achieved the position of Chief Engineer, receiving two Sasol Innovation/Project-of-the-Year awards for his work. At Sasol, his group specialized in development of the next generation Sasol Slurry Phase Reactor for its Gas to Liquids projects, failure analysis, code and regulatory compliance, heat transfer, pipe stress, troubleshooting, and field support involving petrochemical facilities.
Mr. Stadler earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pretoria in 1995