Key Executives

Philippe Dewez, President

Philippe graduated in organic chemistry at the University of Louvain in Belgium and started his early career in South Africa, where he worked in both the steel and chemical industries before joining BP in Cape Town, in 1981. Subsequent positions with BP, took him to the UK, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and France before returning to the UK in 2006. His career has spanned refining, trading and marketing including retail, liquid petroleum gas and bitumen. He joined the bitumen world in 1998 with responsibility for France and Spain before taking a new challenge at head office with responsibilities for strategy.

Throughout his career he has taken an active role in the industry associations, joining Eurobitume in 1999 and taking the Presidency in 2003. He was also President of GPB, the French association of bitumen producers.

Knut Søraas, Director General

Knut was born in Oslo, Norway and holds a M.Sc. from The Norwegian Institute of Technology and an MBA from University of Washington, USA . He has spent his entire career with Esso / ExxonMobil in refining, purchasing, supply and marketing. This has included several foreign assignments in the UK, Chile and France. For the last seventeen years he has worked almost exclusively with asphalt related matters. He was Global Technical Advisor, Bitumen, for ExxonMobil from 2001 to 2003, responsible for the bitumen product line, its performance, technical support, maintenance and development world-wide, a position he held until he became Eurobitume Director General 1st October 2003.

Knut was the Esso / ExxonMobil representative to Eurobitume from 1995 to 1st October 2003, and in 2002-2003 he served as President of Eurobitume.

Mike Southern, Technical Director

Mike is a chemistry graduate of the Royal Holloway College, London University, who has dedicated over twenty years to the technical support of bitumen and its downstream products. Following seven years with Colas Roads, working on polymer modified binder rheology, emulsion development and ISO 9000 Quality Assurance Systems, Mike joined Shell Bitumen UK as Senior Development Engineer. Here he provided technical support for the UK bitumen business, binder quality and R&D project management. In 1994 he moved over to the Bitumen Marketing Division at Shell International Oil Products, where for over nine years his main responsibilities included manufacturing liaison, R&D project management and product HSE support. During this time he also chaired the Eurobitume HSE Committee. He joined Eurobitume as Technical Director in 2005, where his main focus is HSE and among other activities he acts as Secretary of the HSE Committee and Chairman of the Technical Committee.