Ben Schlesinger

Schlesinger, founding president of Benjamin Schlesinger and Associates (BSA), is one of North America’s leading independent energy consultants, specializing in gas and electricity marketing, pricing, infrastructure, trading practices, strategic planning, and power plant fuel planning worldwide.  He has nearly four decades of experience in managing and carrying out engineering/economic analyses of complex energy issues, with particular focus on North American natural gas commodity movements and pricing, policies and programs. Schlesinger has advised over 600 clients in the US, Canada, and 25 other countries, including the top utility, private power, financial services, energy trading and producing, manufacturing firms and regulatory and educational entities. A past vice-president of the American Gas Association and member of the New York Mercantile Exchange’s (NYMEX) Natural Gas Advisory Committee, Schlesinger has testified before the US Congress and in 16 states and Ontario on the direction of the gas industry, gas contracting, purchase and sales prices, royalty valuations, market value, hedging and risk management and related industry practices. 

As the lead independent gas advisor to NYMEX, Schlesinger helped write the highly successful NYMEX gas futures contract, prepared the analytic justification for Henry Hub before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and helped design gas swap futures contracts throughout the US and Canada. In addition, Schlesinger has spoken before numerous bodies, panels and courts on how energy trading operates, including defining and explaining physicals and financials, hub and pool trading, swaps, capacity release and basis trading, intrinsic and extrinsics (Delta trading), and the interplay between these formats and long-term contracts - all using real-world examples.

Schlesinger is a senior fellow of the US Association for Energy Economics, and served as USAEE president in 2011. He is a member of the Brookings Institution’s Natural Gas Task Force that underpinned the landmark 2012 Brookings report entitled “Liquid Markets: Assessing the Case for US Export of Liquefied Natural Gas.” He teaches a graduate level course in energy economics at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and lectures at Columbia University’s SIPA program and at George Washington University on natural gas markets, trading and infrastructure, including pipeline capacity, distribution, storage and LNG contracting.

Schlesinger received undergraduate degrees in arts and engineering science at Dartmouth College, and MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in industrial engineering (now the Department of Management Science and Engineering).