Komi Hassan is permitting
the flow of positive energy
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Meet Komi
As our Vice President of Permitting, Komi develops and executes our strategy to obtain permits and licenses for our energy infrastructure projects. On any given day, he might be dealing with field surveys, permit applications, environmental site assessments and impact statements, regulatory agency information requests, and the development of our projects.
“I truly enjoy working with such a dedicated, innovative, and diverse group of professionals at New Fortress Energy,” says Komi, who joined us in 2021. “Our team prepared a permit application for the U.S. Maritime Administration, which usually takes nine to 12 months, in less than 90 days. That was amazing! But we are not done yet. I will be extremely proud when we load our first drop of liquefied natural gas [LNG] into one of our floating storage units using our Fast LNG solution.”
Komi has always been interested in the intersections of technology, biology, and the environment, and he has built his career on integrating engineering and technology with living systems. He has worked on roads and bridges, commercial buildings, pipelines, chemical plants, and now, LNG terminals and renewable energy projects.
It’s a long way from the small farming town in southwest Louisiana where he grew up.
“It was awesome, with dirt roads and rice fields as far as you could see,” he fondly recalls. “We had horses and livestock and spent most of our time running, riding, climbing trees, and fishing!”
It was also where he found the first important influence in his life: his mom, Melba.
“My mom is the strongest person I know,” he says. “My daughters, Anisha and Elanah, are now also valuable influences for me. They are amazing, brilliant, motivated, and kind.”
Komi thinks his friends and family would describe him with three Ds: determined, demanding, and devoted.
“I’m a competitive person – I like to win,” he says. “I enjoy accomplishing challenges that people might consider extremely difficult, maybe even impossible. I’m also motivated by learning. I believe in lifelong learning, and I think my greatest strength is my intellectual curiosity and my drive to learn and build amazing projects.”
So what’s next on his bucket list?
“In 2022, I got to see Garth Brooks sing ‘Calling Baton Rouge’ in Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge,” he says. “That was a bucket list item that is hard to top, especially as he actually set off the Richter scale in the school’s geology department. We called it a ‘Garthquake’! A close second is building an LNG import or export project in West Africa, where my family is from.”
And as he continues to check off his bucket list goals, Komi is clearing the way for us at NFE to power the world with positive energy.
“We can reduce energy poverty while transitioning to less carbon-intensive fuels, and eventually we will establish a path to achieve net zero,” he says. “What we are building at NFE can change the world.”
