Coolibah Pty Ltd is an energy communications and issues management consultancy based in Sydney, Australia.
Its principal is Keith Orchison, who has been involved in resources and energy industry policy issues management and communications for more than 40 years.
He has been a communicator in one way or another for more than 65 years, starting as a sports writer in South Africa in the 1950s - where he worked as a journalist, news editor and editor until emigrating to Australia in 1970.
During his time as a journalist he was editor of a large specialist magazine at 24, national news editor of a daily newspaper at 26 and editor of one of South Africa's best-known current affairs magazines at 28.
In Australia in the 1970s he worked briefly for Rupert Murdoch before moving in to business communications and becoming PR head of Associated Pulp & Paper Mills in 1974 and of La Trobe University in 1977.
In 1980 he was head-hunted to be chief executive of the upstream petroleum industry association, now the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA), a position he held until 1991. He holds APPEA's gold medal for services to the petroleum industry.
In 1991 he became chief executive of the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, a post he held until retiring in 2003. ESAA was subsequently subsumed in to the Australian Energy Council.
He served on CSIRO energy advisory committees for six years and chaired its Energy Technology sector advisory committee in 1999-2001. He was a member of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, an association of 14 energy, mining and manufacturing associations, for 10 years and was chairman of the AIGN in 2002.
From 2003 to 2007 he was a member of the Howard Government's Critical Infrastructure Advisory Council and chaired its energy committee.
He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2004 for service to the petroleum and electricity industries through fostering co-operation between energy producers and government agencies and through the development the development of policies to benefit Australia in the long term. He is also the holder of the Willis Connolly Memorial Medal of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.
During this century's first decade he wrote energy commentaries for the Business Spectator website.
Over the past decade he has worked with Quest Events to present a series of conferences, most notably the Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference and Australian Energy Week.
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