Strategic speakers

Sarah Bairstow holds significant international LNG and energy leadership experience, including unique end-to-end commercial LNG project development experience. Sarah has successfully marketed and delivered LNG projects from concept through to operations and executed over US$140 billion of gas and LNG transactions.

Sarah joined Mexico Pacific in January 2019 as a formative executive team member, upon which she developed the company and project’s development strategy working with gas and LNG markets, governments, and capital markets to secure the requisite project support and development capital to move the project from an initial start-up phase into development and execution. The project will soon represent the largest foreign direct investment into Mexico to date.

Sarah previously held the position of President and Chief Commercial Officer of Mexico Pacific with wide responsibilities including business development and strategy, gas origination, LNG marketing, build out of the trade unit, contract negotiations, and corporate communications for both Saguaro Energía LNG and Sierra Madre pipeline, with a planned project spend of over USD$15 billion.

In 2024, Sarah was promoted to Chief Executive Officer. As Chief Executive Officer of Mexico Pacific, Sarah is responsible for the execution and delivery of the 14.1 mtpa Mexico Pacific LNG export project located at Puerto Libertad along with future company growth projects.

Prior to joining Mexico Pacific in 2019, Sarah was Head of Strategic Projects and LNG Marketing (Commercial) for the 7.8 mtpa, $18.5bn Gladstone LNG Project, where she secured the long-term LNG SPAs underpinning financing before building and running the commercial LNG desk for close to a decade on behalf of project partners Santos, KOGAS, PETRONAS and Total. Sarah played an instrumental role throughout the project, from initial concept through to operations, with leading roles across the development and build out of permitting, EIS, joint ventures, gas markets, upstream E&P, pipeline, LNG terminal, port development, LNG markets, shipping, FID, operational readiness, and operations.

Earlier in her career, Sarah was an energy projects lawyer with Ashurst, working across multiple LNG projects, energy project development, mergers and acquisitions, and financing.

Sarah holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and a Bachelor of International Business from Griffith University. She is a regular plenary speaker at keynote industry conferences and has been widely recognized across the industry as a judge and award recipient including the LNG industry’s Power Play judging panel sponsored by ExxonMobil, Power Play ‘Rainmaker Award’- Finalist, Managing Director’s Award, Resources Award for Women- Overall Award Nomination, and Queensland Emergent Woman Lawyer of the Year Award- Finalist.