History & Vision
Big River Energy, LLC was founded in October 2021 to develop and provide innovative and sustainable solutions for energy and natural resource markets.
Approach
Diversify throughout value chains.
Develop synergies with customers and suppliers.
Focus on excellence and optimization.
Invest in learning, and providing value to businesses and markets.
Our Team
Steve Magness
Steve is the Principal of Big River Energy. With over 40 years of experience in the energy industry, he is a skilled leader and developer of businesses.
Steve’s most recent role was with USD Group as Vice President of Business Development. At USD, he was responsible for overseeing business development for refined products and efforts in Mexico.
Since 2008, Steve has been, and continues to be, one of the principals of Cogent Energy Solutions, LLC. Cogent Energy Solutions helped develop and manage crude to rail terminals in North Dakota and Wyoming.
Before starting Cogent, Steve worked with Musket Corporation. He worked to develop Musket from a fuel purchasing division of Love’s Country Stores and Truck Stops into a large commodity supply, trading, and logistics company.
Prior to joining Musket, Steve worked on developing custom trading and hedging strategies as a principal at Professional Energy Solutions in Kansas City.
Steve worked for Aquila Inc. in Kansas City before joining Professional Energy Solutions. At Aquila, he served as a Vice President of Business and Commercial Development.
Steve started his career at Koch Industries, where he worked for 17 years. There, he held a variety of leadership roles within the company, including Koch Refining and Marketing, Koch Carbon, Koch Chemicals, and working for Koch’s development group as an internal consultant to other business leaders for economics, decision making, and finance.
Josh Magness
Josh has over ten years of experience in the energy industry with a variety of roles in asset management, trading and marketing, operations and logistics, and energy analysis.
Prior to Big River Energy, Josh was at Twin Eagle Resource Management in Houston. At Twin Eagle, his experience included managing the dispatch and commercial operations for a variety of power generation resources in the U.S., including coal, lignite, waste energy, natural gas combined cycle, natural gas turbine, wind, and battery storage resources.
He also had responsibility for flowing physical power in the U.S., as well as the import and export of power between the U.S. and Mexico. Josh held management, commercial, and operations roles at Twin Eagle.
Before joining Twin Eagle, Josh worked at Shell Trading U.S. Company in the Products Freight group through Shell’s Trader Graduate Program in Houston. Within the freight team, he gained experience in freight trading, vessel chartering, vessel operations, demurrage, voyage economics, and market analysis.
Josh started his career at Endure Energy in Overland Park, Kansas. At Endure, he started as a power scheduler for ERCOT and then served as a trader on the Real Time Desk, focusing on trading intraday and next day financial and physical markets. This included buying, selling, and moving power within and between various U.S. power markets.
Josh has a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Kansas and a Master of Science in Global Energy Management from the University of Houston.
Kale Pick
Kale joined Big River Energy at its inception in October 2021. He has since gained valuable experience in LNG, including market and project development.
Kale is an experienced leader; coaching and managing college football teams. Kale has developed capabilities in planning, strategy, recruiting, and player/personnel development and motivation in 10 years of coaching. Kale has held the positions of Head Coach, Coordinator, Position Coach, Analyst, and Graduate Student Assistant.
Kale received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Kansas, where he was an outstanding and award-winning athlete over his college career.