Tim Blanchard, a senior natural gas trader at Goldman Sachs in Houston, has resigned to join Freepoint Commodities.

He is set to join the energy merchant late next month and has been tasked with building a physical Gulf Coast natural gas desk.

Freepoint CEO David Messer told SparkSpread in an email, “We are excited to have Tim join Freepoint to help us expand our physical gas business into the Gulf.  This addition to our gas team will enable us to connect our physical Gulf efforts with our growing global customer base and allow us to work with existing and new customers, including those who will be exporting LNG.”

Blanchard is a former managing director of gas trading at Mercuria Energy Group and BNP Paribas.

He joined Goldman as a vice president of gas trading in 2016.

He also spent seven years at J.P. Morgan as an executive director of gas trading and before that, held various trading, risk management and origination roles at Enron.

Blanchard’s departure from Goldman comes as the bulge bracket bank plans to scale back its commodities trading arm, following an internal review of the business, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

Blanchard and a spokesman for Goldman declined comment.