Wayne L. Kelley, Managing Director: Wayne Kelley is the Managing Director of RSK [UK] LIMITED, a petroleum consultancy with focus in Africa, Latin America and the Mideast. Wayne is a business executive with 30 years experience with oil and gas operators, service companies and consulting engineers in the upstream sector of the energy industry.
His experience includes projects in the North Sea, Africa, the Mid East, Central and South America, the contiguous United States, Canada and Alaska. He has worked in both exploration and field development on and offshore. He has served as a division engineer for the world's largest oil field service company, vice president - division manager and partner in one of the world's largest engineering partnerships, CEO of a multinational design-finance and construction management company and CEO of an oil & gas exploration and production company largely engaged in research and development. Wayne is a US patent holder for several advances in the use of coiled tubing drilling technology and the production of shallow, low-pressure reservoirs. His financing experience includes project finance with multilateral agencies, mergers and acquisitions, equity finance, project evaluation - structure of finance - risk/economic analysis, preparation of finance documents and finance negotiations. Wayne’s fields of professional interest are the economic assessment and finance of oil and gas properties.
Jean-Luc Vermeulen, Senior Advisor: Jean-Luc Vermeulen, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris holding a PhD in theoretical physics has worked in exploration and production for Elf Aquitaine and for Total for 33 years. He was President of Exploration-Production and a member of the Executive Committee of Elf Aquitaine and held the same positions with Total following the merger of the two companies.
He began his career with Elf Aquitaine in the Research division. He held a number of different positions in the Exploration-Production division and in the Natural Gas division, overseas (in the Middle East and in Africa) and in France including VP E&P Business Development, Senior Vice President Mergers and Acquisitions and Senior Vice President for Africa.
Mr. Vermeulen retired from Total at the end of 2003 and now sits on the Board of Directors of the Russian oil company TNK-BP. He is also co-founder and Chairman of Majus Ltd., a UK company which develops innovative thermal technologies to enhance the production and recovery rates of heavy or waxy oilfields.
D. Ronald (Ron) Harrell, P.E., Senior Advisor: Mr. Harrell is a 1957 Petroleum Engineering graduate of Louisiana Tech University and was named as Distinguished Engineering Alumnus in 2002. He was employed with a small independent producer from 1957 to 1964 and with independent consultant Ralph E. Davis Associates from 1964 to 1968.
Ron joined Ryder Scott Company in 1968 and advanced as a corporate officer through reserves studies of reservoirs located in virtually every oil producing province of the world. He led the company through its greatest period of growth in the late 1990s into the present time. He relinquished the CEO position in 2005 and retired as Chairman in May 2006. He has been intimately involved with petroleum resources and reserves definitions since joining the SPE Oil & Gas Reserves Committee (OGRC) in 1996 and continues to be an industry spokesman for the need for reliable, properly categorized reserves estimates by trained, qualified reserves evaluators. Ron remains active in OGRC matters through his position as SPEE Observer to the committee. He has authored numerous SPE technical papers and is a SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 2007-2008 delivering 34 lectures in 17 countries. He has received recognition for his industry contributions through SPE Awards at the local section level and internationally. He received an Honorary Life Member Award from the SPEE in 2007.
He has participated as an invited speaker in numerous SPE-sponsored events worldwide and for SPE Chapters in several countries. Ron serves as an active member on 6 Boards of Directors including corporations, universities and not-for-profit organizations.
Richard S. Bishop, PhD. Executive Director & Chief Geologist: Dick Bishop is a geologist who has worked the spectrum of research- exploration – production for ExxonMobil (29 years) and Unocal (2 years). During this time he has ‘seen the world’ both as an explorationist and as a synthesizer of global exploration opportunities. He has developed geological ‘yardsticks’ for play and prospect evaluation, developed economic and geological criteria to compare diverse exploration opportunities, contributed fundamental scientific concepts of hydrocarbon accumulation and diapir mechanics, mapped at the reservoir to multi basin scale, and is a guy who has a grand time doing petroleum geology. Most recently, he has been evaluating major extensions of conventional plays in Africa, evaluating unconventional gas in North America, writing a business plan for AAPG to capture more maps in GIS, and developing methods to evaluate the Circum Arctic.
Dick’s primary skill is as an assessor who finds ways to evaluate and compare disparate opportunities and to aid in not only evaluating one’s current core plays but in developing criteria useful in identifying potential future core areas of exploration.
In addition to doing geology, Dick enjoys being around geologists and is Past President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Past President of the Houston Geological Society, has helped to organize several AAPG Hedberg Conferences (assessment, foldbelts, tight gas sands), was General Chairman of the AAPG annual convention, been recognized with the AAPG Sproule Award, and is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Missouri and an Honorary Member of both AAPG and the HGS.
Dick earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University, his M.A. from University of Missouri, and B.S. from Texas Christian University.
Kirby L. Wells, Chief Engineer: Kirby Wells is a petroleum engineer with broad experience in all phases of reserves planning, evaluation and monetization. Kirby began his industry career at a highly respected independent reserves evaluation firm and later served as a reservoir engineer for an independent operator heavily focused on using proprietary drilling technology to maximize production and value. In these roles, Kirby has worked with numerous banks, private and public investors, reserves evaluators and all varieties of exploration and production companies.
At RSK (UK) Limited, Kirby leverages his experience to help clients chart and navigate the shortest and most economical path from undiscovered resources to proven, producing reserves. This work includes aspects of reservoir engineering, exploration and production, operations and business advising.
Kirby's experience includes conventional oil and gas projects in North America, Africa and the Middle East as well as coalbed methane projects throughout North America. Kirby holds a M.Sc. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Houston and a B.Sc. in Physics from Texas Tech University.
Eugene T. Williams, Engineering Consultant: Gene Williams has over thirty years of experience in reservoir engineering problem solving, and is especially competent in terms of reservoir characterization and numerical simulation. He has expertise in all styles of reservoir analysis including both classical and numerical simulation. His methods often integrate reservoir characterization with uncertainty analysis and experimental design for decision making and the evaluation of true value and cost. He has carried out primary, secondary and EOR studies in North America and around the world, and has provided technical support and mentoring to companies ranging from international super-majors to national oil companies to small independents.
He has authored and taught industry courses in reservoir engineering, pressure transient analysis and fractured reservoir analysis. Gene has expertise in EOR and cycling projects, CO2 injection and miscible lean gas flood projects, thermal operations, equation of state modeling, fractured reservoir analysis, coalbed methane programs, the application of directional wells, and economic analysis and reserves.
Originally from Canada, where he obtained his undergraduate engineering degree (University of Saskatchewan) and MBA (University of Calgary), he continued his education at Colorado School of Mines, with graduate studies in Petroleum Engineering and a doctorate program in Geology. Although not completing his dissertation, his thesis studies in turbidite depositional systems has proved valuable in optimizing development of this style of reservoir in West Africa, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Williams has been a consulting petroleum engineer since 1979.
David J. Lyons, PhD, Advisor: Dave Lyons has worked in research and exploration for 41 years, 8 years with Shell, 10 as an independent consultant and 23 with ExxonMobil. Through this time, Dave has worked a variety of scales from undrilled basins to field development. Dave has extensive experience as a project leader of regional studies leading to basin/play evaluation, opportunity identification and ranking. Such efforts include not only project planning and budgeting but most importantly opportunity capture strategy, technical study proposals, seriatim of opportunities, farm-in evaluations, competitor analysis and industry volumes evaluations. Dave also spent time developing methods and tools for stratigraphic interpretation.
He has experience in all continents (except Antarctica) and, indeed, it is hard to find a spot in the world Dave has not worked to some extent. Specifically, he has worked all countries in Africa, circum-Mediterranean, Middle East, Caspian and the North Atlantic. In addition, Dave has worked East and Southeast Asia, Western USA, the Falklands, and probably some places he has forgotten to list, but his most extensive experience is with Africa and the Middle East.
Dave's most recent experience was as project leader for developing integrated geoscience workflows and use of technologies, particularly emphasizing the use of GIS.
Dave Lyons has the geologist/geophysicist experience to find what Nature has hidden and the judgment to evaluate it correctly. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology from Washington State University (1967) and a B.S. in Geology from Ohio University (1964).
Ian O. Norton, Advisor: Ian Norton worked in research and exploration for ExxonMobil for 26 years. A significant portion of this time was spent with teams working evaluation of existing and potential hydrocarbon prospectivity in almost all of the world's producing basins, plus many new plays in frontier basins. This work led to many of ExxonMobil's entries into new plays, and identified many others that were not expected to be profitable under contemporary economic conditions. Ian's main interest is in the structural and tectonic aspects of play evaluation, with a strong focus on basin formation and fill histories that lead to viable prospect development.
Ian is an author or co-author of 20 scientific papers plus nearly 40 meeting abstracts. He is a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the American Geophysical Union.
Tomás E. Carvallo, Director Latin America: Tomás Carvallo has substantial international business experience, starting as a developer for the agricultural and real estate markets in Latin America. Mr. Carvallo was one of the leaders of the first transgenic soy beans field in Argentina, a major player in the cattle market and major stockholder of one of the largest private banks in Argentina. He was the founder of Business Holding SINAROSA S.A., conducting soil and geological research in Venezuela.
Mr. Carvallo also has extensive experience in financing and debt restructuring and consolidation, and has participated in several infrastructure projects.
Mr. Carvallo acted as advisor to the Argentine Government on the development of a sustainable business model that could use resources within a framework of transparency and prosperity between local government and international private investors.
Raad Mohammed, Director Middle East: Raad Mohammed was the Director of Amiraq Consultants in Iraq from 1997 to 2003 responsible for the procurement of Oil and Gas equipment (logging trucks and tools, down hole tools and packers, drilling bits, wellheads, checksons, down hole pressure gages), for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. He was Alriyath's Projects manager for construction of industrial and civil buildings.
Raad Mohammed was the Civil Engineering manager in the Ministry of Oil in Iraq, Missan Oil fields Directorate, Oil Exploration co. from 1977 to 1987. He also served as Civil Engineering manager in the Buzrgan oil fields with Elf – Erab Co. 1976.
Raad Mohammed gained B.Sc in Civil Engineering from the University of Arizona in 1974.
Merrick Mainster, Senior Geologist: Merrick Mainster is a geologist with 20 years experience in three dimensional reservoir modeling, visualization and computerized mapping with major operators, service companies and consulting engineering firms in oil and gas industry.
He has designed and constructed cellular based multilayer structurally complex geological models utilizing three dimensional modeling and visualization software. The majority of Merrick’s experience is focused on field evaluation and the calculation of petroleum reserves at a highly respected independent reserves evaluation firm. In this role he was integrated with teams of petroleum & reservoir engineers to fully characterize the geologic character & petroleum system subsurface reservoirs. Models built represent fields ranging from China, Russia & many of its former Republics, the Caspian Sea, India, Egypt, Kuwait & Saudi Arabia, offshore California, the GOM & continental US, Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia, Switzerland, Australia and offshore Equatorial Guinea.
At RSK he works with an integrated team of engineers to construct fit-for-purpose models for short term economic evaluations, near term to long term production simulation as well as detailed geologic evaluation. His work at times includes multiple probabilistic & stochastic property realizations of geologic facies, other rock and petrophysical properties within stratigraphic model layers to characterize reservoir heterogeneity, address geologic uncertainty in the main effort, to establish asset valuations, reserve calculations and optimization of development programs. Merrick is well versed in issues related to the porting data between various computer applications including basic database manipulation of large wellbore and grid files for data prep and input into Petrel and other modeling packages.
Robert E. Fargo, Petroleum Engineer: Robert was introduced to the Industry while interning with a coalbed methane operator in the reservoir engineering department. Subsequently, he worked as a contractor with RSK (UK) Limited where he assisted in financial analyses, project management and technical work as well as developing RSK’s geographical information system resources. Robert continues to support RSK’s clients in these roles.
Robert Fargo is a recent Engineering graduate of The University of Oxford from where he was awarded a first class honors Masters Degree in Engineering Science. Robert completed his senior year on an exchange program at Princeton University where he performed his Master’s Thesis modeling the viability of redeveloping Iraqi oil and gas resources and infrastructure.