Senior Advisor

Felix Acree is a Registered Professional Engineer with over 40 years of experience in the domestic & global energy industry including reservoir engineering, acquisitions & divestitures, completion engineering and drilling engineering. Past employment has included various engineering and management positions with Anadarko Petroleum and Devon Energy domestically and internationally along several smaller privately owned E&P companies domestically. Extensive experience in GOM and in major producing basins of the U.S. Internationally have lived abroad in Algeria and Argentina and worked on oil & gas projects in over 25 countries. He holds Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering, from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.

Senior Advisor

Mr. Alvarado has led and managed stand-alone companies, subsidiary companies, joint ventures, alliances, operating groups and projects. His career spans four decades in the global oil & gas engineering and construction sector (primarily offshore), including executive/senior leadership positions at Fluor, Bechtel and Brown & Root. Skip is a former member of Fluor’s executive management team in charge of Fluor’s global upstream oil & gas operations. He served as Executive Manager of all joint ventures, alliances and partnerships for Fluor’s upstream business. Mr. Alvarado was also the Executive Sponsor for project partnership structures and within that he was responsible for selection of major contractors, assignment of key personnel and profit & loss for projects under that purview. He also led the structuring and management of other notable international joint ventures/alliances for Fluor’s energy and infrastructure business.

Skip Alvarado has managed business activities globally including: North America, Latin America, United Kingdom, Russia, Africa, Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Brunei, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Construction Science from Texas A&M University and has been voted as Outstanding Alumni.

PhD. Executive Director and 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, fold belts, 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.

PhD. Geologist & Stratigrapher

Janet Combes has worked in the petroleum industry for over 35 years with multiple companies including Tenneco, Amoco, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil. Janet’s expertise is integrated geological and geophysical interpretation with an emphasis on sequence and seismic stratigraphy. She has worked on projects ranging from onshore deltaic deposits, deep-water turbidite systems, shale plays, and coalbed methane to conventional reservoir exploration in established basins to frontier plays, as well as in development and production projects.

Janet has worked around the world – U.S. areas include onshore to deepwater Gulf of Mexico, the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the US Atlantic margin, several regions of Alaska, the midcontinent Dakota Formation, the Mississippi Lime of Kansas, the San Juan Basin, and international projects range in North Sea, West Africa and East Africa, China, Australia, India, Trinidad, Brazil, Eastern Mediterranean play, Iranian Persian Gulf, Kurdistan, and Algeria.

Janet has published 22 papers and extended abstracts as well as 20 meeting abstracts and internal company papers. Janet received her B.S. in Geology from Louisiana State University, her M.S. in Applied Geophysics from the University of Houston and her Ph.D. in Geology/Sedimentology from the University of Texas in Austin.

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. Ron 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.

PhD. Advisor

Dave Lyons has worked in research and exploration for more than 40 years, 8 years with Shell, 10 as an independent consultant and over 20 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, the Mediterranean, Middle East, Caspian and North Atlantic regions. 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).

Senior Geologist

Merrick Mainster is a Petrel geocellular modeler with E&P 25+ years of experience of 3D reservoir modeling applications, visualization and computerized mapping with operators, service companies, consulting and reserves certification firms. He builds 3D geocellular models integrating geophysical data, well log data, and petrophysical parameters, working closely with a multidisciplinary international team of reservoir engineers, geophysicists, geologists and petrophysicists for conventional, stratigraphic & unconventional fields across multiple teams as well as conducts IT & user support for geoscience modeling applications. He is well versed in issues involving the import and export of data between various G&G applications including Studio in addition to basic database manipulation & reformatting of large well data or grid files for data prep in Windows and Unix environments to load into Petrel and IT administration. Finally, he has also administrated 100-300+ Petrel licenses, associated plug-ins, custom workflow macros and worked with teams across the global enterprise to provide application-level support as well as the training of geoscientists and IT support agents.

Merrick attended University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA in Geology and Geophysics Graduate Studies and his Bachelors’ degree in Geology from Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, USA.

Senior Advisor

Kevin Meyers has over 35 years of global oil and gas experience, 17 of which were in executive roles with ARCO, Phillips, and ConocoPhillips. While President of ARCO/Phillips/ConocoPhillips, he led efforts to develop, sanction, start-up and operate the Alpine field and led the discovery of the Nanuq, Fiord, Qannik, and Greater Moose’s Tooth fields. Kevin Meyers also led the Alaskan organization through the acquisition of ARCO by BP, the subsequent divestment to Phillips, the combination of Prudhoe operatorship, and the merger with Conoco.

Kevin Meyer’s most recent position was as SVP of Exploration and Production Americas with ConocoPhillips, where he led the strategic reconfiguration of the company’s North American portfolio by divesting $6 billion in non-core assets and redeploying capital to secure key positions in emerging unconventional shale plays.

Kevin has served on numerous Alaskan boards, including the board of regents of the University of Alaska and the Nature Conservancy of Alaska.

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 wire-line tools, other down hole tools and packers, drilling bits, wellheads, shoes, centralizers and 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.

PhD. 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. Ian holds a Ph.D. from MIT.

Chief Engineer

Marilyn holds a B.S. (Cum Laude) in Petroleum Engineering University of Missouri and an MBA (Top 5) from Southern Methodist University. Marilyn’s career has spanned strategic and project planning roles, operations, field development and exploration. Her current focus is valuations for M&A opportunities, purchase and sales agreement analysis and negotiations, cost estimates and budgets, JOA & PSA analysis, revenue forecasting and defining and scoping work programs.

Prior to joining RSK, Marilyn was Commercial Manager at Cobalt International where she was instrumental in developing and budgeting work programs for Blocks 20 and 21 in Angola. She was also responsible for commercial activities which included business strategy, economic analysis, company valuation, contract negotiations, annual budgets, JOA and PSC compliance, project finance and managed the Angola accounting team.

Marilyn spent much of her career at BP beginning in Indonesia where she was Sr. Reservoir Engineer on the Tangguh LNG project, Sr. Commercial Advisor New Business Development, Commercial Team Leader Java LNG and Commercial Manager. Her other roles were Executive Contract Management, Project Director New Ventures Russia Offshore, Global E&P Finance Manager. Prior to joining BP, Marilyn supervised the economic analysis team for Santa Fe Minerals and previously was a reservoir engineer for Sun.

PhD. 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.

Jean-Luc 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 sat on the Board of Directors of the Russian oil company TNK-BP until 2008. 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.