As you impatiently await the start of the conference, why not take the time to meet the people who have been working hard behind the scenes to make the 16th African E&P conference happen? Many thanks to our amazing organising committee!

Chair of the Organising Committee

Ray Bate

Global Exploration Services Ltd

Served on the PESGB Council during 1995 & 1996 and organised two Seminars with Karen Whitehead of the PESGB: on Venezuela and the Caspian. With the introduction of the SIGs I formed an Africa SIG, the first conference of which was held in 1998 on West Africa. Assisted by Nick Cameron and Val Clure the next conference was held in 1999 on the Southern Atlantic & the Falklands which led, in 2002, to the first international Africa conference held in London in association with the HGS, who were to organise similar conferences in Houston on alternate years. The rest as we say is History.

 

 

Kevin Dale (Awards)        

Sasol

Kevin graduated with a BSc in Geology from the University of Wales, and went to work both offshore UKCS and shore-based in Aberdeen. He took a year out in 1988 to complete an MSc in Petroleum Geology at Imperial College, London.
His subsequent career spans diverse geotechnical work; with the oilfield service sector, for independents, like Perenco & Roc Oil and majors Marathon, Oxy & Repsol. However for more than the last decade has been in the oil and gas division of Sasol, the Johannesburg-headquartered large diversified Energy & Chemicals company.

 

 

Richard Dixon          

BP

• Dr Richard Dixon PhD, BSc, FGS : Sedimentologist with BP Exploration based in Sunbury
• 32 years experience (29 years with BP)
• Global experience, but significant time spent working in Africa, notably North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya & Egypt) and also West Africa (Angola, Gabon, Mauritania & Senegal)
• Has been a regular at PESGB Africa (though more often in London than Houston) since 2006
• Visiting Professor School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Basin Studies & Petroleum Geoscience Group, University of Manchester since 2013

 

 

 

Helen Doran (Chair of Technical Committee)

Helen has explored the African margins for over 15 years with BP and Ophir Energy. Her current passion is trying to understand heat flow around the continent and match observations of high heat flow in the distal domains to a plausible model. The first step to becoming predictive and open up the large YTF of the distal domain. The conference should address some of these issues and create a springboard for future workshops and discussions on the current enigma.

 

 

Duncan Macgregor

Macgeology

Duncan Macgregor is a consultant petroleum geologist specialising in regional African exploration and training. I first had a 20-year employment with BP, working largely in the Far East and thereafter have worked and consulted for a number of independent companies and consultancies, mainly on new ventures and play fairway scale studies in Africa. I am currently a mentor and product auditor at Halliburton-Neftex and spend the remainder of my time conducting workshops and training programmes. I’ve been involved with the Africa conference since its initiation and recently handed over to Helen as Technical Chair.

 

 

Ian Poyntz

Houston Geological Society

Ian Poyntz has been a member of the organizing committee for the HGS/PESGB Conference on African E&P since it was founded in 2001. His professional career included 40 years as an Earth Scientist with Amoco, Occidental and other companies, where he participated in or managed exploration ventures in Africa and the Middle East. He is based in Houston, Texas, and has retired from full time employment but still consults as an International E&P Adviser.

 

 

Madeleine Raven

Nexen

Madeleine Raven received a BSc in Earth Sciences from Leeds University and a PhD from Nottingham University on the diagenesis of Carboniferous limestones from S. Wales, UK.  She currently works as a Senior Geological Advisor on carbonates at Nexen Petroleum UK Limited and is currently focused on the MSCGB margin.  On leaving university she worked for Robertson Research, undertaking numerous reservoir description studies on Middle Eastern and North African carbonates and was involved with regional field work in the Anti-Atlas of Morocco, looking at Infra-Cambrian and Devonian carbonates.  Subsequently, she worked for Maersk Oil where she was involved in the development of the Al Shaheen Field, Qatar, both as an operations geologist and undertaking reservoir description studies.  She then moved on to worked on exploration projects in Brazil and Angola, in particular focusing on pre- and post-salt carbonates.

 

 

Stewart Walter (International Pavilion)

Schlumberger-WesternGeco

A geophysicist by training, Stewart has worked for a number of different service companies in an oil industry career spanning more than 30 years. He currently works in multiclient new ventures for Schlumberger WesternGeco. For the past 15 years his focus has been on sub-Saharan Africa where he has developed seismic and airborne geophysical projects in conjunction with Government Ministries and National Oil Companies.