Management
Dr George Henry Stephen Staley
Chairman
Dr Staley has 35 years wide-ranging management, technical and commercial experience in the
international oil, gas and power sectors. He is currently the CEO, and a director and co-founder, of Upland Resources Limited, a London-listed (Standard Listing) oil & gas company currently with assets onshore and offshore UK. He is also a non-executive director of 88 Energy Limited, an Australian oil & gas company with assets onshore Alaska. 88 Energy has a dual listing on the ASX and AIM. Dr Staley co-founded and brought to the AIM market both Fastnet Oil & Gas plc (where he was the founding CEO) and Independent Resources plc (where he was the founding managing director). He was also both a technical consultant to and non-executive director of, Cove Energy plc – the highly successful East Africa focused explorer that went from having a market capitalisation of £2 million in mid-2009 to being sold to PTTP for £1.2 billion in less than three years. Dr Staley is owner and founder of Derwent Resources Limited, an upstream consultancy advising on oil and gas opportunities. Prior to this, he has worked for Cinergy Corp., Conoco and BP.
He holds a BSc (Hons.) in geophysics from Edinburgh University, a PhD in petroleum geology from Sheffield University and an MBA from Warwick University. He is a fellow of the Geological Society and a member of the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain and The Arc
Paul Griffiths
Chief Executive Officer
Mr Griffiths has 40 years’ oil and gas industry experience, including with the Libyan National Oil Corporation and Gulf Oil, and as CEO of both Island Oil & Gas plc and Fastnet Oil and Gas plc. During this time Mr. Griffiths has managed 2D and 3D seismic data acquisition and processing projects onshore and offshore; drilling and testing programmes, both onshore and offshore; and geological and reservoir simulation desk top studies. Mr. Griffiths is also experienced in business development in respect of licence acquisitions, farm-ins, farm outs, gas marketing and gas sales contracts and negotiations with government agencies. In 2006, Mr. Griffiths put together and led the team that drilled the first successful exploration well in offshore southeast Ireland in 16 years. In 2008 he put together and led the team that generated and submitted the plan of development for the Amstel Field in the Netherlands and in 2014 he put together and led the team that carried out the Tendrara gas field re-evaluation prior to a successful appraisal drilling programme by Sound Energy. He is a geology graduate of the Royal School of Mines (London) and an Associate of the Royal School of Mines.
Ronald Pilbeam
Project Development Director
Mr Pilbeam has over 40 years’ technical and commercial experience in energy-related E&P activities. During this time Mr Pilbeam has worked with Parsons Brinckerhoff in the United States, the Caribbean and Brazil, then with United Technologies in Brazil, before becoming associated with Unigas International both in Brazil and South Africa. Mr Pilbeam has undertaken the management of a number of projects in oil & gas shipping, gas-to-liquids, offshore LNG, onshore petrochemical plant, gas storage, and gas handling, pipelines and terminals. In so doing, Mr Pilbeam has also amassed considerable international experience in working with government, industry and commerce, to achieve often challenging objectives. A British national, Mr Pilbeam is an engineering graduate of King’s College (London), a licensed Professional Engineer (Canada) and an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK).
Louis Castro
Non-executive Director
Louis Castro has over 30 years’ experience in investment banking and broking both in the UK and overseas. Most recently he was the Chief Financial Officer at Eland Oil & Gas, an AIM quoted company recently sold to Seplat Petroleum for £382m. Previously he was Chief Executive of Northland Capital Partners in London and before this was Head of Corporate Finance at Matrix Corporate Capital and at Insinger de Beaufort. He has worked in corporate finance and the capital markets in diverse geographic areas from the UK to the Far East, South America and Africa, including the execution of complex M & A transactions from initiation through due diligence to negotiating and financing.
He started his career by qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC). Louis is currently the Chairman of Orosur Mining Inc., and a non- executive director at Stanley Gibbons Group plc and Tekcapital plc, all quoted on the AIM market.
Louis graduated from the University of Birmingham with a double degree in Engineering & Economics; completed a post graduate course in Production Engineering at Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales.