Management

Sarah Cope (nee Wharry)

Non‐Executive Chairman

Mrs Cope has 20 years investment banking experience working as an advisor to small and mid-cap companies across numerous industry sectors, advising them at Board level on their capital raising requirements, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, growth strategy, acquisitions and disposals. Mrs Cope has worked on numerous IPOs, specialised in advising companies in the Oil and Gas sector and was co-head of energy for Cantor Fitzgerald Europe until January 2018. Mrs Cope has previously worked at finnCap Limited as a director of corporate finance heading up the oil and gas sector, RBC Capital Markets as a director in the equity capital markets team and Seymour Pierce Limited as a director of corporate finance. Mrs Cope is also a non-executive director of Anglo African Oil & Gas PLC and Mayan Energy Limited.

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).

Dr George Henry Stephen Staley

Non‐Executive Director

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