Dr. Peter R.A. Wells, Chief Executive Officer
Peter held research, exploration and senior technical and business management roles in a 30 year career with Shell, BP and LASMO in the Middle East, West Africa, former Soviet Union and the North Sea. He directed the development of BP’s business strategy in the southern Caspian and was BP’s Chief Negotiator in Azerbaijan in 1992/3 leading to business entry and access to multi billion barrel opportunities. Peter was Business Development Director for LASMO in the Middle East and lead a successful business effort in Iran. He co-founded the global exploration geological consulting business Neftex, that was sold to Halliburton in 2014. In 2005, he founded a global oil supply, demand and price forecasting business based on proprietary scenario models and databases. Peter has published widely on world oil supply issues, the economics of upstream contracts and advised international and national oil companies.
Piet Ruijtenberg, Strategy
Piet has 35 years upstream experience including 31 years with Shell in the Middle East, Far East, Europe. He has worked as a geophysicist in exploration and development, run deepwater exploration . operations, set up new ventures, run field development studies. He has also been involved in commercial negotiations and new business development. Piet currently advises banks and hedge funds on Iraq risk assessments and oil companies on new business projects and oil field developments. he has advised international oil companies on business strategies.
Chris Thorpe, Upstream Contracts
Chris has 30 years experience including 8 years as an in-house lawyer at BP and Marathon. Since 1991 he has run his own upstream oil and gas legal practice, involved in the drafting and negotiation of some of the world’s largest and most important petroleum transactions. He has extensive experience of upstream projects in the UK, Middle East, FSU and Africa. Chris is the author of Commercial Contracts (1996) and Fundamentals of Upstream Petroleum Agreements (2009).
Sarah Lloyd, Geopolitics
Sarah has worked as an oil journalist and business analyst on the Middle East and Caspian for over 25 years. As a journalist, she worked for the Russian Petroleum Investor, Energy Intelligence Group, AFP and was the Senior Middle East Correspondent for Platt’s Energy News Service. She has had a wide range of experience from political analysis and risk assessment in the Middle East. Sarah also worked for Global Insight and was a senior commercial analyst for LASMO. In 2001, she co-established Khazar Associates which produced interactive databases for the oil sectors in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Clients included ExxonMobil, BP, Total, Shell, Statoil, Conoco-Phillips, Chevron, OMV, Occidental.