Assistant Director, Mergers & Acquisitions
Ernst & Young LLP Oil & Gas

Craig is a graduate of The Robert Gordon University where he graduated with First Class Honours in Accountancy and Business. After spending a year working with Shell E&P in Aberdeen, Craig joined Ernst & Young in 1998 to train as a Chartered Accountant before qualifying in 2001. For the last five years Craig has specialised in Mergers & Acquisitions focusing purely on both Upstream (E&P) and Oil Service transactions.

New Business Manager
BP

Iain House is currently New Business Manager for BP in the North Sea. He has a engineering degree in mineral technology and a PhD in Mineral Resources Engineering, both from Imperial College London. He has had a variety of commercial management and business development roles in BP over the last 15 years, in Aberdeen, London and overseas (Vietnam and Malaysia). His current role involves the commercial arrangements for delivering major new projects, acreage management, and acquisitions and disposal.

JCRA

James Stretton is responsible for JCRA's activities in foreign exchange risk management. While based in Leeds, he covers all geographic areas. Formerly with Citibank, he traded spot, forwards, futures and options as well as hedging most of Citibank's European overseas capital against adverse FX movement. He developed his own consultancy before amalgamating it into JCRA in 2002. He holds an honours degree in economics from Durham University.

Senior Legal Counci
Petro-Canada

Sean Rush is a Senior Legal Counsel at Petro-Canada's Head Office for International Operations in London. He is responsible for the provision of legal services to the Petro-Canada Group within North West Europe and Russia and is Corporate Counsel to the International Group. A graduate of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand he is currently completing a Masters in Petroleum Law by distance learning through the University of Dundee's Centre for Mineral and Petroleum Law and Policy.

Official Issues Manager
UKOOA

Agustin Rivara is the Fiscal Issues Manager at the UK Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA). Agustin engages on behalf of UKOOA members with government and other stakeholders on the industry’s fiscal and economic issues. He also carries out economic analysis and modelling on different aspects of activity in the North Sea. He has been at UKOOA since early 2004. Agustin is a professional economist who has been involved with the energy sector for more than 10 years. He has worked for Standard & Poor’s DRI, Enron and the Secretariat of Energy in Argentina.

Director of Upstream Production and Development
Centrica Energy

John Shears was appointed to his current role as Director of Upstream Production and Development for Centrica Energy in January 2004. In his current capacity John has delivered an upstream strategy for Centrica plc that builds on its existing gas and oil production operations, onshore and offshore, within the UK Continental Shelf.

As an integral part of his role John continues to lead the development of the Centrica business across Europe and Internationally.

John has worked with Centrica plc for 23 years. During that period he has contributed significantly in his roles as, Director Commercial, for British Gas Retail, in the British residential gas, electricity and telecoms market and Operations Manager in Tunisia managing the International business.
As Director and General Manager of Upstream Assets he lead the acquisition and integration of Power Gen North Sea for £250million and three Power Stations.

John is married with two children and enjoys spending time with his family. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Fellow of the Institution of Gas engineers and managers. During his time within Centrica also John spent 1 year studying an MBA at Instead, France.

CEO
Venture

Mike Wagstaff, a former managing director for Schroders plc, brings years of senior level oil and gas industry experience to Venture, including more than 10 years advising some of the world's largest oil companies, such as British Gas, Shell, BP, LASMO, Conoco and Unocal. In addition, he took public a number of oilfield service companies, including Numar and Paradigm Geophysical. Mike, who began his career as a petroleum engineer with Shell, brings a unique mix of skills to his role as CEO of Venture. He combines years of financial expertise with hands-on experience of the technical side of the industry and a deep understanding of the business opportunity that Venture has been designed to capitalise on.

CEO
Gaffney Cline & Associates

Andrew E. Crouch, Chief Executive, GAFFNEY, CLINE & ASSOCIATES LTD.
Andy is currently Chief Executive of Gaffney, Cline & Associates Ltd., which covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Russia and the FSU. He has a significant background in developing corporate and country strategies and the evaluation assets for both acquisition and divestment and as such he is a leading member GCA's Strategy Group having nearly 25 years' international industry experience particularly in the context of worldwide capital markets. Currently advising a major producing country on the basis and procedures to reintroduce foreign participation in their upstream operations Andy has also served an Expert Witness in cases of disputes and litigation as well as providing advice board level to Governments, National and independent companies worldwide.

Chief Executive
Faroe Petroleum plc

Graham lives in Aberdeen, with his Faroese wife and three daughters. He has a degree in Offshore Engineering from Heriot-Watt University and an MBA from Edinburgh University. Companies he has worked for iclude Schlumberger, Technica and the PSTI, where he was commercial director before joining Dana Petroleum plc in 1997. At Dana he was finance and commercial director and became Chairman of Faroe Petroleum in 1999 and then Chief Executive in 2002, taking the company through flotation on AIM in 2003.

Principal
Lime Rock Partners

Simon Munro joined Lime Rock Partners, the specialist energy focused private equity firm, in August 2002 as a Principal in its Aberdeen office. Prior to joining Lime Rock he worked in JPMorgan’s oil and gas team in Hong Kong and before that was a Vice President in the European office of Simmons & Company International, a highly regarded boutique energy investment bank.

He has been responsible for sourcing, transacting and monitoring numerous Lime Rock investments and currently sits on the Boards of Silverstone Energy, Caledus and Serimer.

Deloitte & Touche LLP
Director International Tax
Roman Webber

NPD
Chief Engineer and

Senior Advisor
Rolf Wiborg

Barclays Corporate
Associate Director
Anne-Frances Gourlay

Burlington Resources
Asset Manager,

NW Europe
Jeremy Valentine