Having chosen Chemical Engineering as a degree subject I looked at various industries to join. I was very lucky to receive a sponsorship from British Gas and joined British Gas E&P Ltd as a Graduate Trainee.
I chose to study offshore engineering at Heriot Watt University in order to forge a career in oil and gas, and that’s exactly what has happened. This industry has everything I was looking for in an exciting, challenging and fulfilling career.
I joined the energy business because of the massive impact it has on our world and way of life, whilst also realizing the large challenges and dilemmas we would face in the energy sector.
As a banker, I have advised and raised capital for oil and gas clients at several stages, and across a variety of geographies, throughout my career which started in the early 1990s.
I wanted to be a geologist since I was 10 years old. Between undergraduate and graduate studies I was a mineral exploration geologist, but decided to go to graduate school to break into the O&G business.
I joined MW Kellogg (predecessor to KBR) after I graduated from business school in 1979, and have been in the oil business ever since.
After working on an architecture degree and watching some very talented colleagues fail to find decent jobs, I changed direction and received my undergraduate degree in Petroleum Land Management from the University of Oklahoma.
I left the military to change careers, and intended to study law at Aberdeen University, but with a back ground in engineering and diving I got sucked into oil and gas.
Accidentally. In my third year of Mathematics at University I took a vacation job with a Company that turned out to be Oil and Gas. Loved the real world application of Mathematics and became a Geophysicist.
I started in this industry as a process engineer in 1992. In my early days, I worked on both greenfield and brownfield projects in the North Sea and the Middle East.
It happened in 2006 when received an invitation to work in the Ministry of Energy to start defining a possible reform in the hydrocarbons sector.
Natural progression – PETRONAS offered a scholarship for me to study geology in the US. Joining the oil and gas industry seemed a natural fit after I graduated.
