Senior Management

Dr. Wolcott has been involved in oil and gas investment, management and consulting for 35 years.

He served as the special advisor to the CEO of Irkutsk Oil Company where he provided expertise leading to significant production growth. Prior to this, Dr. Wolcott was the CEO of Ruspetro PLC, a London listed oil and gas company. Previously he worked for various companies including YUKOS Oil Co., ARCO Oil & Gas Co., and Schlumberger Inc.

While working at YUKOS as Senior VP and Chief Technical Officer, Dr. Wolcott played a pivotal role in leading YUKOS to become the number one oil producer in Russia, the lowest cost producer and one of the top reserve companies in the world.  During this time, he managed numerous research and development centres, completed hundreds of development plans, whilst developing the skillsets of thousands of engineers.

In addition to expertise in oil and gas field development, he has practiced, taught and published with regards to oil and gas production, reservoir and waterflood engineering, fracturing, reservoir simulation, and petrophysics. Dr. Wolcott has more than 25 publications and has published two books, and has contributed to a third.

Dr. Wolcott has a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.  He received B.S and M.S, degrees in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Wyoming.

Mr. Mach is a petroleum engineer with a senior executive background at Yukos and Schlumberger.

At Yukos, Mr. Mach served as Vice President, responsible for exploration and production at Yukos E&P from 1999 until 2006; this division provided almost a third of all Russian oil production.

Prior to Yukos, he managed many different business units for Schlumberger in North America, Europe and Africa, including Algeria.  He has also served as a Non-Executive Director of Ruspetro plc from 2011 to 2013.

Mr. Mach’s specialty is stimulating and producing oil and gas wells.  He is the inventor of the “Nodal Analysis” techniques for maximizing production from oil and gas wells and was recognized as a “Legend” in production operations by the SPE. Considered to be the father of modern Gas Lift with the introduction of “error envelope” spacing. Mr. Mach pioneered orthogonal fracturing of horizontal wells. He has published many technical papers and co-authored two books on production.

Mr Mach has a B.Sc. degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa and has served as Chairman of the university’s petroleum engineering advisory board.

Mr. Welsh has expertise in managing teams to begin producing hydrocarbons quickly in the locations of Algeria, US Gulf of Mexico, Russia, Kuwait and the UK North Sea.

His work history includes roles at BP, Amoco and Dome Petroleum.  He was most recently Founder and CEO of Mustang-1 Limited, an advisory and private equity company prior to joining Petroceltic.

His recent project experience includes an important role in large scale BP projects in Algeria, where improvements in well production and facility construction campaigns were important to improve financial results.

Mr. Welsh has an Engineering Degree from the University of Alberta, an MBA in International Business and has received Executive Education training from Duke University in Mergers and Acquisitions.

Mr. Blewden has extensive international experience in oil and gas financial management, corporate finance and energy investment banking.  

He was previously the CFO of Sterling Resources Ltd, a Canadian-quoted E&P company with assets in Europe, which he left after completing a successful recapitalisation of the company and arranging additional financing.  

Prior to this, Mr. Blewden was the CFO of the E&P companies: PetroSaudi International, Vesta Petroleum, and African Arabian Petroleum (a private Middle Eastern based company with a range of exploration and production assets in Africa).  Preceding that, he was Head of Corporate Finance at YUKOS.

Before his finance roles in the oil industry, he worked in senior positions in the oil and gas investment banking teams at Citigroup, UBS, Chase Manhattan and Schroders where he worked on a large number of successful international equity and debt capital raisings, IPOs, M&A transactions, and strategic advisory assignments.  He started his career on the technical side, as a petroleum engineer in Shell.  

Mr. Blewden holds a BA (Honours) and MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge, England.