About Us

Senior Management

Doug Manner (Chairman)

Doug Manner has over 25 years engineering experience in the oil and gas industry, principally in the North American region as well as extensive corporate experience serving on the Boards of numerous oil and gas exploration firms. He is currently CEO of Westside Energy Corporation, an American Stock Exchange listed shale gas energy company with 65,000 acres in the Barnett Shale area in Northern Texas and production of 3 million cubic feet gas per day. He is also a Director of Cordero Energy, Inc and Rio Vista Energy Partners LP, energy companies based in North America.

Previously, Mr Manner has held senior positions in oil & gas companies including, COO of Kosmos Energy LLC, a private company exploring for oil and gas in offshore West Africa, COO of White Stone Energy, a Houston based oil and gas advisory firm, Chairman and CEO of Mission Resources and COO of Gulf Canada Resources Ltd responsible for both international and domestic activities. He spent 16 years with Ryder Scott Petroleum engineers having started his career at Amoco Production Company.

Aaron Close (Managing Director)

Aaron Close has over nine years experience as a geoscientist in the North American oil and gas sector, having graduated from the Colorado School of Mines Golden with a Bachelor of Science, Mathematics and Computer Science Engineering and Geophysics in 1997. Mr. Close has extensive knowledge and experience of shale gas exploration including mineralogical, petrophysical, stratigraphic, geomechanical, and geochemical analysis. Until recently he was a Gas Shale Supervisor and Geoscientist for Kerogen Resources Inc, which specialises in identifying unconventional gas shale formations in North American Basins. He worked on the initial geologic and engineering evaluation of the Barnett Shale, where he led a team in the acquisition of over 12,000 acres of land and then undertook 3D seismic. He also handled most aspects of corporate technology development with Kerogen Resources Inc. He also gained vast experience as a Geoscientist at EnCana Corporation, an industry leader in unconventional natural gas and integrated oil sands development. Here he primarily worked in unconventional plays, exploration and development focusing primarily on gas shales, as well as tight sand, cherts, tight carbonates and basin centre accumulations. Mr. Close is a proven oil finder having discovered new oil and gas accumulations for EnCana Corporation in the Comanche Ranch Field, Texas. Additionally he has gained experience in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas as a geophysicist at Marathon Oil Company, where he undertook seismic interpretation and mapping of exploration sites, and producing fields.

Non - Exec Directors

Michael Frayne (Non-Executive)

Michael is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Geologist with over 15 years experience in the resource sector. He was previously Managing Director of Asia Energy plc and has also been responsible for sourcing significant resource and energy projects around the world and successfully establishing several UK and Australian listed companies with these projects.

Anthony John Samaha (Non-Executive)

Anthony Samaha holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Economics degrees. He is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia and an Associate of the Securities Institute of Australia. Anthony has over 15 years experience in providing accounting and corporate advice in a diverse range of industry sectors including resource development. He has previously held senior advisory positions in the corporate finance divisions of internationally affiliated accounting firms and has extensive experience in valuations, independent expert's reports, due diligence, capital raisings and mergers and acquisitions. He is a director of AIM quoted resources companies Altona Resources Plc and Braemore Resources Plc.

Ross Warner (Non-Executive Director)

Ross Warner holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Western Australia and a Master of Laws degree from the University of Melbourne. He has approximately 10-years experience working in law firms including Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Australia and Clifford Chance in the UK. His principal area of practice was corporate finance and particularly advising venture capital funds in relation to management buy-outs and related transactions. Mr Warner is a director of a number of AIM listed companies.

Technical Consultants

Charles Bingle (Technical & Operations Manager)

Mr. Bingle has over 28 years experience in the conventional and unconventional oil and gas arena. He was a founding member and engineering manager at Houston based shale gas specialist, Kerogen Resources Inc, and was part of the start-up team at PetroSolutions Ltd, a dedicated energy consulting firm aimed at evaluating conventional oil and gas reservoirs globally. Previously, Mr. Bingle has held other engineering positions in oil and gas companies including Frontera Resources, where he was responsible for the evaluation and improvement of production in Azerbaijan and Georgian oil fields. He also worked as a consultant for ResTech Houston, a multi-discipline reservoir evaluation services company, working on many domestic and international projects to increase production through drilling and improved operations. Mr. Bingle was awarded the DeepStar contract in 1999 to evaluate all deepwater Gulf of Mexico projects for a consortium of 20 major and large independent oil companies. This work led to his appointment as President of ResTech Houston. Additionally, he gained vast experience as an oil and gas engineer through working at Schlumberger Well Services and Exxon Company U.S.A. as a reservoir engineer in the 1980s.