Bill Wilks MD at Merlin Energy Resources Ltd

Bill Wilks PhD

Managing Director / Principal Geophysicist

Bill has over 33 years of broad global experience in exploration and appraisal, with the majority spent with operating oil companies.

Geologically driven seismic interpretation at all scales – Exploration/appraisal evaluations and portfolio build – Structural interpretation – Play based exploration – Integration of rock property modelling – Integration of non-seismic methods for opportunity de-risking – New ventures evaluations and screening.

Previous Employment: Petroleum Development Oman | Sarawak Shell | Shell UK | Maersk Oil and Gas | BG | Ikoda | Scott Pickford

Helen Bone, Principal Geologist, Merlin Energy Resources Ltd

Helen Bone

Chartered Geologist / Director / Geoscience Division Manager

A Chartered Geologist with over 20 years global industry experience gained in both operating and consulting companies across the whole E&P life cycle.

Reservoir analysis and model building - Prospect evaluation - Petrophysical analysis - Geological drilling support - Volumetric determination - New ventures evaluations and screening

Previous Employment: iTec Resource | Fairfield Energy | Zeta Petroleum | Granby Oil & Gas | Regal Petroleum | Troy-Ikoda

Fiona Lawrance, Business Administration Manager at Merlin Energy Resources

Fiona Lawrance

Business Administration Manager

Fiona has worked in the oil industry for over 30 years and has a BSc in Geology. One of the founders of Merlin, Fiona carries out the key roles of Company Secretary, Bookkeeper, Office Administration and HR. Fiona advises on data loading issues, drawing on her many years of experience as a technical assistant. Fiona also ensures we operate best practice HSE procedures.

Previous Employment: Clyde Petroleum | Hunt United Corp. | Neste Exploration Ltd.

Sandy Smith, Datawise Division Manager, Merlin energy Resources

Sandy Smith PhD

Datawise Division Manager

Client focused, operations & services manager with over 25 years technical and business experience in oil and gas.

Service Management - Project Management - Information Management and Quality Improvement - Content Services Platforms - Cloud & Data-Center Operations - Virtual Data Rooms - Remote 2D/3D Visualisation - Integration Management - Exploration Geoscience - Biostratigraphy - Sedimentology - Sequence Stratigraphy.

Previous Employment: Landmark EAME Ltd./Halliburton | Shell UK Expro Ltd. | Robertson Research International Ltd.

at Merlin Energy Resources Ltd

Eleanor Oldham

Senior Geophysicist / Rock Physicist / New Ventures Manager

A Geophysicist with over 10 years of experience, having a thorough background in a range of geophysical techniques and a specialism in rock physics.

Training lead for Essentials of Rock Physics and Seismic Amplitude Interpretation Course.

Rock physics and quantitative seismic interpretation - 2D/3D seismic interpretation and depth conversion.

Benjamin Adillah

Senior Reservoir Engineer

A Reservoir Engineer with over 10 years of experience of offshore and onshore fields, covering exploration, prospect maturation, development and brown fields' operations.

Carbonate & clastic reservoir analysis - Dynamic & probabilistic modelling - Development & reservoir management plan delivery.

Previous Employment: PETRONAS | Sarawak Shell

Andy Sims Director at Merlin Energy Resources Ltd

Andy Sims PhD

Chartered Geologist

A Chartered Geologist with over 38 years of experience in exploration, development and production geoscience in UK and international petroleum areas.

Reservoir description, quantification & model building – Petrophysical analysis and volumetric determination – Geoscience application and IT support.

Previous Employment: Clyde Petroleum | Britoil

Phil Copestake fromat Merlin Energy Resources Ltd

Philip Copestake PhD

Principal Geologist / Stratigrapher

A petroleum geoscientist / stratigrapher with over 40 years of global oil and gas industry experience, with operating companies and in the service sector, in both technical and management capacities.

Petroleum geoscience - Applied sequence stratigraphy -Biostratigraphy - Active researcher with significant publication record.

Previous Employment: IHS | IEDS | BP | Britoil | BNOC | Robertson Research

Georgina Lockham, Geoscience assistant at Merlin Energy Resources

Georgina Lockham

Junior Geoscientist

Graduated in 2018 with an MSc in Petroleum Geoscience from the University of Manchester.

Geophysics - 2D/3D seismic interpretation – Well ties - Coordinate Reference Systems and location reviews - GIS - Data audit, QC, loading and project set-up support - Marketing support.

David Whitworth

Junior Geologist

Graduated in 2020 with an MSc in Petroleum Geoscience from Royal Holloway, University of London. PhD underway in sedimentology and carbon storage.

Geological interpretation well logs – Sedimentology - Stratigraphy - Geomodelling - Energy transition including CCUS & Geothermal.

Louisa

Louisa Jones

Data Assistant

A Marketing graduate with over 25 years’ experience of data management and database marketing.

Database administration – Creation and manipulation of large data files – Data quality assessment and enhancement – Process creation, documentation, and improvement – GIS.

Previous Employment: HomeServe UK | npower | Do It All | The Royal British Legion

Jay Lydon-Johnston

Data Assistant

A grounding in technical roles ranging from training individuals in the charitable sector in the use of databases, to general computer advice for home clients.

An avid fan of the sciences, holding a BSc in Environmental Resource Management.

Merlin Associates

Merlin has a team of associates that we can  call upon to complement our in-house skills.

Belltree Ltd.

Merlin has a long standing alliance with Belltree Ltd. This alliance allows us to deliver projects that require Engineering workflows.  Belltree provide industry leading Reservoir Engineering and Petroleum Engineering consultancy. Belltree’s complementary services include:

  • Benchmarking studies, employing bMarkTM.
  • Reservoir Engineering.
  • Mature Field Rehabilitation (LTRO).
  • Simulation Modelling.
  • Commercial advisory and independent reports

Find out more on their website. 

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Malvern Geochemistry Services LTD.

Our alliance with Malvern Geochem extends Merlin’s geoscience capability to include geochemistry and petroleum systems support for clients.  Established relationships with industry-leading analysis providers means that we can deliver tailored data and interpretations needed to address business needs across the full E&P lifecycle. Example applications include:

  • Reservoir Fluid Property Assessment (including Contaminants, Non-Equilibrium Gradients…)
  • Production Surveillance and Geochemical Production Allocation.
  • Well Integrity Assessment and Abandonment Support.
  • Geochemistry Training and Mentoring.

Quintessa Ltd.

The Merlin and Quintessa alliance brings together two groups of technical professionals with deep expertise in geosciences, data management & analysis, decision support, mathematical & geochemical modelling and software development skills.

Combining the skillsets of Quintessa and Merlin provides support to clients in a range of areas including carbon capture and storage (CCS), geothermal energy utilisation, hydrogen production and storage, natural gas storage, and the decommissioning of oil and gas production facilities. 

Find out more here.

Third Party Providers

Merlin works with a group of hand-picked third party companies to deliver value-adding specialist solutions to our clients. The project management is taken care of by the Merlin team to ensure that the client enjoys a seamless multi-disciplinary service that is bespoke to their needs.