Prior, from August 2014 to December 2015, Olivier was team leader of New Ventures Norway at Premier Oil Norge AS (PONAS). He has spearheaded the screening of the E&P market for acquisition opportunities and the evaluation of portfolios for sales. This resulted in Premier Oil’s acquisition of E.ON UK. In this period, Olivier and his team has also progressed selected strategic themes, i.e. Upper Jurassic stratigraphic play and pressure protected traps to support the opportunity screening. He started his career with PONAS in November 2012 as Exploration Team Lead UK and has been instrumental in managing efficiently a significant post-acquisition portfolio of 40+ licences (Premier Oil had acquired OilExco North Sea Ltd in 2009 and EnCore Oil plc in 2011).
From 2011 to 2012, Olivier worked at Wintershall Norge AS as team leader of West of Shetlands exploration. He successfully set up an AMI to apply for the acreage his team had identified, during the UK 27th Licensing Round. This resulted in the award of Licence P2011-‘Dunvegan’.
Prior, from October 2008 to February 2011, he was portfolio manager at Total SA. He successfully coordinated the exploration strategy of various African affiliates (Gabon, Cameroon…) and acted as interim exploration manager of post-farm-in acquisitions in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda. He was in particular instrumental in managing effectively the integration of the significant activities of Uganda licences in accordance with Total E/A strategy, standards and procedures. He also prepared and gave internal prospect evaluation courses and actively participated in the renewal of corporate prospect evaluation methodology.
From August 2006 to September 2008, Olivier was Block17 E/A manager in Angola. With his team, he enforced the renewed E/A strategy that aimed at supplementing oil production levels of producing or (then) future Floating Production Storage and Offloading units (Girassol, Dalia, PAZFLOR, CLOV). The operations were conducted on two Production Sharing Agreements (PSA) with distinct partnerships.
Since the start of his career in 1992 with Société Nationale Elf Aquitaine Production (SNEAP), Olivier has held various roles as operations geologist (France, the Netherlands, Niger), New Ventures and affiliate geologist working on a great variety of tectonic and sedimentary contexts and in different countries, in the same major company, Elf / Total. This allowed him to develop a broad range of skills as a resourceful and creative petroleum geoscientist. He has in particular acquired in-depth skills around volumetric uncertainties and risks evaluation as well as portfolio management.
