With over 30 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry working with both international and local companies in offshore and onshore environments, Siecap is proud to welcome Glen Smith to their energy division.
Working in a diverse range of executive, operational, drilling and geological roles, Glen has refined his expertise on projects across Australia, as well as in Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Indonesia, Brazil and Africa.
His career commenced with Delhi Petroleum in the mid-1980s as a wellsite geologist before moving to fulfil various operations management rolls, notably with Delhi, Esso/Exxon, Mount Isa Mines Petroleum (MIMPEX) and Innamincka Petroleum.
More recently he has worked in the Coal Seam Gas (CSG) industry with Comet Ridge Limited and Chartwell Energy Limited as contract Drilling Manager before taking up a position as Chief Operations Officer for Tlou Energy Limited in 2010.
Based in Johannesburg South Africa, Glen directly managed the operations for Tlou’s growing Southern African asset base, specifically their Botswana Lesedi CSG Energy Project, overseeing activities which saw the company move from exploration through to early development.
Glen brings this wealth of experience and a proven track record to leading Brisbane project management and advisory firm Siecap in his role as Senior Advisor.
When asked about his biggest career achievement to date, Glen says that it would have to be his time in Botswana as COO for Tlou Energy.
“Living in Johannesburg and managing the project in central Botswana provided many challenges and hurdles, especially in an environment where no established industry or third-party contractor base existed. Added to this was a supply chain lag of minimum 3 months from overseas suppliers to have things land in central Botswana. Despite these impediments, our small management team took the company from exploration through to early development stage,” he says.
In addition to working with multinational oil and gas companies earlier in his career, Glen has spent the last 15 years in the small cap market., assisting explorers in the pre-listing phase and building value to take to an IPO. He considers this to have been one of the more challenging aspects of his career.
“The bigger challenge is the transition from a successful explorer to a profitable production company, with many small companies failing in this step. There needs to be a never ending balancing act between staying sufficiently funded, and meeting expectations of shareholders and senior investors. This is made even more challenging with the backdrop of dramatic commodity pricing fluctuations and governments’ regulatory frameworks,” Glen explains.
As for industry trends, Glen says that the energy sector has experienced a record low period of sustained oil and gas price, meaning that most organisations have had to shed significant numbers from their workforce and bottom-line operating costs.
However, to maintain continued work programs and commitments, both large and small companies have needed to utilise experienced and multi-skilled contractors to fulfil the staffing gap.
“The interesting conundrum here is that a good proportion of this experienced work force will soon be retiring from the industry and given that for the last 20 years due to both environmental pressures and low commodity prices, a lot of universities have seen drops in graduation rates for resource engineers; a shortage of experienced professionals will soon hit,” he says.
Siecap Advisory Board Member John Henderson believes that Siecap’s existing clients have benefitted from Glen’s thorough industry and technical knowledge through the recent successful delivery of project studies in the energy sector.
“Siecap’s energy advisory and project management strategy suits Glen’s ability to apply practical solutions to complex field development problems” he said “Glen’s strong industry background, most recently as an executive, and previously as an operations and exploration professional allows him to undertake advisory, consulting and project management roles for energy, hydrocarbon and mining projects of all scale and complexity, from concept to execution and we’re really pleased to have someone of his calibre on our team”.