Mike Bilbo

Director

Mike has worked in the petroleum industry for more than 30 years. He brings all-round skills and the experience essential to deliver sustainable and successful projects. He laid the foundations of his career working for BP in Aberdeen in the 1970s exploring the North Sea. In 1977 he moved to North America to work on Alaska, the mid-Continent, the Gulf of Mexico and the Rocky Mountains. In 1981 he joined Carless Exploration where he dealt with the full spectrum of activities needed to access acreage, discover and develop small onshore oil fields. Mike returned to BP in 1986 to work on business development in the Middle East and West Africa and later moved to the upstream Corporate Planning team that created a new and successful global Exploration and Production strategy for the company.

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From 1992 he ran BP's business development projects in the Caspian Region and developed three production-sharing contracts in Azerbaijan.  While living in Baku he led the team which transformed Shah Deniz into a robust exploration project by delivering the commercial, technical, legal and operational work commitments which culminated in a super-giant gas discovery. In 2003 Mike moved to Turkey to run BP's various operations there.  In 2007 he joined Canamens Energy and focused North Africa and  Morocco in particular, where negotiated access, led all the technical work and found new partners to participate in a major 3D seismic and drilling campaign. Canamens was sold in a trade sale in 2012. Since 2012 Mike has worked on fund-raising and business planning for an independent E&P company and gas producer based in Senegal. Mike graduated from Exeter University with a degree in Geology. He also holds an MSc in Applied Geophysics from Birmingham University.