Management Team.
Larry Bates (Chief Executive Officer)
Prior to his appointment at Nobel Upstream, Mr. Bates served as Vice President and Advisor to the President of OAO NK Rosneft where he oversaw international projects and business development. He has negotiated deals in partnership with ExxonMobil in the United States and Canada, Statoil, as well as a German refining JV with BP and CNPC in Tianjin, China. Mr. Bates also held leadership positions at BP, TNK-BP, Trinity Energy and Baker Hughes.
Mr. Bates served as Vice President and Shareholder Business Manager of BP Russia, leading BP's operations and business development efforts with Rosneft. He oversaw Sakhalin exploration activities and advanced BP's efforts to acquire exploration licenses in the Russian Arctic.
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From 2005 – 2007, Mr. Bates served in TNK-BP as Performance Unit Leader and Director of TNK-BP's first Greenfield major project. Mr. Bates was previously founding Director of Trinity Energy Ltd., an oil & gas independent where he negotiated and executed Uzbekistan's first production sharing agreement, operated oil and gas fields in Uzbekistan and Russia and marketed refined petroleum products in the region. He has also worked in the oil services sector with Baker Hughes and EVI-Weatherford, where he implemented a variety of performance contracting projects in FSU and South American markets.
Mr. Bates received his B.A. in Economics (Magna Cum Laude) from Texas A&M University in 1989.
Huseyn Gasimov (Chief Financial Officer)
Mr. Gasimov has been a finance and commercial executive for nearly twenty years in and outside of Azerbaijan. He has worked on multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, financing and business development deals. He joined Nobel Upstream as CFO in 2014 following a career at BP, where he held a variety of financial and managerial roles.
Prior to joining Nobel Upstream, Mr. Gasimov worked for BP for over 16 years. Most recently, he was a member of BP's regional leadership team in Azerbaijan where he was Head of Business Development and Commercial Operations for the ACG (Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli) oil field. He was responsible for commercial management of the ACG PSA, a BP-operated joint venture with several major international oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Statoil and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).
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During his tenure at BP, Mr. Gasimov also served as Head of Finance, Offshore Operations, Resources, Drilling & Completions and Exploration and has held other management roles in the areas of M&A, strategy, planning, performance management and corporate risk management.
Mr Gasimov earned his B.A. and M.A. in International Economic Relations from the Azerbaijan State Economic University. He is an Associate Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) as a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), and is a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA), also recognized by AICPA.
In 2009, Mr. Gasimov was awarded the Tereqqi (“Progress”) Medal of the Republic of Azerbaijan by the President of Azerbaijan for his contributions to the development of the Oil and Gas Industry.
Nicholas Pogson (Head of Commercial)
Nick Pogson joined Nobel Upstream as Head of Commercial in 2017. He has 31 years of industry experience including commercial and managerial roles in the UK, Russia, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia. Immediately prior to his appointment with Nobel Upstream, he was Commercial Manager in Maersk Oil Corporate HQ in Copenhagen where he provided commercial operations and negotiation support to business development and exploration activities globally.
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Mr. Pogson was Commercial Director of Endeavour Energy UK from 2010 through 2012, responsible for commercial management of the company's UK North Sea exploration, production and development portfolio. In addition to commercial management of Endeavour's existing asset portfolio, Mr. Pogson was also accountable for the negotiation of new asset acquisitions in the UK North Sea.
From 2004 to 2009, Mr. Pogson held several commercial and business development positions with TNK-BP and BP Russia in Moscow including the role of Commercial Director for RUSIA Petroleum, a TNK-BP subsidiary negotiating with Gazprom, CNCP and KOGAS to develop one of the world's largest natural gas fields. In BP Russia he provided expert commercial advice to the BP/ Rosneft JV exploration activity in Sakhalin and the Russian Arctic.
Mr. Pogson has a BSc in Applied Chemistry from Brunel University in London.
Jose Antonio Morillo (Reservoir Engineering & Production Data Management Advisor)
Prior to joining Nobel Upstream as a consultant, Mr. Morillo held reservoir engineering and technical positions with PDVSA Intevep, Harvest Vinccler, Harvest Natural Resources, Oilfield Production Consultants, Perceptum Limited and Savannah Energy. He has more than 25 years of international experience in reservoir engineering, field development, production optimisation, reservoir simulation and reserves evaluation.
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Mr. Morillo provides reservoir engineering and production data management expertise to Nobel Upstream, supporting production surveillance, well performance evaluation, reserves assessments and technical studies. His experience spans conventional and heavy oil reservoirs, gas and gas-condensate fields, waterflood projects and new business evaluations across Europe, Africa and South America.
Throughout his career, Mr. Morillo has been involved in reservoir characterisation, dynamic simulation, integrated production modelling, decline curve analysis, PVT studies, production forecasting and field development planning for assets in the United Kingdom, the United States, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Oman, Gabon and the Netherlands. More recently, he has combined his subsurface engineering expertise with advanced production data management and analytics, developing SQL databases, Power BI dashboards and Python applications that improve production monitoring, automate reporting and support technical decision-making.
Mr. Morillo holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Petroleum Reservoir Engineering and a BSc in Systems Engineering.
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