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About us
Management Team
Iain McKendrick - Chief Executive Officer

Iain McKendrick has worked almost entirely in the oil and gas industry in a variety of corporate and asset positions. His experience is predominately in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf but also includes periods of business development roles in Colombia, South America and Houston, USA. Iain holds a Bachelor of Law Degree and Diploma in Legal Practice from Aberdeen University. Latterly he has held senior leadership positions with TOTAL as Joint Venture Manager UKCS and as Vice President, Business Development and Strategy in Houston.  Iain joined Ithaca as COO in February 2008.  In December 2008 he became CEO.

 

Graham Forbes - Chief Financial Officer

Graham joined Ithaca in March 2010 bringing to the company 19 years of oil and gas experience in the UK and in Africa. After graduating from the University of Aberdeen with an MA (Hons.) in accountancy Graham gained his chartered accountant qualification through the PWC training scheme. Following this he moved to ExxonMobil where over 5 years he worked on many operational and acqusition based projects for the company. In 2002 he moved to First Oil/Group as finance director for the group. In 2007 he took up the position of chief director for First Oil Plc where over 3 years he increased the profitability of the company and led it to be the UK's biggest privately owned E&P company

 

John Woods - Chief Development Officer

John has 28 years of Petroleum Engineering and Development Management experience in the North Sea. With a Bachelors degree from Leicester University, he joined Britoil for graduate training in 1981. After gaining operations and joint venture management experience, he moved to Amerada Hess in 1989 where over a period of 13 years, based in London and Aberdeen, he developed their UK Petroleum Engineering capability and moved into operations management with overall responsibility for some of the UK North Sea's largest and most complex developments. On leaving Hess, John moved into the service sector of the North Sea working with Helix RDS to support companies such as BP, Marathon, Paladin, CNR and Tuscan in developing new reserves and consolidating existing production in the North Sea and worldwide. As part of this work, he led a 'hot' team within BP evaluating production issues on one of their key North Sea fields. John then joined Wood Group Engineering as a Director to develop a service capability with the new breed of smaller companies entering the North Sea. He joined Ithaca in February 2006.

 

Nick Muir - Chief Exploration Officer

Nick has over 25 years technical experience oil and gas industry. He graduated in geology from Edinburgh University and later completed a Masters degree in geophysics at Imperial College, London. In 1986, Nick joined Elf UK and soon after went to Elf's Research Centre in France to work on numerous worldwide exploration projects. Latterly Nick focused on North Sea activities for Elf in particular exploration around the prolific Piper field before taking up a senior technical position in ENI's exploration team where he was responsible for Ireland and West of Shetland areas. In 2000 Nick joined Enterprise and focused on a thorough re-evaluation of near field exploration opportunities in the Central North Sea, some of which became commercial discoveries. Following the acquisition of Enterprise by Shell, Nick was responsible for the technical management of the acquired Enterprise portfolio. He was appointed Exploration Commercial Lead for the North Sea and managed an extensive portfolio rationalisation for Shell over the period 2003-2006. Nick joined Ithaca in February 2006.


 

Lawrence Payne - Chairman

Lawrie Payne has over 40 years of senior management experience in the oil and gas industry.  He completed his Bachelor's degree in Economics and Master's degree in Marine Geology from the University of Alberta and Columbia University, respectively.  In 1964, Lawrie began his career as a landman with Pan American Petroleum (Amoco) and then as an exploration geologist with Kerr-McGee in 1970.  Lawrie joined Sunningdale Oils Limited as the Manager for Canada, where he held the positions from Exploration Manager to President, was active in North Sea exploration and led the sale of the Company to Kerr-McGree.


In 1976 Lawrie became founding President of Sceptre Resources Limited, a TSX listed oil and gas company.  From 1979 to 1994, Lawrie founded and was President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Atlantis Resources Limited listed on the TSX and London Stock Exchange.  After the sale of Atlantis in 1994, he ran Stag Valley Management, an oil and gas drilling fund management company.  Lawrie joined Ithaca Energy in April 2004.