About
Applied Petroleum Technology AS (APT) is a commercial company with offices in Norway, UK, USA and Canada and laboratories in Norway and the UK. The company, which was established in March 2000, offers high quality analyses and consulting services to the oil industry, within the areas of exploration and production and the disciplines of geochemistry and petroleum systems modelling.
What makes us unique
- Consulting and Interpretation
Are made up of Petroleum Geochemists and Basin Modellers
- Laboratory Team
Are made up by Engineers and Technicians
- Administrative Team
Are made up of CEO, COO, CTO, CFO and Division Managing Directors
Vision & Values
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Our vision
To be a preferred vendor of geoscience services globally.
To be acknowledged by the market as the best vendor of our deliverables when it comes to client satisfaction, quality and efficiency.
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Our Values
We generate value for our customer and owners because we have high standards when employing people, empowering people and nourishing people’s pride in doing their best at work.
Our laboratories are of the highest standards when it comes to quality, efficiency and working environment.
We know our customers.
The Team
meet us
Our highly skilled and dedicated employees are the heart and soul of APT.
The unique combination of in-house geological services and a staff boasting extensive off-shore and oil company experience provides a competitive edge to the quality of services for the petroleum industry.
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View Team
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Helge Nyronning
Chief Executive Officer
Helge Nyronning
Chief Executive Officer
People, technology, processes and business – its all of interestHelge began his oil and gas education in the 1980’s and now has about 30 years of experience working with both service companies and operators.
He has a broad educational background spanning from a Cand.Scient. in Applied Mathematics to a B.Sc. in Machine Engineering and Economy, reflecting his wide range of interests.
Helge’s first positions involved working with petroleum reservoir evaluation, simulation and stochastic modelling. This evolved into modelling complete project uncertainty through the life of the field where his broad technical and financial background became useful. These projects were done for both service companies and operators on the NCS including Saga, Hydro and Statoil (Equinor).
Helge also spent several years in a position connecting the petroleum industry with IT as a product manager for Roxar, and in pure IT as manager for project management for Sun Microsystems Norway.
Prior to joining APT as group CEO in 2019, Helge spent 13 years in various management positions in Aker Solutions and Aker Geo (now AGR) allowing him to engage in business development globally from Australia to the USA. For his final 3 years at Aker Helge held the position of CEO for First Geo (Aker Geo).
Outside of work Helge has a big family and he tries to spend as much time as possible outdoors in nature from sea to summit though all seasons. Helge is convinced that he is a runner, although his running performance would convince most people otherwise.
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Craig D. Barrie, Ph.D.
VP - Regional Operations
Craig D. Barrie, Ph.D.
VP - Regional Operations
Teamwork, communication and robust, quality science is the key to successCraig is a geologist and geochemist who has worked in an array of fields, initially focused on ore mineral systems before moving towards organic geochemistry applications in petroleum systems. He obtained his B.Sc. (Hon.) in Earth Sciences from the University of Glasgow (2005) and his Ph.D. in geochemistry and mineralogy from the University of Liverpool, graduating in 2008.
Post PhD Craig was a teaching fellow in structural and metamorphic geology at the University of St Andrews for a year and then spent two years as a PDRA in isotope geochemistry, under Prof. Adrian Boyce, at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center in East Kilbride, Scotland. Craig joined the isotope ratio mass spectrometry manufacturer elementar in 2011, spending several years in the UK office as a technical specialist before transferring to elementar Americas as a product manager. In 2015 Craig left elementar and joined GeoMark Research in Houston, TX as a senior geochemist responsible for the establishment of their fluids isotope laboratory as well as interpretive geochemistry reports and research & development. Craig became Director of Reservoir Geochemistry at GeoMark Research in 2020, whereby his role as head of the division developing the company’s unconventional time lapse geochemistry, allocation and geochemistry consulting was formalized. He was also involved in GeoMark’s half day seminar series, geochemistry courses and client/operator outreach and education programs.
Craig has published over 40 technical articles along with dozens of conference abstracts for presentations and posters. He is the co-theme chair (2020 - ) for geochemistry for the Unconventional Research Technology Conference (URTeC) and reviews papers for various journals and subjects on request. Craig has served on the editorial committee of the magazine Geology Today (2010 – 2015) and was an ordinary member of council for the Mineralogical Society of the UK and Ireland (2012 – 2014).
Craig is married with 1 daughter and has a sizeable and eclectic library, although a considerable section is devoted to his love of comics and collectibles.
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Geir Hansen
General Manager - Geochemistry and Basin Modelling/PSA department
Geir Hansen
General Manager - Geochemistry and Basin Modelling/PSA department
Geochemist with 30 years experienceGeir Hansen obtained a Cand Mag (BS) in chemistry and sedimentology at the University of Oslo and finished his Cand Scient (MS) degree in petroleum geochemistry in 1990, with a work focusing on source rock pyrolysis characteristics and kinetics.
After an internship with Amerada Hess upon completion of his degree he joined Geolab Nor as a staff geochemist working mainly with post drilling geochemistry on exploration wells from the NCS. Later he become the company project manager on surface geochemistry studies working with all aspects of SGE from planning, offshore deep-water shallow coring through development of analytical methods and interpretation of data.
In 1995 Geir took the position as General Manager of Surface Geochemical Services, a joint venture company, and further developed his expertise within the field of surface geochemistry, a position he held until 2001 when he joined Aker Kværner Geo as a consulting gochemist.
During his years in AKG he was also in charge of building geochemical data bases as part of the company’s multi-client project team.
In 2004 Geir joined APT as a Sr. geochemist – a position taking him back to the roots as a geochemist. Over the next decade Geir worked with all sorts of geochemical challenges from surface geochemistry through pre and post drilling well analysis as well as regional studies, having special focus on building APT’s comprehensive geochemical databases. In 2014 Geir took over as the General Manager of APT’s geochemistry and basin modelling/PSA department.
Geir is passionate about Track & Field where he is the head coach of decathlon and sprint in the local T&F club and is also referee on national level. When not on the track he spent much time on outdoor activities as biking, hiking and kayaking.
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Carl Peter Berg
Chief Financial Officer
Carl Peter Berg
Chief Financial Officer
30 years international financial experienceCarl Peter has nearly 30 years international experience working for public listed companies in the shipbuilding industry, Oil & Gas sector as well as a background from consulting, financial industry, and international organisations.
He has an MSC degree in Economics and Business Administration from NHH Norwegian School of Economics.
Carl Peter has worked most of his career in management positions for international companies in Europe and South America. He started his career in France where he worked two years for Noral, a Norwegian company, before he moved to work for the UN-WFP in Italy and Africa. He later worked for Siemens Oil & Gas as Procurement Manager and a few years as Management Consultant for Cap Gemini and CMA. F
rom 2006 to 2015 he worked as CFO in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for Norse Energy and Panoro Energy, two stock listed Exploration & Production Companies. He later worked as CFO for Vard Brazil, which is part of an international shipbuilding group with shipyards in Recife and Niteroi, Brazil overseeing its accounting and control functions.
Carl Peter joined APT in January 2020 as CFO.
He is married and has three children. Outside work he likes ski mountaineering and tracking. He is also trying to become a kite surfer.
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Dr Julian Moore
Chief Technology Officer
Dr Julian Moore
Chief Technology Officer
Data, innovation, valueJulian is a creative geoscientist who has a great enthusiasm for petroleum systems and integrating across multidisciplinary datasets to solve subsurface problems. He studied Geological Sciences at the University of Plymouth, completing at the turn of the millennium. After a year working on databases with IHS Energy, he returned to academia to complete an MSc in Petroleum Geochemistry at the University of Newcastle. This continued onto a PhD on mudstone sedimentology and petrophysics with Prof. Andrew Aplin.
Julian won an internship with BP during his PhD and this led to his admission onto BP’s Challenge Graduate program. His first roles where in Aberdeen in operating assets, and his final role was in the North Africa regional exploration team. After completing the Challenge program Julian continued working in exploration with roles in regional exploration, access, unconventional resources and assurance. This included a very enjoyable secondment into the Reliance-BP JV based in Mumbai, during which time two significant discoveries were made. Over his time in India he travelled extensively and honed his love of Indian food.Julian joined APT in 2015 as the Technical Director of APT UK where he takes on a wide range of activities from day to day management of operations, to accounts to business and product development. His real interest continues to be technical consulting and working with clients. Julian is a co-developer of Girasol, a well site gas interpretation soft developed jointly between Tim Dodd (ex-BP), APT and ARKCLS.
Outside of work Julian enjoys running, cycling, snowboarding, travel, cooking and reading.
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Patrick Barnard
Advisor – APT UK
Patrick Barnard
Advisor – APT UK
A petroleum geochemist with over 45 years’ experience of making geochemistry relevant to explorationistsPatrick started out his working life as a laboratory technician researching novel penicillin based antibiotics at Beecham Research Laboratories before studying chemistry at Manchester and then a masters in geochemistry at Newcastle.
His 32 years working with Robertson Research in its various incarnations included many years as manager of geochemistry. He left in 2006 to found the UK arm of APT with his long term colleague Dr Steve Thompson.
His great interest as the science has evolved from ‘interesting’ to ‘fundamental’ to petroleum exploration and production, has been in applying the science to assist the search for and development of new resources. His particular interest has been to help probe the understanding of controls on source rock occurrence on the global scale.
Patrick has worked on source systems in basins across the globe from the Pre Cambrian to Recent and in mapping them on a time slice basis. He has particular experience across on and offshore Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has travelled extensively meeting clients on all continents including the Americas and Russia. He has published numerous papers on geochemistry applications particularly in Jurassic and Carboniferous source rock genesis and addressed technical gatherings and client companies in multiple locations.
He continues to be involved in the UK arm of APT in technical operations and assisting Julian Moore in a management role. In addition to his technical and administrative role in the UK, Patrick is a director and Board member of the parent company, APT AS, in Norway.
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Phebe Chung
Business Development Representative (APT Canada)
Phebe Chung
Business Development Representative (APT Canada)
Phebe started her career in the petroleum industry as an intern with Canadian Hunter Exploration. After receiving her BSc. in Oil and Gas Engineering from the University of Calgary, Canada in 2001, she moved to Texas to work in the wireline division with Halliburton. Upon returning to Canada, she completed to her MSc. in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in 2007 at the University of Calgary.
With almost 20 years of industry experience before joining APT, Phebe was a reservoir/production engineer, evaluating and optimizing various oil and gas asset types worldwide from onshore to offshore plays and conventional to unconventional plays. Phebe has been a connector between data, people and engineering principles. She utilizes her skills to understand the behaviors and responses of petroleum systems to create synergies in strategy development for the company assets.
Outside of the office, Phebe rows at the Calgary Rowing Club and assists in coaching new and upcoming rowers. Travel is another passion where she is immersed in culture, food and people of the country.
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Ian Cutler
Geochemist
Ian Cutler
Geochemist
Highly experienced geochemist with key skills in data manipulationIan has a degree in geochemistry from the University of Reading, graduating with a first in 1986. After a brief period of research at the University of Sheffield he joined Robertson Research as a junior geochemist in 1988. Remaining with them as the company rebranded as Simon Petroleum and then Fugro Robertson, he joined APT (UK) in 2007.
Over the last 35 years he has gained extensive experience working worldwide on both single client and regional multiclient reports including NW Europe, Barents Sea, Central Europe, North America, Gulf of Mexico, Middle East, Far East and Africa. He has particular interests and skills in computer processing and manipulation of geochemical data with extensive experience of data manipulation, database construction and data loading. He also has wide ranging experience of the geochemical properties of mud additives and the amelioration of the effects of additive contamination in geochemical studies.
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Dr Rachel Gavey
Senior Associate Petroleum Systems Analyst
Dr Rachel Gavey
Senior Associate Petroleum Systems Analyst
A passionate Earth Scientist with a desire to extract value from integrated dataRachel has always had a passion for understanding the Earth and the systems within it. After gaining her Geological Oceanography BSc at University of Wales, Bangor, she continued her education with a PhD in Marine Geology at the University of Southampton with time spent at Seoul University, South Korea and Victoria University, Wellington, NZ.
Rachel joined APT in 2018 as a Senior Associate following her family’s relocation to Scotland from New Zealand. During her time in New Zealand Rachel spent 7 years working as an Exploration Geologist specialising in Petroleum Systems Analysis for Austrian Operator OMV. Prior to that she worked in the UK as a geologist for Fugro GeoConsulting and as an oil and gas technology adviser for OTM Consulting.
Outside of working for APT Rachel serves on the Scottish Energy Forum board promoting the discussion around energy use and transition, advises international operators on technology needs, and takes part in a wide variety of geologically based projects. Outside of work Rachel’s passion for worldwide travel and understanding the earth continues together with her husband and 2 young children.
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Lloyd Jones
Staff Geochemist & Petroleum Systems Analyst
Lloyd Jones
Staff Geochemist & Petroleum Systems Analyst
Lloyd has an M.Sc. in Petroleum Geochemistry from Newcastle University. Lloyd is a highly motivated geochemist and aspiring petroleum systems analyst with a broad range of geochemical and geoscientific skills. Over the past 5 years, he has gained extensive experience working on a variety of international multi well regional studies (Canada, UK, and Bolivia) and single well geochemical studies (UK and NW Europe).
Lloyd has undertaken a variety of 1D and 3D basin modeling studies encompassing source rock evaluation, thermal modelling, and migration risk with a focus on the UK North Sea. Professional experience includes the geochemical analysis of flowed and migrant hydrocarbons; source rock evaluation, seep and outcrop studies, wireline source rock evaluation, and wellsite gas analysis using APTs in-house Girasol software. Additionally, Lloyd is a capable organic petrologist, having worked on studies covering North America, Asia, and the UKCS/NCS.
Outside of work, Lloyd is a keen rugby player, who played for Newcastle University in the BUCS rugby championship and currently plays at the club and regional levels.
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Helen Kerr
Business Development and Marketing
Helen Kerr
Business Development and Marketing
Business Development Geoscientist with a global perspectiveGraduating in 1989 with a BSc in Geology (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Helen joined Robertson Research for a Summer job. 14 years later, having been a petroleum geologist, project manager and later business development geologist, leading the sales of ‘Tellus’, Robertson’s flagship global playfairways and petroleum systems initiative, she moved to Scotland to take a career break and renovate a family property.
Returning to geoscience in 2005 as a consultant, Helen spent two interesting years working with Getech, learning about potential fields data and assisting with the development of their global studies group and product lines. In 2007, after a second baby, Helen returned to consulting part-time, in a continuing role with C&C Reservoirs to expand the penetration of their global analogue knowledgebase ‘DAKS’ in NW Europe.
With longstanding experience in the sector, Helen became a consultant to APT UK in 2010, bringing their first multi-client study to market. Over the last decade this business relationship has developed and she now supports business activities for APT in the UK and internationally.
Helen maintains her “hands on” interest in geology, participating in ongoing field work on the Port Askaig tillites of Islay, that she first mapped in 1987. She spends her ‘freetime’ with her geologist husband, two growing sons, horses, cats, hens, sheep and a Manchester terrier named Inca.
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Dr Steve Killops
Senior Geochemist
Dr Steve Killops
Senior Geochemist
Geochemist with global experienceSteve has been a geochemist with APT since 2005, having worked in the field for some 30 years previously, in the commercial and academic sectors.
He gained a 1stclass hons BSc in Chemistry and a PhD from Bristol University before specialising in organic geochemistry. He has run analytical facilities in a commercial laboratory and has taught geochemical courses at Royal Holloway (London University) and with the Open University.
Steve has worked on petroleum system projects around the globe.
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Eric Michael
Chief Geochemical Advisor (Americas)
Eric Michael
Chief Geochemical Advisor (Americas)
Solving problems with chemistryEric has a BS from Indiana University and MSc from University of Oklahoma in geology & chemistry.
He is a subject matter expert in application of geochemistry and basin modelling for basin and field scale problems. Eric has 32+ years of industry experience (ConocoPhillips, USGS, Mobil, Sohio) in conventional and unconventional (e.g., heavy oil, CBM, shale oil/gas) reservoirs performing subsurface risk and resource assessment for in-place volumes, hydrocarbon phase prediction and field development and optimization. Eric managed a geochemistry & basin modelling team at COP and mentored multiple geoscientists and engineers. He has coauthored 45+ publications and patents in using geochemistry and basin modeling for petroleum system analysis. He enjoys application of new technology to problems and has been involved in numerous applied research programs using chemistry or basin modeling for petroleum system analysis and building problem specific tools and workflows.
Eric joined APT Houston in 2022 for continued development and expansion of APT services & solutions onshore US, in the GoM and internationally.
Eric is married and has three children. When not working Eric likes most things outdoors hiking, biking, travel, or reading about behavioural economics.
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Emma Straughan
Petroleum Geochemist & APT UK HSE Coordinator
Emma Straughan
Petroleum Geochemist & APT UK HSE Coordinator
Emma has a B.Sc. in Chemistry and an M.Sc. in Petroleum Geochemistry both from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Emma joined APT in 2008 after the completion of her masters. In her first few years with the company Emma gained a BSc in Geosciences from the Open University.
Emma has gained experience working on both single client and regional multiclient reports including UK, NW Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Experience includes geochemical analysis of flowed and migrant hydrocarbons, source rock evaluation, seep/leak/annuli evaluation, optical maturity, and wellsite gas analysis using APTs in-house Girasol software.
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Kjell Urdal
Senior Engineer
Kjell Urdal
Senior Engineer
One of the founders of APT - an expert in GC-MS and programmingKjell Urdal finished his chemical engineer education in analytical chemistry in 1980. He started to work at Senter for Industriforskning (SINTEF from 1993) as a chemical engineer working mainly with GC-MS investigating of organic matters in water, air and sediments.
From 1986 he worked as a Research Scientist developing new methods for characterization of different oil fractions by GC-MS. The methods were sold to several international oil companies.
In 1998 he joined Saga Petroleum as a Senior Engineer with responsibility for the high resolution mass spectrometer used for biomarker analysis. When Saga Petroleum were acquired by Norsk Hydro and Statoil he joined APT in 2000 as one of the funders.
Since then he has been in charge of the mass spectrometers at APT and he has also developed our own APT-LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) software with interfaces for all instruments so that all results are directly transferred to the database.
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Dr Fredrik Wesenlund
Petroleum Geochemist
Dr Fredrik Wesenlund
Petroleum Geochemist
Geochemist with a passion for Arctic field workFredrik Wesenlund obtained his B.Sc. in geology and geophysics in 2014 and M.Sc. in petroleum geology and petroleum geophysics in 2016 from the University of Oslo. For his M.Sc. thesis, he performed an organic geochemical characterization of the Johan Sverdrup Field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, focusing on source–oil correlation, thermal maturation, reservoir filling, and biodegradation.
Having spent an exchange semester at the University Centre in Svalbard during his B.Sc. studies, he realized that he wanted to spend more time with the stunning geology in Svalbard. Thus, in 2017 he embarked on a Ph.D. degree in geochemistry at UiT the Arctic University of Norway, investigating the organic and elemental composition of Lower to Middle Triassic black shales collected in eastern Svalbard.
He finished his Ph.D. degree in 2022 and started his career at APT shortly after, now working as a geochemist.
When not at the office, he enjoys guitar jamming, mountain hiking, and split boarding, whenever he gets the chance.
Join the team
Do you have experience and a passion for any of the APT core disciplines?
We are always interested in hearing from people with experience in Petroleum Geochemistry or Basin Modelling (PSA) who feel they could contribute something exciting to the work we are involved in.
Please contact us at post@apt-int.com with an up-to-date C.V. and a note explaining what you think you could bring to the APT experience.