Edward van Riessen graduated in geology at Lent some years in geophysical research and as a teacher in geography. He then joined Shell in 1973 and worked as a petroleum engineer and geologist in Oman, the Hague, Brunei and Thailand. After his return to Holland, Ed developed and delivered training, was technical advisor for projects in Russia, and management consultant for organizational change. He completed his career in Shell as general manager of a joint venture in Moscow. In 1998 Ed started his own consultancy bureau, and has carried out learning development projects in Oman and has given Exploration & Production training in Nigeria, Europe, the Middle- and Far East and Russia.

Wiekert Visser (1948) obtained his MSc in geology /geochemistry at Utrecht University, and his PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He joined Shell in 1979 as research geochemist. After a few years, he changed disciplines to seismic interpretation and worked as an interpreter in Oman. In 1989 he became team leader of the Seismic Stratigraphy services group within Shell, subsequently moved on to head the geochemistry research effort and finished his career within Shell as Chief Geochemist for the company. During the years 1999-2003 Visser was Manager of Exploration and Field Evaluation at the State Oil Company of Suriname. In 2003 he established his own consultancy company "Cepex"(Consultancy and Education in Petroleum Exploration). In 1999 he was co-founder of EPTS, for which he has been serving as a director since 2003.

Maarten Wiemer has 35+ years' experience as Exploration Geologist for Shell in a/o Egypt, NW Borneo, Middle East and North Africa, China, Madagascar, North Sea, Oman and The Netherlands - Geology Research and Teaching. He has strong exploration evaluation and project leader skills, and has also a lot of experience with Opportunity Screening and Near Field Exploration / Appraisal. He is also specialised in Seismic Stratigraphy and Reservoir Characterization, including sedimentology and diagenesis. Through the years, Maarten has developed solid supervisory, teaching, and coaching competencies. He has a strong interest in Depositional Systems, Regional and Reservoir Geology and in general Petroleum Geology Learning.

Jan de Jager has a PhD in Geology from the University of Utrecht. He joined Shell in 1979 as exploration geologist, and worked in several locations around the world (Netherlands, Gabon, USA, Australia, Argentina, Malaysia) in technical and management positions. During the last ten years of his career he was responsible for the quality assurance of Shell's exploration prospects in many parts of the world and for upograding and replenishing Shell's global exploration portfolio. During this period has also developed extensive expertise in prospect Risk and Volume assessments, for which he developed and ran a successful internal training programmes. Following his retirement from Shell in 2010, Jan de Jager took on a position as part time professor at the University of Amsterdam and he is also working as consultant exploration advisor for various E&P companies.

Peter Nederlof (1950) has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Amsterdam and worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Stanford University in California. Peter joined Shell's Industrial Chemicals Research Group in Amsterdam in 1979 and moved 'upstream' to the Geochemistry Department in E&P in 1982. After 7 years in Research, Peter worked 16 years as a geochemical advisor in Canada, Oman and the United States, where he served as geochemical advisor with Shell Deepwater Development Inc. in New Orleans. In 2005, Peter returned to Shell International in the Netherlands and worked as Shell's principal technical expert for geochemistry, providing leadership and direction to a global skill pool of about 40 geochemists. He was responsible for Geochemistry Technology and provided technical advice to Shell E&P companies in the Middle East and North Africa. Peter is a highly motivated lecturer and has provided training courses for Shell and for the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE). His EAGE-sponsored Student Lecture Tours have been well received in over 15 countries. From 1991 to 1998, Peter served on the Board of the European Association of Organic Geochemists (EAOG); he was also a member of the first editorial board of GeoArabia when it was launched in 1995. Peter and co-authors have received best paper awards from both the AAPG and the SPWLA for their work on the Athel Formation in Oman.

Peter Betts (1952) graduated in Petroleum Engineering from The Royal School of Mines, Imperial College,London in 1975 and joined Shell as a Petroleum Engineer in the same year. Peter had a variety of assignments in Malaysia, Oman, the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands, working as well-site engineer, petrophysicist and area team leader. In the Netherlands, he headed the petrophysics technology development group, and spent two years as senior petrophysics trainer before moving to the integrated studies group, where he served a joint role as project manager for contract field studies and petrophysics consultant. Peter left Shell in 1999 and joined Logica, a major IT systems integrator, where he worked as an account manager and IT business consultant. In 2003 he returned to his EP roots, working as an independent petrophysical consultant.

Derk Jan Feenstra graduated in Geophysics at the University of Utrecht. He joined Shell in 1977 and worked initially as operations geophysicist for 6 years. After an assignment in Brunei as processing geophysicist and interpreter he returned to the Netherlands and worked as geophysical advisor for seismic processing before joining Shell Training as course director for Geophysics training. In 1997 he moved to the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij working some time in strategy and planning and then became Chief Geophysicist and later manager GeoSolutions in NAM. He then returned to Shell International as discipline chief for Geophysics in 2003, and was appointed deputy Chief Geophysicist for Shell International in 2006. Derk Jan retired from Shell end 2010 and set up his own Geophysics management consulting company in addition to being a director of EPTS. In his consulting practice he focusses on project management of seismic data acquisition and processing, from survey design through tendering and award to execution.

Jaap Mondt (1947) obtained his bachelors in Geology at the State University of Leiden after which he went to Utrecht to study Theoretical Geophysics. His PhD dealt with the determination of the Core- Mantle transition analysing P and S waves diffracted around the liquid outer core. Subsequently he joined Shell Rijswijk in 1977 to do research in Quantitative Interpretation based on seismic, petrophysical and geological data. After a posting in Londen where he worked on the interpretation of data of the North Sea Central Graben, he returned to Rijswijk to head a Quantitative Interpretation Team, developing 3D Interpretation Workstation methods. This was followed by an assignment to supervise Contractor Seismic Processing: software as well as actual projects. The next job was Course Director Geophysics in the Shell Learning Centre. At the same time he was for 5 years part-time Professor in Applied Geophysics at the University Utrecht in The Netherlands.

studied Geology at Utrecht University (stratigraphy as major, with sedimentology and geochemistry as minors) and graduated in 1981. Directly thereafter he joined Shell where he was subsequently shipped to exotic places like Lima (Peru), London (UK) and Cairo (Egypt). He started off in Peru, in exploration, where he worked as stratigrapher and wellsite geologist during the Camisea drilling campaign. After London (working on mostly Southern North Sea fields) and Egypt (Head of Lab and involved in e.g. the Obaiyed discovery), he returned to Holland where he had the pleasure of teaching Exploration Geology in Shells Training Centre in Noordwijkerhout. He then moved to Production Geology and worked as Team Leader for a number of mainly African fields (Egypt, Algeria, Cameroon, Nigeria). In this capacity he led a team of PG's, SI's, RE's, PT's and WE's with the main task of producing FDP's. After that he moved back to 'Training', where he, with appropriate passion, taught the secrets of Production Geology to Shell's new recruits.