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Educated in Geology and Micropaleontology at the Universities of Plymouth and Aberystwyth, GSS International (now GSS Geoscience Ltd.) began in 1993 after Dr Mike Bidgood left Halliburton Energy Services (formerly Gearhart GeoConsultants), having been with that company since 1988 and working in their Jakarta and Aberdeen offices. Apart from a year working for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen in the mid 1990s Mike has operated as an independent biostratigraphic consultant to the hydrocarbons industry. He is now based just outside Aberdeen, Europe's oil capital, but has undertaken projects, home & abroad and office- & wellsite-based, from over 40 countries.
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From 2009-2019 Mike contracted to Neftex Petroleum Consultants Ltd. as their Biostratigraphy Co-ordinator in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and was heavily involved the development of that company's "Biostratigraphy Module" and its integration with Neftex's "Earth Model"® suite of products. This primarily involved the co-ordination and supervision of the efforts of 3-4 staff constructing a calibrated global database of biostratigraphic events which underpinned the veracity of the company's global sequence stratigraphic model and provided biostratigraphic mentoring and support to around 100 geoscientists.
The Biostratigraphy Module consists of over 300,000 calibrated global bioevents from over 7,000 public-domain sources. This data was used in synthesising integrated biozonation schemes for many individual basins including Santos & Campos (Brazil), Burgos (Mexico), Scotian Shelf (Canada), Moroccan Offshore (North Africa), Essaouni (North Africa), Kurdistan (Iraq) and Krishna-Godavari (India). In 2012/13 he was jointly responsible for the successful migration of the company's entire database from the Global Time Scale of 2004/8 to the new GTS2012 timescale.
In 2015 Neftex was acquired by Halliburton Landmark and Mike carried on his work which also included (as SME) development of a biostratigraphic module within Halliburton's "DecisionSpace"® cloud-based subscription E&P package. In his final two years with the company Mike was involved in the development of AI and Machine Learning applications to biostratigraphic interpretation. See our Research page for further information on this.
OUR ASSOCIATES
Biostratigraphy - although a very specialised field in the hydrocarbons industry - is a vast subject and is impossible for a single person to cover in its entirety. Think of us as paleontological "engineers". There are upwards of 20 different categories of engineer and you would not call in, say, a software engineer to design the foundations of a 30-storey building.
Similarly, different geological and operational problems require different solutions from different specialists. The three main biostratigraphic specialities are microfossils, nannofossils and palynomorphs and GSS is proud to be working with three of the most experienced, independent biostratigraphers in the fields of foraminifera, nannofossils and palynomorphs to complement Mike's 40-year expertise in microfossils.
Similarly, different geological and operational problems require different solutions from different specialists. The three main biostratigraphic specialities are microfossils, nannofossils and palynomorphs and GSS is proud to be working with three of the most experienced, independent biostratigraphers in the fields of foraminifera, nannofossils and palynomorphs to complement Mike's 40-year expertise in microfossils.
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STEVE STARKIE (Datum Stratigraphic Ltd., Nannopaleontologist)
After studying Geology and Nannopalaeontology at the Universities of Plymouth and UCL, Steve was awarded his doctorate in 1994 and joined the Geochem Group in Chester, UK as a nannopaleontologist. He subsequently joined Total (then Totalfina) as their Atlantic Margin geologist. He left Total in 1999 and established Integrated Reservoir Solutions Ltd. (iRes) as Director, working in project design. He left iRes in 2002 and set up his own, independent, biostratigraphic consulting company - Datum Stratigraphic Ltd. with 30 years of industry experience. He specialises in Mesozoic to Recent calcareous nannoplankton and has also worked on projects worldwide from South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southern Asia and Southeast Asia.
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| PATRICE BRENAC (StratPal Consulting, Palynologist) After studying and gaining a Masters degree in Palynology at the University of Montpellier, France, Patrice first worked for Total in France and then Robertson Research International in the UK (now part of CGG) before becoming independent in 1997. In 2013 he joined Saudi Aramco working in Saudi Arabia and became independent again in 2021. The breadth of Patrice's experience is worldwide, with his main area of expertise in Jurassic to Recent palynology of South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Southern Asia and Southeast Asia, and with Paleozoic experience in Indonesia and Oman. Patrice has 40 years experience in the hydrocarbons industry. |
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| FELIX SCHLAGINTWEIT (Independent Micropaleontologist) After studying and gaining a Diploma in Geology and a PhD at the University of Munich from 1979 - 1990, Felix worked at the Bavarian Environmental Protection Agency and was project leader in industry working on contaminated land sites. He became an independent geological consultant in 2003, specialising on the microfaunas and microfloras of carbonate facies, as particularly studied in thin-sections. He has published over 300 papers in scientific journals and has made over 100 conference contributions. He has experience from Late Paleozoic to Cenozoic sections but his specialisation is the Jurassic to Eocene, particularly from Tethyan localities in and around the Middle East. |
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