Paul Cornick

Background

About Paul Cornick

I have been working 33 years in industry as a palynologist / stratigrapher, much of this time helping to run and build PetroStrat, which last year celebrated it’s 20th anniversary. I grew up in Chichester, West Sussex, moving to Sheffield with my parents when I turned 16, where I attended 6th form to undertake ‘A’ levels which helped secure my place at Manchester University studying Geology & Geography. From here I returned to Sheffield to study for a Masters in Palynology, choosing to do my thesis on the Namurian marine bands in Derbyshire under the watchful eye of my tutor, the belated Ted Spinner. In 1989 I started my industrial career with Robertson Research in North Wales. This gave me a great insight into North Sea Tertiary stratigraphy and led me to taking a position with Amoco UK in 1997 as Biostratigraphy Coordinator in London. This provided invaluable operator experience. Following the oil price crash in 1998 and the resultant O&G industry M&A activity that led to BP acquiring Amoco at the beginning of I found myself joining the consulting world, mainly working North Sea Central Graben assets, mostly in the Palaeogene. Having moved back to North Wales I co-founded PetroStrat in 2001 with Dave Rutledge and since 2004, having teamed up with fellow directors Mark Weldon & John Gregory, the business has gone from strength to strength. Today we can claim to be the largest team of biostratigraphers in the western world, complemented in recent years by an ever-strengthening team of reservoir geologists. Our acquisition of RPS spec Geo (including what was formely Ichron) at the start of 2021 and then in May 2022 of Paleo Data Inc in Louisiana saw us venture away from the organic growth model we had pursued for so long. As MD of PetroStrat Ltd and President of PetroStrat Inc I am immensely proud of what we have achieved (and by we, I mean every single individual in our company). It is the people who make us what we are. Today we are fully embracing digitisation and the energy transition and have started to develop commercial opportunity outside of the conventional E&P sector. The opportunities for us to apply our detailed understanding of subsurface stratigraphy, reservoir quality and seal integrity in supporting the emerging market of CCS / CCUS gives me very great optimism for the future.