Dr. Keith Millheim has over 40 years experience in the E&P business of which two thirds of his career was for Conoco, Amoco Production Co, and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in various operational, research, and management roles. Millheim also served as the Director of Drilling and Production Institute, Mining University of Leoben, and Director for the Mewbourne School of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Oklahoma.

During his long career he also served as a high level consultant for various international major oil companies and government institutions. Millheim is known in the industry as a leading innovator of various technologies in drilling, deep water operations, and arctic technologies. He has over a dozen inventions and has authored more than 60 papers and articles on drilling, management of engineering, systems dynamics, and other technical and management oriented subject matter. He is also the co-author of the best selling SPE Applied Drilling Engineering Textbook.

Millheim holds a Doctorate in Mining Engineering from the Mining University of Leoben, a Masters Degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelors of Science in Petroleum Science from Marietta College. He is a long time member of the National Academy of Engineers, winner of numerous industry awards, and a long time contributor to the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Mr. Williams has been in the oil and gas industry for over 25 years recently having owned and operated an oil and gas exploration, production, and consulting company prior to joining the U.S. Department of Energy in 1989 where he oversaw the Oil and Gas R&D program at the Office of Fossil Energy. From 1993 to 1999, he was Business Development Director and later Vice President of Westport Technology Center in Houston, a leading upstream oil and gas research and technical services company.

Westport pioneered many innovations in reservoir characterization, flow assurance, drilling fluids and well completions. Tom led Westport to initiate a number of joint industry research projects (JIPs) to leverage resources, knowledge and funds. Tom was instrumental in IITRI selling Westport to Dresser in 1998, which then merged with Halliburton. In 2000 Tom was co-founder and served on the Board of Directors of Cementing Solutions, Inc. (CSI), a successful and innovative oil and gas cementing services and technology development company based in Houston. CSI is now owned by Superior Energy Services. He recently retired from Noble Drilling Corporation as Vice President, Research and Business Development of Noble Technology Services.

Tom is currently the (non-executive) Chairman of the Board of Directors of Far East Energy Corporation. Far East (FEEC.OB) is a publicly traded exploration and production company with headquarters in Houston, Texas and operation offices in China. Far East focuses on coal bed methane exploration, drilling and production in China. He is co-chair of the DeepStar Consortium Contributors Advisory Board, which represents over 60 service companies that focus on deep-water R&D, and also serves on the Board of DeepStar. He is a board member of the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) consortium. RPSEA is a not-for-profit consortium with over 150 member companies and universities that manages the Energy Policy Act R&D funds for Unconventional Gas, Ultra-Deep Water and technology for small independents. (DeepStar manages the ultra deepwater portion of these funds.)

Mr. Yemington has over 30 years experience on frontier water depths for the offshore oil and gas industry. Chuck participated in startup of the engineering firm Diverless Systems Inc, in 1981 and opened the Houston office that, after merger, became Sonsub Inc. and was acquired by Saipem in 1989. He joined the Subsea division of Dresser Kellogg in 1998 and after the merger with Halliburton was US Engineering Manager for Halliburton Subsea.

Chuck has expertise in both technical and project management, and has been responsible engineer on multi-discipline projects spanning mechanical, electrical, structural, and civil engineering; naval architecture; and offshore operations. He is named inventor on sixteen issued patents and several others now pending.

Chuck has broad experience with design, fabrication, and construction of deep water production systems. Project experience includes work on Magnolia, Thunder Horse, Hondo, Harmony and Heritage, Zinc, Snapper, Lena, Jolliet, and others. His production system experience includes risers; trees; manifolds; umbilicals; controls and instrumentation; pipeline pre-commissioning and repair; floating platform installation; pipe end connections; hot taps; subsea pig launchers; flow line burial; subsea tooling; and ROV’s and construction vessels including both ship shape and semisubmersible vessels.