Board of Directors

George has more than 40 years of experience in the oil industry and began his career at Shell, having graduated with a BSc in Geologic Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.

George is currently actively consulting in corporate organizational structure, technical integration, data solutions and A&D. His career began with 17 years at Royal Dutch/Shell Oil. He then became a founding member of Carrizo Oil & Gas serving as Vice President of Exploration and Development for seven years. More recently he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Davis Petroleum Corporation for seven years. George then served as Technical Director of Global New Business Development at Hess Corporation between 2012 and 2018.

His career has spanned a broad spectrum of the E&P sector involving all petroleum engineering, development, and exploration disciplines as well as corporate planning and finance. His expertise lies in deal structuring, A&D, portfolio optimization, risk analysis and tactical execution. George has repeatedly been the catalyst that integrated technical management, finance and commercial alignment to project implementation.

Adonis, one of the founders of Chariot and its Namibian subsidiary Enigma, is a mining entrepreneur whose expertise lies in the discovery, exploration, financing and development of mineral resources including diamonds, precious metals, base metals and more recently battery metals.

Adonis has led various teams that have built new mining assets from exploration through and into production. Recent focus has been on developing and bringing battery metal recycling businesses into production as well as investing in green energy projects with an emphasis on industries producing clean and sustainable energy.

Adonis has worked in the sector for over 25 years and has been influential in the founding, financing and growth of a number of companies, including Petra Diamonds. Adonis founded Petra in 1997 and it became the first diamond company to float on AIM. He was executive chair of Petra until 2011 and oversaw it becoming one of Africa’s largest diamond producers leading to Petra being a constituent of the FTSE250 for many years. After more than 20 years at the helm of Petra he stepped down in 2020. Adonis is the founder and chair of the Pella Resources Group, an African focused natural resources group. Pella has collaborated and been a seed investor in various technology metal related and renewable energy companies operating globally.

Julian is a Chartered Accountant with over fifteen years of experience in the energy sector. Prior to being promoted in May 2015, Julian was Chariot’s Group Financial Controller for 3 years.

Before joining Chariot in 2012 he was a manager within BDO LLP’s natural resources department in London where his client portfolio included Main Market, AIM and ASX quoted energy and mining companies with exploration and production assets primarily in Africa, the Former Soviet Union, South America, Australia and Asia.

Duncan is a geologist with over 20 years of experience in the sector and joined Chariot in 2013 as Exploration Manager. He has overseen the Company’s upstream activities since then, including two high profile deepwater exploration wells in 2018 and, more recently, the identification and integration of the Lixus Offshore licence in Morocco which contains the Anchois gas appraisal and development project. He has an MSc from Imperial College and joined the Board of Directors of Chariot in 2020 as Technical Director.

Chris has had over 30 years of experience in the City providing top level advice to boardrooms across a wide range of sectors. During this time, he was retained by some 20 FTSE100 companies including British Gas, Cairn Energy, and Tullow Oil. Latterly he was Managing Director at Jefferies Hoare Govett (a division of Jefferies Inc.) specialising in corporate broking and investment banking; and prior to that, he held a similar role at Citigroup. Originally, he trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. Currently Chris is a Director of Ventus 2 VCT plc, a company invested in a portfolio of companies operating wind and hydroelectric renewable energy assets in the UK.

Andrew has over 40 years of experience in the oil & gas industry, with specific expertise in the development and production of gas assets. In addition to his role with Chariot, Andrew is also CEO of the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB),  the employer-led skills, standards and qualifications body for the development of the engineering construction workforce of Great Britain.

Andrew is a petroleum geologist by background. He has previous experience with Eni, Fina, LASMO, Triton Energy and Monument. Andrew was a founder of Fairfield Energy Limited with whom he was Business Development Manager (2006-2015) and latterly a Non-Executive Director (2016-2022) and was also a Non-Executive Director and Chairman (2011-2015) of Sound Energy Plc, an AIM listed Moroccan gas company. Most recently he was on the Board of IOG Plc, a UK-based upstream gas company with assets in the Southern North Sea, which as CEO he led from 2017-2022 taking the company from micro cap status to being an established gas production operator.

Pierre has over 25 years of operational and management experience in energy industry, with specific expertise in the development of natural gas projects in Africa.

Pierre was previously Head of Business Development at Orca Energy Group, playing a key role in the development of the Songo Songo gas field, located offshore Tanzania, which is analogous to Chariot’s Anchois Development Project. Prior to that, he held leadership roles at African Petroleum Corporation, Perenco and OneLNG.

Benoit has 15 years of experience in investment banking in London and Paris, specializing in strategic equity financing transactions.  Benoit has been involved in renewable energy projects in Africa since 2010, in particular with the development of wind and solar projects in South Africa, and the co-foundation, in 2014, of AEMP, a hybrid power producer focusing on providing hybrid power to mining companies in Africa. Since 2021, AEMP has been integrated in Chariot as Chariot Transitional Power.

Laurent has over 20 years of experience in the international development sector and sustainability, public and private sectors across Africa. Laurent was the Senior VP Sustainability (Africa) for AngloGold Ashanti and previously led large-scale energy programmes for the UNDP in East and Western Africa for over a decade. In 2014, Laurent co-founded AEMP, a renewable and hybrid power producer that became Chariot Transitional Power in June 2021.

David has more than 25 years of international experience and has previously worked with Enterprise Oil, Shell, BG, Devon, Perenco and OphirEnergy. David has managed exploration, appraisal, and development well projects both onshore and offshore in many locations worldwide, including Chariot’s 2018 Namibia exploration drilling campaign, which was completed safely and significantly under-budget.

Nick Shepherd is a commercial lawyer with over 28 years of experience in the energy sector and joined Chariot in 2022 as General Counsel, managing the legal aspects of its gas, hydrogen and power portfolios. Over a career with Neo Upstream UK Limited, Zennor Petroleum Limited, Tullow Oil plc, Paladin Resources plc, BHP Billiton Limited and Premier Oil plc, has as advised on all aspects of the hydrocarbons sector from exploration to development and production and in a number of diverse international jurisdictions, with particular emphasis on transactional matters and M&A.