James has 19 years of broad ranging oil and gas experience in industry, banking and consulting. He has worked with the founders of Realm Energy - a European focussed Shale Player - since May 2009 formally becoming CEO of the company after its RTO onto the TSX Venture exchange in October 2009. He remains a director of Palladian Energy Limited, where he advised investment banks, private equity firms and energy companies on a variety of issues largely relating to equity capital markets, M&A and equity research. He has assisted with floating 8 energy companies over the last few years on London’s AIM market. He has worked with numerous unconventional gas players, and their advisors, and assisted in bringing Great Eastern Energy and Green Dragon to AIM. He also initiated the main unconventional gas conference outside North America and Australia in 2008. He is an expert at commercial opportunity assessment worldwide, identifying critical success factors. He is familiar with unconventional gas geology, technologies, costs, above ground risks and economics. Prior to forming Palladian Energy Limited, he was a Director at PFC, an equity analyst at DLJ, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie and an engineer at Shell, largely onshore Holland. He is an Honours graduate in Chemical Engineering.