Meet the team
Ian Davison – Geologist (Director)
Ian Davison is Joint Managing Director of GEO International Ltd, Earthmoves Ltd. and Eagle Energy Ltd. Ian received a BSc honours degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Leeds, and then went on to complete a PhD on Precambrian mobile belts in Mali, NW Africa at Montpellier and Leeds Universities. After this, he joined the British National Oil Company in Glasgow for three years where he was involved in International Exploration in NW Europe. He then decided to take a break from the routine and moved to Salvador in NE Brazil where he lectured in Basin Dynamics, Tectonics and Precambrian Geology for five years. During this time he consulted extensively for Petrobras, and Brazilian mining companies.
He returned to the UK in 1989 and became a Senior Lecturer in Structural Geology at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he directed the Salt Tectonics Research Group. He founded Earthmoves Ltd., in 1990, an international oil exploration consultancy, and has been involved with exploration and salt tectonics consultancy work for over one hundred oil companies exploring the South Atlantic margins and Europe in the last nineteen years.
He has published over sixty papers in scientific journals and books. He speaks fluent French, and Portuguese.
Matthew Taylor – Geologist (Director)
Matthew Taylor is Joint Director of GEO International Ltd, Richmond International Geoscience (RIG) Ltd., and Eagle Energy Ltd. He is a Petroleum Geologist with an active consulting business as well as an oil exploration business in Eagle where he has recently completed an asset sale of French exploration interests. Along side consulting, Matthew has developed a Global Basin Ranking Product which is a high level basin screening tool. He is widely recognised as a talented and effective International Exploration Geologist who has built and managed acreage portfolios in Europe, Africa and the Middle East for a number of companies.
Prior to re-activating his consulting business in 2006, Matthew was General Manager of the London and Oman offices for Hunt Oil and also their International Exploration Manager. He was instrumental in the development of the Hunt exploration portfolio, with licenses in West Africa, Oman and Europe.
Before that, Matthew was director of Taylor Exploration Associates Ltd. (TEAL), advising a list of client companies on Africa, Europe and South America over a period of 3 years. In his 15 year career prior to TEAL he worked for BP, BHP and Triton Energy. He has been a key player in the teams accessing or discovering over 1 billion barrels of oil in Africa.
He has been particularly successful in building an acreage portfolio and managing the exploration of that acreage, marketing to new partner companies, managing existing partners and liaising with relevant authorities.
Matthew graduated from Durham University in 1980 with an honours degree in Geology. He has written and presented papers at numerous conferences. He has also produced two commercial reports on Petroleum Geology of the South and Central Atlantic Margins which were bought by most of the major and many other oil companies.
Lee Anderson – Geoscientist (Seismic Interpretation)
Lee began his career with Western Geophysical in 1980, after completing four years service on the deepwater and transition zone seismic crews, Lee joined the Technical Services and Interpretation Department in London focussing on Computer Mapping and Technical support. In 1990, Lee joined Amerada Hess Ltd., London as a Technical Assistant/Computer Mapping Specialist, formulating computer mapping workflows and guidelines. Responsibilities also included mentoring of geoscience personnel with mapping software. In 1997 after the successful completion of an honours degree at University of London, Lee was promoted to Geologist and became part of Amerada’s North Sea Central Graben Group, responsibilities here included, prospect generation of all operated licences, UK Licence Round applications and the recommendation and drilling of 2 exploration wells. In 2000 Lee moved from the North Sea team to work on international portfolios which included Algeria and a regional evaluation of West African petroleum systems. Becoming more focussed on passive margin exploration Lee was now part of the Brazilian 3rd Round Licensing Team, assessing 15 offshore permits from the Camamu-Almada Basin in the north to the much sought after Campos Basin in the south, resulting in the successful bid for a high impact Campos Basin licence. Following on from the Brazilian Round work and a promotion to Senior Exploration Geophysicist, Lee had a short secondment to PetroVietnam in Ho Chi Minh City assessing potential development and production licence opportunities and training of local geoscientists in interpretation and mapping software. Further work has included in-depth evaluations of New Venture opportunities, predominantly within passive margin settings. Lee speaks fluent Spanish.
Lee Joined GEO International in January 2007.
Pedro Baptista - Geologist (GIS Specialist) 
Pedro Baptista (Geologist) - graduated in 2000 with an MSc in Basin Evolution and Dynamics from Royal Holloway, University of London. Pedro worked for Earthmoves (a frontier oil exploration, and salt tectonics consultancy company) where he gained great understanding of salt basins and plate tectonic reconstructions. During his career he has developed a vast knowledge of applying GIS software for Hydrocarbon Exploration including products such as South Atlantic Digital Atlas, Licence Round Evaluations, Licence Application Documents and a worldwide basin evaluation tool.
Over the last two years he has consulted and provided training in ArcGIS for several companies including Hunt Oil (Frontier Exploration & New Ventures Team), GXT – Sonangol (Joint venture project on Angola Basins), CNR, and Reliance (Ranking World Sedimentary Basins), etc. Pedro undertook extensive field work in Portugal, Rocky Mountains, Kwanza Basin, Aquitaine Basin, Bristol Channel Basin and Groix Island. Pedro speaks fluent Spanish, English, Portuguese and French.
Tiago Cunha - Geologist (Basin Modeller)
Tiago graduated in 1998 with a degree in Geology from the University of Lisbon, since then he has engaged in an academic career including a variety of research using 2d and 3d gravity modelling software. In 2001 he began his PhD entitled “Gravity modelling, flexure, and crustal structure of the conjugate margins of West Iberia and Newfoundland”. He has also helped to organise and participated in a number of scientific cruises. He has published 5 papers and presented posters at numerous international conferences
Tiago began working for GEO International in 2008
Tiago is fluent in Portuguese, English and Spanish
Ian Steel - Geologist (GIS Specialist) 
Ian Steel graduated in 2006 from Royal Holloway, University of London with a Masters Degree in Geoscience. He joined GEO International in November 2006 previously having worked for various structural and petroleum consultants, in production of technical reports, play fairway mapping and the building and management of ArcGIS digital atlases. He has worked on a number of different areas including the South and Central Atlantic margins, Ireland, Faroes Islands, Norway, Barents Sea and the Middle East.
During his university career Ian undertook fieldwork in Macedonia (Mineral Exploration) and field mapping projects in Skye, Almeria Spain and more recently in Northern Ireland.
More recently he has begun to develop interpretation skills having interpreted seismic data offshore Ireland, Faroes/Shetlands and Norway.