OCEAN MINERALS - Key Persons
Dr Colin Seaborn, Chief Metallurgist, has broad metallurgical and business analysis experience in the mineral processing industry. This included over 20 years with CRA (now Rio Tinto) in base metals, gold and coal covering both operations and project development as well as project evaluation for CRA Group Executives.
Subsequently, he has assisted mineral exploration companies to set up initial metallurgical testing and project evaluation for base metals and gold projects in Australia and Namibia. He has organized metallurgical testing and evaluated on-shore processing options for Neptune Minerals' various underwater base metal and gold prospects in the south west Pacific. As well as his work in the mineral industry, he has, through his own consulting company, conducted organisation improvement projects in various sectors including manufacturing and waste management.
He has a PhD in metallurgy from the University of NSW and an MSc in mineral economics from Macquarie University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Dr. Jay Agarwal, former Vice president, Technology Assessment, Charles River Associates Inc. has more than 50 years of experience directing new product and process development, business strategy, technical and economic feasibility, and acquisition analyses in the chemical, coal, minerals, steel, metals, and energy industries.
Dr. Agarwal had senior management positions with U.S. Steel; Kennecott Copper, and lastly with Amax as V.P. of technology before joining Charles River Associates. His areas of specialization include the interaction of technology, markets, and economics; technology management; and feasibility analyses of capital expenditures, new ventures and risk analyses. He has consulted for major companies around the world and testified in International Trade cases. Jay holds a Doctor of Chemical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors
- Member of the Executive Management Team
Dr. John Halkyard, Chairman, is an Ocean Engineer and active in deep ocean projects involving mining and oil & gas since the late 1960's. He was the Director of the Ocean Mining Laboratory for the Kennecott Manganese Nodule Consortium in the 1970s and led the successful mining system development effort.
From 1988 - 2000 he was Technical Director for the Deep Oil Technology, Inc., which successfully developed and commercialized a proprietary deep water oil and gas platform, the "Spar". From 2000 - 2007 he served as the Vice President R&D and Chief Technical Adviser for Aker Maritime,, Inc. which was acquired by Technip, the world's largest energy engineering and project service company.
Dr. Halkyard holds an ScD degree in Ocean Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mr. Cameron May has a multi-faceted and multi-national career in advanced materials business development. Business responsibilities included Technical Director, Business Development Director, VP of Marketing & Sales, Commercial & Technical Director-North America, Business Development Manager-Medical & Components Division and Senior Research Engineer.
Cameron spent 22-Years as an Associate of Calloway Cars, responsible for materials technology, engineering and applications for Callaway Cars, developers of high-performance automotive vehicles.
Job Titles:
- Chief Geologist
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mr. David Felix, Chief Geologist, served as the Sr. Exploration Geologist for Kennecott Exploration, Inc., discoverer of superior manganese nodule deposits in the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Equatorial Pacific for the KCON Consortium: AREA USA 4 under the U S Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. Dave holds a MS in Geology from the University of Southern California.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Management Team
- SVP Business Development
Mr. David S. Huber, SVP Business Development, has 45 years of offshore oil & gas experience in the GOM and internationally, all with exploration and production companies.
Dave started his career as a subsea drilling engineer at Exxon and then moved onto the North Sea for 11 years with Hamilton Oil Company where he held the positions of Chief Engineer, Manager: Planning and Economics and finally Production Manager. Dave went on to co-found two deepwater E&P companies in the GOM: Mariner Energy, which had a successful IPO on the NYSE and then bought by Apache Corporation for $4 billion, and Deep Gulf Energy, which was sold to Kosmos Energy for $1.25 billion.
He retired in 2017 as Sr. VP Operations and Projects. He serves on the board of Ocean Minerals and Neptune Minerals, both deepwater mining companies, Respinnovation a French medical device company and Subsea Infrastructure LLC, an offshore financing company.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mr. Doug Maxwell, Associate Process Metallurgist, Deep Reach Technology, has more than 30 years' experience in mineral processing. He has been project manager for projects up to $30 million in total value and has supervised or participated in several plant start-ups. His experience includes bench testing, pilot plant testing, start-up and field service in mineral processing and hydro-metallurgical plants for copper, gold, lead-zinc, potash, phosphate rock and other materials.
Doug holds a Masters of Engineering, Metallurgy, from the Colorado School of Mines.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- CEO of Asian Mineral Resources Ltd
Mr. Duncan T. Blount, is currently CEO of Asian Mineral Resources Ltd., a TSX-V listed nickel-copper-cobalt mining company in Vietnam. He has over 10 years of experience focused on the natural resources sector - across mining, energy, and agriculture.
Previously, he was Head of Emerging & Frontier Market Commodities at RWC Partners, where he was responsible for developing the group's commodity views and determining natural resources portfolio strategy. Prior to RWC, Duncan was a Senior Analyst at Baobab Investment Management and an Analyst at Everest Capital. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Language & World Trade from Samford University and a Master of Business Administration from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Member of the Executive Management Team
- President
Mr. Hans Smit, President and Chief Executive Officer, has 20 years of worldwide underwater mining and subsea engineering, operations, and management experience.
He was President of Neptune Minerals, Inc. from 2015 to 2017.He served as Managing Director of IHC MMP focused on providing services to the underwater mining industry worldwide. Prior to this, Mr. Smit was the Projects Director of Marine and Mineral Projects (Pty) Ltd a company specializing in providing the subsea diamond mining industry engineering and operation solutions.
He has designed, developed, implemented, and optimized numerous underwater mining systems, in particular, the crawler technology being used by De Beers Crawler for subsea diamond mining.
Mr. Jack Lifton, is a consultant, author, and lecturer on the market fundamentals of the technology metals, the term that he coined to describe those strategic rare metals whose electronic properties make our technological society possible. These include the rare earths, lithium, and most of the rare metals.
He is educated as a physical chemist, specializing in high-temperature metallurgy, advising both original equipment manufacturers (OEM), high tech industry and the global institutional-investment community on the natural resource issues that impact either a proposed business model or a high-volume manufacturing plan for the mass market. He is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mr. James Guild is the Executive Vice President in the Willis Energy Practice and member of the executive Committee for the Houston Energy Practice. His responsibilities include the development, marketing and servicing of energy and marine accounts. Jim has 40 years of experience in the insurance industry with a significant emphasis on marine and energy business. His expertise includes domestic and foreign primary casualty, P&I Clubs, excess liability, property, and builders risks including subsea deep-water tie backs. He also has extensive experience in the use of fronting for insured-owned captive insurance companies, including the use of Oil Insurance, Ltd. (OIL) as reinsurance.
Jim began his career as a broker with Reed Stenhouse in Houston working on offshore drilling, construction and integrated oil companies with refining operations. He was an original principal in a Houston brokerage firm that specialized in insurance for the energy industry and was an Executive Vice President there for twelve years. Prior to joining Willis, Jim was a Senior Vice President with Sedgwick where he was responsible for managing their Houston office and US Energy Practice.
Jim holds a B.S. degree in Pre-Law/Political Science from Oklahoma State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Mr. John Petersen, is a lawyer and accountant with over three decades of corporate finance, due diligence, M&A advisory and related legal services for manufacturers, innovators and investors in the energy storage and renewable energy sectors. Over the last eight years John has earned a global following for his articles on the energy storage and alternative energy sectors. He has contributed to AltEnergyStocks, Seeking Alpha, The Street, NASDAQ.com and Batteries International Magazine and InvestorIntel.
John is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
Mr. Karl Winter has over 34 years of experience in deep-water subsea equipment and specialized projects focused on the offshore oil and gas industry.
Karl has managed and worked on numerous deep-water projects around the world. He is the founder and CEO & President of the international offshore engineering company, Ocean Flow International. He has also founded and owns several other equipment and capital companies. Education includes Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Science (Ocean Engineering) (Msc), Bachelor of Science (Engineering) (Bsc Honors), Diploma in Ocean Engineering, and a Diploma in Production Engineering
Karl is also a long time helicopter pilot.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Chief Ocean Engineer
Mr. Richard Petters, Chief Ocean Engineer, began his career as design and test engineer for Ocean Management, Inc., a pioneer manganese nodule consortium in the 1970s. Richard participated in the successful pilot mining tests in the Clarion Clipperton Zone where OMI collected over 800 tonnes of nodules. Following the nodule experience, Richard pursued a career in undersea engineering designing and testing numerous subsea vehicles and equipment. He was staff engineer for Lockheed Martin Undersea Systems for 10 years and has been an independent consultant for 25 years prior to becoming an Associate of DRT.
He has participated in several deep sea mining study projects with DRT. Richard holds an MS in Ocean Engineering from the University of Hawaii.
Ms. Laurie Meyer, Chief Projects Officer, has over 30 years of experience in aerospace and marine engineering. She led the Deep Reach Technology team as Principal Investigator for the US Army Research Labs funded cooperative research project to assess the economic viability of a deep sea based new source for Rare Earth Elements.
Prior to joining DRT in 2013 she was Chief Technologist for offshore renewables projects at Lockheed Martin Corporation and led the multi-contractor engineering team funded by the US Naval Facilities Command to design small and large-scale Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion plants and prototype key enabling technology. Ms. Meyer was also responsible for internal R&D projects and technology insertion planning in her role as Chief Technologist. She served as Chief Engineer and Systems Integrator for a wide range of other programs at Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman (space, air and ground), after beginning her career as an analyst at Hughes Aircraft and Lead Systems Engineer at Martin Marietta.
Laurie holds a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.