Profile

Until his retirement in early 2018 Jim Ross was an Independent Petroleum Consultant specialising in:

• Oil and gas reserve/resource evaluation, classification and reporting; and,
• Unitisation and redetermination issues, from technical, commercial and strategic perspectives.

He provided advisory services, expert determination support and training to companies and governments in the development of internal processes, contractual negotiations and dispute resolution procedures associated with these and related issues. In a career in the energy industry spanning more than 42 years, he worked initially for a major oil company followed by 21 years with an international consulting group, before establishing his own company, Ross Petroleum, in 2004.

He served on the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Oil and Gas Reserves Committee, where he played the lead role in the development of the SPE/WPC/AAPG Resource Definitions and Classification System, which subsequently became the basis for the Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS). He was also a vice-chair of the Bureau of the UNECE Expert Group on Resource Classification (EGRC) responsible for the development of the United Nations Framework Classification for Fossil Energy and Mineral Reserves and Resources (UNFC), now expanded to address both renewable energy resources (to provide comparability with the classification of non-renewable energy resources) and also injection projects for the purpose of geological storage (e.g. for CO2 sequestration).

He was a co-author of the AIPN report on "International Unitisation of Oil and Gas Fields: The Legal Framework of International Law, National Laws and Private Contracts".

He has a BSc and a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Liverpool, and an LLM degree (with Distinction) in Petroleum Law and Policy from CEPMLP, University of Dundee. He received the SPE Management and Information Award in 2003.