Directors
Gijs Holstege 2025- current co-director
Gijs studied geophysics at Delft University before joining Shell international. He has 31 years' experience in technical and leadership roles throughout the entire upstream lifecycle from mature field production, through to exploration including several years in finance, planning and strategy. He has worked in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Thailand, Syria, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands and Brunei where he was exploration manager. He is passionate about planet sustainability and has developed interest in climate change over the past decade leading to his involvement in energy transition
Lisa Thieme 2025- current co-director
Lisa has spent 30 years in the Energy and Mining industries, including 20 years with Shell in Exploration, Development and Carbon Sequestration/New Energies groups. Within Shell, she was an Operations Geology Subject Matter Expert. The first seven years of her career was in the mining industry with Phelps Dodge and Placer Dome primarily exploring for gold, copper and zinc. She has worked across the globe in South America, North America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Her M.S. is from Colorado School of Mines with a B.A. in both economics and geology from Lawrence University. She is one of the EPTS trainers for Operations Geology. She is also the Senior Energy Advisor for Crescat Capital.
Bert van Bommel 2016-2024, past co-director
Bert van Bommel (1955) graduated in structural geology and exploration geophysics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands in 1980. He worked with Shell for nearly 30 years in both exploration and development and production departments. Bert also managed a large unitisation project.
He started as seismic interpreter, but during his career held a variety of positions such as team leader, chief geoscientist, technical manager and deputy CEO. He has worked and lived in Australia, Argentina, Venezuela, Gabon, Syria, Italy and the Netherlands.
Since February 2016 he has assumed the role of co-director of EPTS.
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Dirk Pronk 2016-2024, past co-director
Dirk Pronk graduated from Utrecht University in the Netherlands in the early eighties with a degree in Geology and soon after joined Shell. At Shell he worked as a seismic interpreter, initially in exploration, later in development in a number of countries across the globe (Brunei, Norway, Colombia, Scotland). The second half of his career was spent in managerial roles in Petroleum Engineering and Field Development, leading multidisciplinary study teams and/or subsurface departments (Netherlands, Nigeria, Scotland).
His last position was Petroleum Engineering Manager at Shell UK, a role he combined with that of Head of Geoscience. He has always enjoyed working with people of different cultures and has very much enjoyed mentoring and coaching younger and less experienced staff.
He assumed the role of co-director of EPTS on the 1st of May 2020 and is happy that through his role at EPTS he has the opportunity to continue contributing to the education of staff in the energy industry worldwide.
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