Colleagues

Over the years, COSCO has assembled strategic alliances with leading business and technical experts throughout North America and progressively around the world. Aided by these relationships, COSCO conducts due diligence on investment candidates, assists its clients in executing mandates, or otherwise identifies investment strategies or developing opportunities. With most of these individuals or entities, which it identifies as “Colleagues”, COSCO has established formal contractual relationships. Descriptions of COSCO’s Colleagues are set out below.

[ Origin Capital Group | Cambridge Earth Sciences Limited | Global Business Consultants ]

Origin Capital Group (“Origin”) (www.origincap.com) is an Australian-based, principal-owned investment bank, which provides specialist financial advisory services to the corporate and government sectors. Through subsidiaries, it provides corporate, and also project & structured finance and securities services and manages a private equity fund on behalf of a number of financial institutions.

Origin and COSCO have worked together over the past five years on a number of financings and M&A assignments, typically for Australian companies with strong US or Canadian ties. Origin assists COSCO to identify financing candidates in Australia, as well as to perform due diligence on local companies and projects brought to COSCO’s attention by other sources.

Nick Palethorpe has 25 years experience in project and corporate finance. Prior to establishing Origin, he was Executive Director, Project and Structured finance of AIDC Limited. He had overall responsibility for project and structured finance, corporate lending and securitization. Prior to joining AIDC Limited, Mr. Palethorpe was Vice President Project and Structured Finance at Bankers Trust. He has also established and managed financial advisory groups for the First Boston Corporation and Westpac Banking Corporation. Before entering the finance sector Mr. Palethorpe worked in Australia and North America in the oil and gas industry as both a geophysicist and as a sales chemist. Employers included Chevron and Mobil Oil.

Cambridge Earth Sciences Limited (“Cambridge”) was founded in December 1999, by Doctor Anthony K. Yeats. Through this company he assists other companies in geology and exploration management, in particular New Ventures strategy, in many parts of the world. He is developing a portfolio of equity interests in exploration and production companies in conventional and unconventional oil and gas opportunities around the world.

Dr. Yeats is 60, married with two children aged 32 and 28. He was educated at Universities of Bristol Cambridge between 1965-1971, from which he received both a B.Sc. and a doctorate in Geology.

Dr. Yeats started in the oil industry with Royal Dutch Shell between 1971-1983, serving in Oman, Indonesia, Botswana, Nigeria, and finally in Malaysia as Team Leader for Exploration.

He then moved to British Petroleum and worked there between 1983 and 1990, firstly in Norway as District Geologist and then Chief Geologist, then in Hudbay Indonesia as Chief Geologist, followed by Manager Regional Appraisal Group Africa Middle East and Chief Geologist, Middle East, Africa, Canada and Europe (excluding UK and Norway). Finally he was Exploration Coordinator for the Global Basin Analysis Group, which defined and developed the exploration basis for Lord Browne's “New Strategy” for BP.

After introduction of that strategy, Dr. Yeats was recruited by Total in Paris, where he worked between 1990 and 1999. There, he was responsible for the New Ventures Group and eventually became Exploration Manager Russia and Former Soviet Union.

Global Business Consultants (“GBC”) is a multidisciplinary consulting firm based in Caracas VZ that provides a strategic macro and global vision to corporate business, in general, and for energy and oil, in particular.

The GBC mission is to provide its clients with high-quality strategic advice. Its goal is to furnish the most consistent data and the most objective corporate analyses for bettering decision making. GBC provides its clients with personal attention by visiting their offices and by establishing open and direct dialogue. GBC pledges to work with its clients to give them the best strategic advice and to enhance business analysis. It believes that improving the client’s understanding of their markets (primarily in Latin America) is a critical component of its service.

In particular GBC offers accurate strategic analyses on the oil and gas industries of Latin American countries, from an "inside" perspective, using some of the best talent in the Latin American oil/gas industry.

Dr. Alberto Cisneros-Lavaller founded GBC in 1997. He is currently Director/CEO/Partner. In addition to its senior associates, backing GBC operations is a network of consultants that include more than 30 experts/specialists in key areas of business, in general, and oil and gas, in particular.

A lawyer and professor in the doctorate program of the School of Law of Political Science at Central University, Caracas, he has been senior advisor on geopolitics of Oil at the Planning Coordination of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) (1992-2003). His primary responsibility in that position was to advise on international political matters and their mid- and long-term implications for Oil Markets. Dr. Cisneros-Lavaller, who holds a PhD in international relations from the University of North Carolina, began work in the oil industry in 1983, first as Head of International Politics in Corporate Planning at Maraven (a PDVSA affiliate). He has authored numerous articles in specialized journals and a book in “Latin American conflict and cooperation”. He previously served as director of the Master in Latin American Integration, at the institute of High Administrative Studies (IESA), in Caracas, Venezuela (1981-1983); Associate Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana Campaign, USA (1984); and Full Professor at Doctorate Level in the Center for Development Studies (CENDES).