VGS has more than 40 subsurface surface, and new venture development specialists delivering projects across the Asia Pacific region.
John Voon – Director VGS
John Voon is a seasoned explorer with over 30 years in the upstream oil and gas industry, including 27 years at Shell in leadership and technical roles spanning New Ventures, deepwater exploration, and global technology development. He has a proven track record in delivering major discoveries (e.g., Gumusut, Malikai, Kebabangan), securing and marketing new acreage, and driving fiscal reforms across Asia-Pacific.
He combines deep technical expertise, strong commercial acumen, and an extensive network of contacts among NOCs, IOCs, and independents to deliver value for his clients.
John founded VGS and Associates in 2017 bringing together bespoke teams of technical and commercial talent to deliver subsurface, integrated development, and M&A projects across Asia. The VGS team is actively involved in Upstream ventures in the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Australia.
Kushwant Singh – Geoscientist and Datascientist
Kushwant Singh is a Petroleum Geoscientist with more than 25 years of operating and joint venture experience in Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He has a proven track record in 4D and 3D seismic interpretation, dynamic and static model integration, and well planning using PETREL software. He is also experienced in new ventures and exploration, risk mitigation, and harnessing data management and AI to maximise value for Upstream businesses.
Kushwant led the determination of Brunei Shell’s remaining Champion Main Field oil reserves and planning waterflood well placements after reviewing reservoir performance reviews based on the identification of partial OWC movement on 4D seismic.
He has also generated machine learning (ML) production forecasting scenarios to predict end of field life and potential well workover candidates.
Tony Lake – Reservoir Engineer
Tony Lake is an experienced Reservoir Engineer and team lead with a broad background in petroleum development and exploration (onshore and offshore); oil, lean / rich gas, coal and shale. He has a strong understanding of the technology enabling the maximisation of gas and oil recovery to guide decision makers.
Tony played a key role in the integrated team leading to significant (multi TCF) gas discoveries and field development in Deepwater Sabah Malaysia. While working for NAM in the North Sea, he secured approval for the expanded development of a mature multi-TCF gas field, significantly extending its production life.
He has also led multidisciplinary teams in Australia developing significant gas and oil fields for Santos and Beach Energy, and has managed reserve reporting for a major gas asset in the Philippines.
Trevor Magee – Senior Geoscientist
Trevor is an accomplished geoscientist with extensive experience across Southeast Asia, including major projects in the East Java, Northern Central, and Southern Sumatra Basins. He has deep expertise in biostratigraphic frameworks — calcareous nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera and larger foraminifera — and is adept at evaluating their advantages and limitations in complex geological settings.
His work spans regional exploration studies that apply sequence stratigraphy to define play fairways and identify new hydrocarbon prospects. Career highlights include leading the Sotong and Anding marginal field development feasibility studies for WMC Petroleum with Petronas and Carigali, and serving as Chief Geologist for the PM7 exploration block, resulting in a gas discovery well.
Trevor has also contributed to development planning, notably the Ande Lumut feasibility study in the Northwest Natuna Basin.
Keith Chan – Senior Geoscientist
Keith is a geoscientist with 18 years of experience in oil and gas exploration, specializing in basin evaluation and prospect development across Southeast Asia. He has led subsurface projects in Brunei, Myanmar, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, consistently contributing to discoveries in previously untapped reservoirs.
His work spans diverse geological settings, including HPHT wells, stratigraphic traps, transition zones, sub-thrust plays, and carbonates. He is skilled in seismic interpretation at both regional and prospect scales, with a track record in successfully interpreting large-scale broadband seismic datasets.
Among Keith’s achievements are the acquisition and testing Malaysia’s first sub-carbonate broadband seismic with Petronas and advancing RTLSM FWI technology for sub-thrust prospects in Indonesia.
Pei-Tze Kueh – Senior Production Technologist
Kueh has 26 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, with a strong track record in executing field production enhancement projects through surface and subsurface activities in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, New Zealand, and The Philippines.
His specialist skills include: optimizing well inflow and outflow performance; conceptual well and completion design; sand control management; artificial lift design and optimization; smart well design; WRFM; well integrity management, as well as gas and water injection.
Kueh’s experience includes working as the Lead Water Injection Specialist for Petronas SWIFT. He was also part of the SF30 drilling team in Malaysia, successfully completing four IGP wells, SFCS drilling with 7 OH SAS wells completed, and planning for SFDP-A drilling projects involving three wells.
Jamie Burgess – Geologist-Geochemist
Jamie has more than 25 years of experience in government and industry, including 17 years with Shell, most recently supporting asset operations across Northwest Australia and Northwest Borneo. His work has included basin-wide gas quality assessments ahead of Brunei Shell’s LNG contract renegotiations, as well as evaluating H₂S, mercury, and wax risks for Shell’s Crux Field Development in the Browse Basin.
With expertise spanning well evaluation, prospect maturation, incremental development, and process engineering, Jamie has worked extensively as a rock and fluid specialist, complemented by roles in Flow Assurance and Well, Reservoir, and Facility Management.
He has delivered operational evaluations during drilling for real-time decision-making, conducted contaminant, PVT, and geochemical analyses, and assessed source rock, reservoir facies, and fluid properties to support both near-field and greenfield developments. His background also includes process optimisation, troubleshooting product streams, containment monitoring, HSE planning, and advancing CCUS technology from development to deployment.
Jeff Roche – Petrophysicist
Jeff has four decades of experience as a Petrophysicist in exploration, appraisal and development projects globally. His key areas of expertise includes deterministic and probabilistic petrophysical evaluation of oil and gas reserves in conventional clastic and carbonate, including unconventionals and CCS.
He also has expertise in delivering integrated petrophysical studies, including reservoir characterization for input into static and dynamic models consisting of numerous 10-50+multiwell fields e.g., NW Shelf, PNG, Georgia, Romania, Bangladesh, North Sea (Norwegian Sector).
Key roles have included working as a Principal Petrophysicist on major capital and expansion projects, and Technical Team Lead for numerous MCPs SS Certification projects; open acreage and gazettal licence round reviews and economic-risk assessments.
TG Tan – Facilities Engineer
Thiam-Guan (TG) Tan is a Facilities Engineer with 34 years’ experience in the Upstream oil and gas industry, including 26 years with Shell. He has expertise in subsurface and surface field development activities, project execution, and operating venture governance on some of the largest and most complex gas projects in the world. This includes responsibility for all technical aspects of Shell’s interests in Gorgon and Wheatstone, including the Gorgon LNG project and development of the Greater Gorgon area (>40 TCF).
TG started his career as a construction engineer with an oil and gas fabrication contractor. He joined Shell as a Front End Facilities Engineer then went on to other roles in field development, strategy, business development, implementation of business processes, and major project governance.
TG is currently the surface engineering lead for an exploration and development programme in the Philippines.
Thomas Mauduit – Tectonics Specialist
Thomas has three decades of global experience in oil and gas exploration, including conducting detailed subsurface analysis of more than 80 fields globally. His expertise encompasses seismic interpretation, static model building (Petrel, SMT Kingdom, Landmark, Paradigm), basin modelling (lithospheric scale, basin scale, prospect scale), and a sedimentology (carbonates, siliciclastics and turbidites).
He has delivered this expertise for oil and gas companies including Elf, Shell, E.On, Orion, Dana, K.Noc, EnQuest, Taqa, Noble Energy, Fairfield, StaatsOlie, Socar, Cairn, and ANP.
Thomas has also worked as the Head of the Shell Tectonics Laboratory and as a researcher at universities in France and The Netherlands.
Yong Boon Teck – Geoscientist
Boon is an experienced exploration geoscientist and seismic interpreter with more than 23 years of global experience across various basins, including Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and the Gulf of Mexico. His core expertise includes prospect mapping and maturation, basin screening, regional seismic mapping, and well execution.
He led a Sabah ultra-deepwater Playbased Exploration (PBE) project, identifying and maturing approximately five new plays and 20 new prospects in Northwest Borneo. Boon was also responsible for a regional seismic mapping project, covering around 20,000 km² in Central Luconia.
Other key projects have included assessing frontier and near-field prospectivity in the NW Palawan Basin and maturing prospects in Myanmar’s Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
Volker Simon – Exploration Lead
Volker is a globally recognized Exploration and Development Manager with 30 years of shaping upstream ventures across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
As Shell’s Exploration Manager in Brunei, Volker led an annual $300–400 million program, pioneering deepwater and high-pressure shallow offshore projects, orchestrating large-scale 3D/CSEM surveys, and revitalizing underperforming assets. He also led mature basin rejuvenation and new play projects for Shell Malaysia and New Zealand and was Chief Development Officer for Shell ventures in Tunisia, Malaysia and Oman. Volker has also served as Shell’s General Manager HSSE for global asset acquisitions and divestments.
At VGS, Volker guided a major transition for an independent Asian energy company that had acquired upstream assets from an IOC. He is currently leading an extensive subsurface evaluation project in offshore Timor-Leste.
Paul Wong – Production Technologist
With 18 years of experience at Shell, Paul is a seasoned production technology expert specializing in acid stimulation, perforation, workovers, well clean-up, completion design, sand control, production enhancement, field development, and well and reservoir management.
In the Malampaya project (Philippines), he led the infill well development study for the Camago and Malampaya East fields. In the Malay Basin, he delivered Phase 2 and 3 of the Bergading gas fields and conducted the Phase 4 development study, introducing the first commercial deployment of new gas tracer technology in Phase 2 wells as Well and Reservoir Management Team Lead.
For the Gorgon Project (Australia), he served as production engineer for Jansz–Io, creating the reservoir surveillance and optimization plan. On the Prelude project (Australia), he developed the well concept and completion design as Production Technologist Lead.
In Sarawak’s Central Luconia gas fields, he delivered major developments with big-bore completions and initiated a breakthrough stimulation method for long carbonate horizontal wells — now adopted as best practice across the asset.
Peter Chia – Geophysicist
Peter is an accomplished and accredited geophysicist with nearly four decades of expertise in seismic marine acquisition, processing, contracts, and quantitative interpretation, driving exploration and development success across Asia-Pacific and beyond. His career spans 22 years with Shell Malaysia, 2 years with CGG, 13 years with Shell Australia, and VGS consulting engagements in Timor-Leste and the Philippines. Peter has also co-authored 26 technical articles and papers on a range of subsurface issues.
Career highlights include the development of the Jintan, B12 and E8 gas fields Sarawak where he pioneered stimulation techniques for long carbonate horizontal wells. This approach has since been adopted as industry best practice. He also managed a range of complex seismic operations across New Zealand, Browse, Bonaparte, Carnarvon, Otway, and Bowen basins, overseeing both proprietary and multi-client data.
Steve Miller – Petrophysicist
Steve is a veteran petrophysical consultant with 45 years of experience delivering global subsurface projects, including offshore drilling in the UL, Malaysia, and the US Gulf Coast, and extensive work on carbonate and clastic reservoirs in Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand — many in collaboration with Shell.
He pioneered the development of integrated reservoir models (IRM) and field development plans, as well as monitoring and surveillance strategies for Oman’s Fahud and Natih carbonate fields, and North Kuwait’s carbonate and sandstone reservoirs.
At Shell’s Technology Centre in Bangalore, Steve built and led the Petrophysics, Geomechanics, and Quantitative Interpretation skill pools, managing capability growth, training, and technical oversight for a 20-member team.
His basin expertise spans Timor-Leste offshore, where he re-evaluated 120 wells across the Sahul Platform (Jurassic to Triassic) for basin analysis; North Kuwait’s Cretaceous basin, analyzing 1,500 wells with rock typing for neural-net modeling; and North Kuwait’s Jurassic basin, assessing 300 wells to support static and dynamic models.
Joe Simonetti – GIS Analyst
Joe is a GIS Analyst with two decades of global experience in the oil and gas and mining industries. His career includes 12 years with Shell, where he worked within exploration teams across Australia, Asia, and the Americas, providing geospatial expertise to support a wide range of oil and gas projects.
He has delivered measurable business impact across venture and growth activities, including block acquisition, regional studies, play-based exploration, and portfolio maturation. Joe has also played a pivotal role in operational planning, executing, and monitoring seismic and geochemical surveys, drilling programs, HSSE initiatives, non-technical risk management, logistics and commercial activities.
At VGS, Joe supports exploration, development, and operations for a major gas asset in the Palawan Basin.
Adrian Chong – Well Engineering Specialist
Adrian has a career spanning more than 35 years in the oil and gas industry, working in wells and drilling roles with Shell, BP and Chevron.
He has specialized in well construction activities from a lifecycle perspective ranging from well planning, drilling, completions, well intervention/workover including plug and abandonment operations. He has expertise across well types from conventional, multi-lateral and horizontal wells, small land operations to offshore HPHT and ERD projects. He is also experienced in contracts strategy/negotiations, supervision of jack-up, tender barge and semi-submersible operations.
Prior to joining VGS and Associates, Adrian had been working for Chevron Australia in various capacities in the exploration/appraisal and development teams within the Drilling and Completion function.
Samantha Chew – Oil and Gas Economist
Samantha specializes in oil and gas value management, financial due diligence, and assurances. Her experience comprises valuation analysis, financial modelling, commercial deal structuring, investment governance, project benchmarking, financial audit, planning, and strategy.
A chartered accountant by profession, Samantha has evolved from an early career in KPMG audit to a strategic investment specialist at Shell. With a 24-year career span in Shell, she gained extensive projects experience, namely Qatar Pearl GTL mega project delivery, strategic QP Shell Al-Karana Petrochemical collaboration, China Unconventional exploration, SMDS Bintulu Gas-to-Liquid business turnaround and Malaysia LNG venture governance. She also led assurance governance for Shell’s $21 billion Upstream Asia portfolio across Brunei, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and China.
She is currently an economics advisor at VGS, where she promotes valuation excellence to support oil and gas client investment decisions for major capex investment, exploration bid rounds, acquisitions, and divestments.
Vicky Yawapongsiri – Contracts and Economics
Vicky brings 25 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, including 16 years with ConocoPhillips, specializing in economic valuation, fiscal regimes, development planning, gas commercialization, contract negotiations, and due diligence.
She has a strong track record of commercial delivery on upstream and midstream projects across Asia Pacific including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Australia.
Vicky advises VGS clients on energy project valuation, mergers and acquisitions, risk assessment, scenario planning, sensitivity analysis, reserves certification, development plan optimization, and the review and negotiation of commercial agreements.
Cathal Smith – Contracts and Legal
Cathal has extensive experience in advising Australian and international clients on the
establishment and operation of major resource projects. He has a primary focus in the oil and gas sector including the negotiation of upstream activities, exploration, government and co-operation agreements, project structuring, operating agreements, farm-ins and major construction contracts.
He has held legal and commercial roles at all stages of the value chain and has in-depth knowledge of title, tenure and governmental issues, royalty interests, unitisations, regulatory compliance, governance, risk management and operations.
Cathal has participated in, and led, numerous executive management teams and has a strong track record in developing relationships with key stakeholders, including governments and regulatory authorities, to ensure the timely identification and achievement of goals.
Lloyd Watson – Aviation
Lloyd has 40 years industry experience in Helicopter and Fixed Wing Operations. He was the Shell Aircraft Director accountable for the safety of all operated, chartered, and contracted aviation operations globally.
His experience includes aviation operations, safety and de-risking for all mission types and remote piloted systems, and the development of operational and competency standards for aviation services in Shell and across the oil and gas industry.
Prior to Shell, Lloyd was a Helicopter Pilot in the Royal Navy and has spent 20 years flying offshore on operations globally.
Captain Gordip Singh – Marine Logistics
Captain Gordip Singh has 40 years of marine and shipping industry experience, He has led marine operations and HSEQ management for oil and gas companies in Malaysia, Nigeria and Angola, including a range of complex offshore construction, hook up and commissioning projects.
Captain Gordip has also championed strategic planning, organization, and execution of the ISM and HSEQ Management System in risk assessments and mitigation exercises, audits, regulatory compliance, incidents investigation, loss prevention and training in marine logistics.