Management Team

Massimo M. Geremia, President & CEO

Co-founder of Manitok in 2005 Mr. Geremia has over 20 years of experience in the Oil & Gas, Finance, and Real Estate industries with Birchcliff Energy Ltd., Equatorial Energy Inc., and Boardwalk Equities Inc. The last 10 years exclusively in the Oil & Gas sector.

Tim de Freitas, Ph. D., Vice President, Exploration & COO

Co-founder of Manitok in 2005; Mr. de Freitas earned his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in geosciences from the Universities of Toronto, Western Ontario, and Ottawa, respectively. In 1991, he entered into an industrial post doctorial fellowship focusing on circumpolar regional geoscience. After several years of arctic work, he moved to Imperial Oil and Nexen, to work on steam assisted bitumen recovery, structural geoscience, and conventional heavy oil. Since 1999, Mr. de Freitas has worked at British Gas International and Talisman Energy, in various technical and managerial capacities in foothills exploration and development teams. Mr. de Freitas is responsible for the discovery of many oil and gas pools in the unstructured plains and in the complex structured foothills of western Canada; he also gained a reputation as a technical lead in company asset groups.

Mr. Dion has over 20 years of financial experience in the petroleum industry holding various managerial positions during that time. He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1988, with a Bachelor of Commerce degree and has been a member of the Institued of Chartered Accountants of Alberta since 1991. Most recently, Mr. Dion was Finance Manager at Compton Petroleum from September 2003 to January 2010 where he was involved in the issuance of debt and equity securities, corporate acquisitions and restructuring. Prior to that, Mr. Dion held various senior financial positions at Canadian Natural Resources, Rio Alto Exploration, and Nexen.

Dorothy Else, BSc., Vice President, Land

Ms. Else received a Bachelor of Science degree (Honours) from the University of Calgary in 1978 and started her career that year as a landman for Getty Oil Company, working in the foothills of Alberta and British Columbia. Ms. Else spent 10 years from 1992 to 2002 at the Enerplus Group of Companies, first as Land Manager and later as Vice President, Land. As Vice President, Land Ms. Else was intimately involved in both pre and post acquisition issues including negotiation of purchase and sale agreements, title reviews, closing documentation and post closing asset integration. After leaving Enerplus in 2002, Ms. Else has acted as an independent consultant for a number of large and small companies. Ms. Else has been consulting to Manitok since 2005 on a part time basis, providing assistance for Manitok’s land related activities.  Ms. Else is an active member of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen.

Mr. Bradley received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in structural geology from the University of Alberta. Prior to joining Manitok, Mr. Bradley worked briefly in mineral exploration, followed by Talisman Energy in structurally complex hydrocarbon exploration. Mr. Bradley was involved in successful drilling and exploration operations in the Foothills of Western Canada, Western United States, Colombia, and Kurdistan. Western Canadian and United States exposure included drilling directional and horizontal wells as well as play and prospect generation. Colombia and Kurdistan experience provided detailed exposure to complicated international prospect development and progression. In Colombia, Mr. Bradley was part of the initial Block 9 evaluation team which resulted in the Akacias discovery, now a key component of Talisman’s Colombia strategy. In Kurdistan, Mr. Bradley was involved in drilling three complex wells into Talisman’s second exploration prospect in Kurdistan.

Robert Brown, M.Sc., Geoscience Manager, Plains

Mr. Brown earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. degree in geoscience from the University of Saskatchewan and Queen’s University, respectively. From 1998 to 2001, as a geologist with Vermilion Resources, he was part of the exploration and development team that saw Vermilion’s domestic production grow from 2,200 boe/d to 14,000 boe/d and total market capitalization exceeded $800mm. From 2001 to 2009, as an independent consultant specializing in both exploration and reservoir characterization, Mr. Brown worked closely with technical teams from over 20 successful junior and senior oil and gas companies, including several foothills operators. Mr. Brown has over 17 years of industry experience, and more than 12 years of reservoir characterization experience in the foothills with Talisman Energy, British Gas International and Manitok.

Mr. Carlson has over 10 years of oil and gas accounting, finance and tax related experience. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 2002 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree and has been a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta since 2005. Previously, Mr. Carlson was the VP Finance & CFO of Bellamont Exploration Ltd., which sold in March 2012 and was the Controller of Bellamont from 2008 to 2010. Prior to Bellamont, he was the Assistant Controller of Ryan Energy Technologies, Financial Accounting Analyst at ARC Resources Ltd. and a Senior Associate with PricewaterhouseCoopers in its audit department.

Mr. Eirikson has more than 38 years of drilling operational experience on wells ranging in depth from 300 to 4,600m (sour, vertical, directional, and horizontal) in Canada and overseas. He graduated from NAIT, Petroleum Resources (Honors) in 1975 and subsequently has held various drilling related positions. His Canadian foothills experience was obtained working in drilling departments at Gulf Oil and Talisman Energy for a total of 15 years. Internationally, Mr. Eirikson has held positions and provided services ranging from drilling planning, management to well completion and service in Libya, Thailand, and China.

Greg Feltham, M.Sc., Geoscience Manager, Foothills

Mr. Feltham received his B.Sc. degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland as well as an M.Sc. degree in structural geology from the University of Calgary. Since 2002, Mr. Feltham worked with Talisman Energy in their Canadian foothills groups, where he was highly regarded for his technical ability, strong work ethic, and large reserve adds in a host of complex structured plays, including deep carbonate targets and stacked multi-zone, shallow reservoirs. In addition to the domestic foothills work, Mr. Feltham’s technical competence in structural geoscience earned him a two year assignment in Talisman’s SE Asia group. Mr. Feltham was involved in many foothills drilling operations in technically challenging, structured and fractured reservoirs.

Mr. Heneghan has 17 years of operational experience in Western Canada. He graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geological Engineering and received his Professional Engineering designation in August 2000. Mr. Heneghan was Operations Manager at Caltex Energy prior to working at Manitok. Prior to that, Mr. Heneghan held various operations positions at Cordero Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources, Burlington, Canadian Hunter, and Baker Hughes INTEQ.

Tad Iwamoto, Manager Geophysics

Mr. Iwamoto has over 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry after receiving a BASc at University of British Columbia. He started his career with Texas Instruments working in their subsidiary Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) which involved seismic data processing and data acquisition. Utilizing land and marine leading edge processing technology became the norm as he worked with the R & D in Dallas and later Houston. Mr. Iwamoto had international assignments in England, Dallas, Houston, Buenos Aires, and Australia. He worked up to Calgary processing manager when GSI was sold. Thereafter Mr. Iwamoto has worked at other companies including Paradigm Geophysical, Gulf Resources and Talisman Energy specializing in seismic imaging.

Kavanagh Mannas, P.Eng., MBA, Operations and Development Engineer

Mr. Mannas received his B.ASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto. In 2006 he joined Suncor Energy’s natural gas department in their Grande Prairie field office as an operations engineer, primarily working on deep basin and foothills properties. In 2008 Mr. Mannas moved to Calgary as a production engineer, focusing on similar areas. After the Suncor/Petro-Canada merger he worked supporting over $2 billion in asset divestitures. In 2011 he graduated with an MBA, specializing in Finance, from the University of Calgary. Also in 2011 Mr. Mannas moved into exploitation engineering working both foothills, and unconventional properties.

Ms. McLeod received a B.Sc. in Engineering from the University of Calgary and started her career with Mobil Oil. This included working sour facilities and then transferred into the drilling department working from shallow to deep wells, and included heavy oil when seconded to Imperial Oil. In 2004, after 9 years with ExxonMobil, she joined Talisman Energy. Ms. McLeod gained experience in the deep foothills of Alberta and BC and continued to excel in her career as a Sr. Drilling Engineer internationally for Talisman on increasingly complex projects in Alaska, Trinidad, and Peru. Ms. McLeod’s last role with Talisman was as Engineering Team Leader for the Kurdistan, Iraq project.

Mr. Quartero has over 30 years of industry experience; 21 years in the foothills with Talisman Energy. He is well known for his ability to find hydrocarbons in the Canadian thrustbelt. Mr. Quartero has tested more than 200 prospects in the foothills and has found about 2 Tcf of natural gas reserves in a variety of  structured plays.  He pioneered horizontal drilling concepts in the Alberta foothills in the 1990’s which provided Talisman a significant success advantage over its competitors. As a technical lead and senior manager at Talisman, he played a significant role in growing their foothills production from less than 10MMcf/day to more than 350MMcf/day. As a foothills District Manager at Talisman, he assembled and led a world class technical team and managed budgets in excess of $300 million. Mr. Quartero believes strongly in the foothills advantage and is pleased to bring his innovation and expertise to the Manitok team.

Mr. Scheirer received a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering  with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. Upon graduating Mr. Scheirer began his career in the oil and gas industry working for Talisman Energy. At Talisman he held various development engineering positions in their midstream operations group in the Alberta foothills, Montney shale pilot team in NE British Columbia, and  most recently in international exploration working on projects in Colombia, Peru and Kurdistan. In this time Mr. Scheirer gained valuable experience and expertise in facility and asset development.  Mr. Scheirer joined Manitok in the fall of 2011.

Mr. Stewart has over 50 years of oilfield experience as a rig manager, a drilling rig fabricator, and a drilling superintendent. Prior to joining Manitok, Mr. Stewart was the Vice President, Operations of Stoneham Drilling for approximately 5 years. Prior to that, Mr. Stewart was a drilling superintendent for Bow Valley Energy and Talisman Energy.

Mr. Sutherland earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) in geology with a concentration in petroleum geology from the University of Calgary in 2011. His honours thesis examines the diagenetic factors that influence porosity with increasing depth in the Viking formation of central Alberta.  Upon completing his degree, Mr. Sutherland was awarded the APEGGA Past Presidents’ Medal in Geology for achieving the highest academic standing in his graduating class.

Venessa Veres, P.Eng., Operations and Exploitation Engineer

Ms. Veres received her Bachelor of Applied Science in Chemical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Thereafter, she spent four years working at BP Canada Energy as a field and production engineer for various conventional and unconventional natural gas assets in the Western Canadian Sedimentary basin. During that time her focus was maximizing profitability by improving well deliverability through successful well workovers and operational projects to lower operating expenses. In Feb 2010 she commenced at Manitok as the Operations and Exploitation Engineer for the heavy oil assets in the Swimming area of Alberta. Currently Ms. Veres is working in the foothills area as a production and operations engineer.