Michael Seymour (1941 – 2024)
A petroleum explorationist with abundant entrepreneurial spirit.
Michael Seymour (Image courtesy of Philippa Seymour)
Michael Denys Seymour was an oilman through and through, and the geology on which his career was based was important to him throughout his adult life.
Becoming an oilman
Michael entered Clare College, University of Cambridge, in 1963 (later confessing modestly that he gained entry only because he shared a love of Wagner with his interviewer). He studied Natural Sciences and specialised in Petroleum Geology in his final year, during which he took part in one of Cambridge’s annual ten-week Spitsbergen field expeditions. On graduation, Michael taught at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, but felt his future lay elsewhere. This led to him enrolling in the Petroleum Geology course at Imperial College London in 1968 – and so Michael’s life as an oilman began.
His career as a petroleum geologist started properly when he was recruited by Burmah Oil Company in 1969 to work with what was then Woodside Burmah on the North West Shelf of Australia. Based in Perth with his wife, Philippa, he spent much of his time on the drilling rigs, developing expertise in electric-log analysis, and contributing to the discovery of the giant Scott Reef and North Rankin fields. They were exhilarating times, but in early 1973 he returned to London as equally giant fields were being discovered in the North Sea. He joined Conoco, but felt he’d missed out on that North Sea excitement, having been asked to evaluate the prospects of unexplored areas west of Britain.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Open to new opportunities, Michael accepted an offer to become Exploration Manager for a small Canadian company, Sunningdale Oil, with acreage offshore UK and elsewhere. He later described that move in late 1973 as the best thing he ever did. Working closely with the company’s founder, Michael would be appraising a discovery in Norway one day and off to Paris for meetings about Abu Dhabi the next. It was a life very much to Michael’s liking. A period with small USA company Kerr McGee followed, and then a spell with independent Scottish company Moray Petroleum as Managing Director.
Michael’s experience of small entrepreneurial companies inspired him to form his own, and the first of several he founded was Teredo Oils Limited in 1983. On newly acquired blocks from the UK Government, Teredo drilled several wells onshore UK and as a non- operating partner in the North Sea. With growing opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe, Michael founded other small companies to explore there, including Medusa, Aurelian and Trajan Oil and Gas.
It was a life very much to Michael’s liking
Continuing his love of geology
Michael retired from active petroleum exploration in 2010. Settled in Streatley, Berkshire, he devoted more time to his family and his sporting interests, including tennis, cricket and fives. He never lost his love of geology, and with several old geologist friends and their partners from his Cambridge days, Michael would make short annual expeditions to classic geological sites around Britain. And controversially, he would call on his geological knowledge of past climates to support his contention that the prevailing view of anthropogenic climate change is misplaced.
Michael was born on 3 September 1941, and following a short illness he died on 11 September 2024, aged 83. He will be greatly missed by his many friends, his wife Philippa, children Stuart, Amanda and Jacqueline, and his four grandchildren.
By Michael F Ridd and Mark Moody-Stuart
