Key Personnel

Cate Friedlander is a well-known member of the Australian corporate legal community, with extensive experience in the upstream resources and energy sectors across Australasia, South-East Asia, Middle East and the US. This includes a number of years living and working in Asia.

Cate has worked for significant listed and unlisted entities in the sector – Novus Petroleum (General Counsel and Company Secretary), Anzon Australia, Esso Australia and BP and more recently has consulted to Pilot Energy, Bridgeport Energy, Beach Energy.

Cate’s experience extends to both asset/industry and corporate related work (M&A, IPO’s, contractual, corporate governance and risk and advisory). Her asset and industry related experience is extensive – covering oil, gas and LNG sale agreements, FEED and construction of production infrastructure, exploration and development joint venture related dealings, drilling and governmental negotiations.

In addition to her corporate experience, Cate has previously worked in private practice with top tier firms, across a variety of commercial and resource matters.

Cate also holds a Graduate Diploma in Applied Corporate Governance from, and is an Associate Member of, the Governance Institute of Australia.

Uno Makotsvana is a highly experienced CFO with more than 25 years of experience across resources, infrastructure and government services sectors specialising in commercial management and strategy, corporate finance, funding and investor relations. Uno commenced his career at Deloitte, progressing into senior roles in the professional services space before transitioning into a commercial finance role in a large ASX listed company. Uno previously served as CFO in both public and private companies including Capital Limited, a UK Listed mining services company - a role he held for three and a half years from 2012. He has held other senior leadership roles with both Australian and International organisations. Uno has a Bachelor of Accounting from the University of South Africa, a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the Alliance Manchester Business School (UK) and is a Chartered Accountant (Australia and New Zealand).

Chris has held a range of Executive roles including CEO and VP Business Development in projects in Europe, the Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia. Chris has extensive connections with government agencies, joint venture partners, service providers, banks and investors and brings a passion and values-driven approach to strategic leadership and staff development. Over his 26-year career, Chris has commercialised oil and gas assets, delivered new country entries and farmouts and generated over AU$1billion in corporate deal flow. He joins Melbana after a decade with New Zealand Oil & Gas (ASX: NZO) which has assets in New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia.

Chris has 30 years of technical, operating, and executive leadership experience in oil andgas projects of all types across Australia, the USA, Southeast Asia, the UKand Middle East.He has extensive experience in capital raising, including IPO, oil and gas field development,and a track record in delivering safe and efficient operations via the development of high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams, and managementsystems. Most recently, Chris hasbeen advising several public and private Australian and international companies on oil andgas and net zero projects and transactions and was previously COO at Strike Energy.

Duncan Lockhart has held a wide array of senior roles within the oil and gas industry, both within Australia and internationally. Recent experience has been with Central Petroleum (as General Manager Exploration), Senex (as Manager Regional Studies) and Drillsearch (as Executive General Manager – Exploration) where he identified high value opportunities, provided technical assessments and successfully implemented regional strategic initiatives. Duncan’s professional experience encompasses 31 years with companies such as BHP Petroleum, Woodside, OMV, Galp Energia and Origin. Coupled with his experience, Duncan holds several qualifications including a Bachelor Applied Science – applied Geology (QUT), Bachelor Science (Honours) – Geology (University of QLD) and a PhD (QUT).

Errol Johnstone has had a distinguished international career with ExxonMobil over 29 years in a variety of exploration and appraisal roles, with particular emphasis on new ventures, basin analysis and new play generation. Mr Johnstone is one of the industry’s experts in Structural Geology, Regional Geologic synthesis, Sequence Stratigraphy and 2D/3D Seismic Interpretation. He has extensive experience working on multi-disciplinary taskforce studies working with Russian, Japanese, Malaysian and Indonesian geoscientists and has also been active in teaching structural geology field schools and mentoring new geoscience staff.

With experience throughout most of the Australian and Far East basins including Russia, Mr Johnstone's multidisciplinary skills in geoscience integration generated many new exploration play initiatives resulting in several significant discoveries. 

Dean Johnstone is a geoscientist with over 40 years industry experience in oil and gas exploration, development and production. Over his earlier career with ExxonMobil and Delhi Petroleum, he has worked in a variety of lead technical roles with particular emphasis on Structural Geology, New Ventures, well site operations, field development/appraisal and mature field opportunity generation.  As well as working on a variety of projects within Australia and SE Asia, Dean had a long technical association with ExxonMobil’s activities in Papua New Guinea from Farm-in, through early appraisal and exploration drilling to FEED studies for the PNG Gas Project and LNG. In particular, the drilling of the Hide-3 and 4 wells established the presence of a multi TCF gas resource which became the foundation for the PNG LNG Project. This was followed by the successful drilling of the Moran oil discovery in 1998. More recently he was ExxonMobil’s Structural Geology Advisor for Canada, working in a wide range of geological settings which included Western Canada Basin Production assets and arctic exploration in the Beaufort Sea. On returning to Australia, Dean was involved in basin analysis for new Venture opportunities within SE Asia. Dean joined Melbana in 2011 and has worked on a wide range of opportunities within Australia, Cuba, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand, focussing on New Ventures and active drilling programs.

Dr. Rafael Tenreyro has over 40 years of experience in the Cuban oil industry, working in a exploration projects which lead to the discovery, evaluation and development of 14 oil fields. Most recently, he was the Exploration Director for Cupet (National Oil Company of Cuba) leading all exploration programs by Cupet and participating in exploration projects by foreign companies of Production Sharing Contracts. As well as his native Spanish, he is fluent in English, Russian and French.