John McGoldrick

This article is part of the Spinwatch Fracking Portal and project

John McGoldrick is the chief executive of Dart Energy, which holds rights to drill for shale gas and coal bed methane (CBM) in the UK. As of December 2013 it was awaiting permission to drill its first exploratory well.

The company has a licence to drill for 110 trillion cubic feet, which McGoldrick claims is a tenth of the supply in the Bowland Basin shale area. The area stretches under Cheshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Yorkshire.

Activities

In November 2013 McGoldrick told investors attending the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) Spotlight conference that he 'couldn't wait to drill under [Wayne] Rooney's backyard'. His reference to the famous British footballer in a video posted on the ASX's 'Director Talk' website later caught the attention of journalists and campaigners.

Greenpeace managed to jot down some quotes from McGoldrick before the video became unavailable online:

• 'The British government is incredibly positive in all this. I’ve never quite seen a Government push an idea so hard and so fast.'
• 'The Ministry is very much encouraging unconventional gas.'
• 'Quite incredible how public the support has been.'
• 'We do have our detractors, activists that don’t want fossil fuels..we do have them. But hopefully through time all that will be pushed aside.'

Biography

According to Dart Energy's website:

John is in charge of the overall management of Dart Energy and has more than 32 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. John joined Dart Energy in 2012.

John joined Phillips Petroleum Co. Europe Africa in 1980 as a petroleum engineer. In 1984 he joined Enterprise Oil plc as a petroleum economist and subsequently served in a variety of management roles. From 1997 to 2000, he served as the managing director of Enterprise Energy Ireland Ltd and was later appointed as an executive president of Enterprise Oil Gulf of Mexico Inc., between 2000 and 2002.

From 2004 to 2006, John held the position of executive president of Falcon Bay Energy. From 2006 to 2010 he was executive chairman and director of Caza Oil & Gas and is currently its non-executive chairman and a non-executive director of Caza Petroleum, its subsidiary. In his capacity as executive chairman, executive president and managing director, respectively, he was responsible for the overall management of such companies. Since 2008, he has also been an independent non-executive director of Vanguard Natural Resources. John holds a bachelor degree in chemical engineering with economics from University of Bradford, United Kingdom