PESA ACT/NSW March Lunch

Guest Speaker(s): Wolfgang Fischer

Wolfgang Fischer (BSc Hons., Fellow of AusIMM, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors) is the Managing Director of Gulf Energy Pty Limited. Wolfgang’s career in petroleum exploration and development has spanned nearly 50 years. After completing his BSc with Honours at Melbourne University, Wolfgang joined Esso Australia where he spent 13 years in a range of operational and senior management positions. At Esso, he was a member of teams exploring in the world class offshore Gippsland Basin, the Bonaparte Basin and offshore Western Australia. While with Esso, he participated in the discovery of more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil in offshore Malaysia and, in the early 1980s, he headed Esso’s Australian new ventures team. In 1986, he joined the ASX listed Australian Petroleum Fund as Exploration Manager and six months later took on the role of Managing Director, a position he held until September 1989 when he left to set up his own petroleum industry ventures. During his time with AUSPET, he directed its growth to a sizeable oil and gas producer and pipeline owner. After leaving AUSPET, Wolfgang was involved in exploration that led to the discovery of the massive Bayu-Undan gas-condensate field in the Timor Sea. He was also one of the few professionals who, in the late 1990s, recognised early on the potential of coal seam natural gas in Queensland and was instrumental in building and developing an acreage portfolio that was sold to a major Australian energy company for hundreds of millions of dollars. During his business career, Wolfgang has identified attractive, early-stage business opportunities previously overlooked or misappraised by industry.