DAVID F. NICKLIN
Executive Director of Exploration
Mr. Nicklin joined Matador Resources Company in February 2009 as Executive Director of Exploration, after working with us as an independent contractor since November 2007. Prior to joining Matador, Mr. Nicklin provided executive level consulting services to a variety of clients from January 2000 onwards through his wholly owned corporation, David F. Nicklin International Consulting Inc. In 2006, Mr. Nicklin co-founded and currently leads a small, private oil and natural gas company, Salt Creek Petroleum LLC. Salt Creek Petroleum owns small, non-operated interests in a variety of onshore oil and natural gas fields in the United States. Since 2009, Mr. Nicklin has consulted almost exclusively for us, with the primary exception of the minimal time he has devoted to Salt Creek Petroleum. Mr. Nicklin worked approximately 210 days for us each year from 2009-2011 and is expected to work a similar number of days for us in 2012. We have determined that Mr. Nicklin’s involvement with Salt Creek Petroleum does not detract from his performance for our company and does not result in any conflict of interest between Mr. Nicklin and our company due to the fact that Salt Creek Petroleum is not involved in plays and prospects that compete with our interests.
In 2000, he founded and led for three years a private oil and natural gas exploration company, Serica Energy, which is now a public company with assets in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland and Morocco. Between 1981 and 2000, Mr. Nicklin was an employee of ARCO, an integrated energy company, where he participated in and led several international exploration teams, particularly in the Middle East, southeast Asia and Australasia. In 1991, he became the Chief Geologist for ARCO, a position he held until his retirement in 2000. In this position, Mr. Nicklin was responsible for the quality of the geological effort at ARCO, in particular, ensuring the application of state-of-the-art geological technology, the company’s risk management process, the selection of new ventures and the high-grading of a large geoscience staff. Throughout his career at ARCO, Mr. Nicklin was closely involved with the successful exploration for and development of a number of large oil and natural gas discoveries. Prior to joining ARCO, Mr. Nicklin was a senior development and operations geologist in a variety of positions in the United Kingdom, Angola, Norway and the Middle East. He was a specialist in well-site operations and provided training in operations to entry-level personnel.
Mr. Nicklin was born in the United Kingdom and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from the University of Wales in 1971. He is an active member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and various other professional groups.