When some discoveries paved the way for the MLJ South adventure

I have excellent memories of my time in this subsidiary. I took over from Olivier d'Aboville, we were a small team and there was a lot of interaction between the various stakeholders: geosciences, drilling, contracts and procurements. Everyone was very motivated during the exploration phase, nobody felt excluded and we all wanted to do our best. I still recall a great feeling of cohesion and it was a real pleasure to be working in such a great atmosphere. In bigger subsidiaries, this kind of situation would not be possible. Drilling MLJ2-06 in 2007 was such an exciting and overwhelming time. History showed that the exploration of this well allowed the successful extension to the south part of the field. In the next few years, being part of the ML4 and ML5 exploration wells campaigns was fundamental because it confirmed their real potential; all these discoveries paved the way for the MLJ South adventure. 

Despite the workload, there was a great atmosphere in the office. One day, I was involved in a little story that could have had disastrous consequences: I was working in Jean-Luc Broyer office, another geophysicist who was on holidays at the time. When I left the office for a few minutes, the fan fell because of some vibrations and it caught fire on the carpet! Fortunately, the small fire was stopped straight away but it is true, as Louis Heuze said afterwards, there was a better way to leave Brunei if I wanted to leave! After all, I spent almost five years in Brunei with my family and we all had an excellent time there.