Management Team

Owned and managed by engineers, the management team is supported by core personnel who are experienced and respected within the energy industry.

We are an independent company with one objective – to deliver the correct technical and commercial solution to our clients, ensuring they get the desired solution for their projects. By becoming the chosen well engineering department for our clients, Zenith strives to be the pinnacle of well engineering consultancy and project management services.

Contact our management team to discuss how we can support your current or future projects across the globe.

Martin Booth

Managing Director
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Martin Booth

Managing Director

Martin has over 32 years of experience in the oil & gas Industry.

Martin worked for Ranger Oil at a time when they had four mobile rigs on contract in the UKCS and was involved in the first offshore well to utilise a 20,000PSI BOP.

He was the Drilling Superintendent for the Shearwater development, an HPHT field in the central North Sea. This project was delivered substantially ahead of budget by utilising a technical limit approach to planning and operations. Before establishing Zenith in 2012, Martin held a management position with a well engineering & project management company for eight years, and during this period managed multi-rig projects and set up operations in remote locations with no oil and gas infrastructure.

Martin has an engineering degree from RGU and during his time in the industry has developed training programmes for graduate engineers entering the industry. As well as completing the London Marathon, Martin also played rugby from an early age and is still a keen rugby supporter. Martin is also a season ticket holder at Aberdeen Football Club.
Chris Collie

Operations Director
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Chris Collie

Operations Director

Chris has over 17 years of experience in the oil & gas Industry, spending his initial years with Maersk contractors on their trainee drilling engineers programme. This involved rig site training on board Maersk's range of newly built HDJUs, industry-renowned training courses and office-based positions.

From there, Chris joined AGR Well Management where he worked as a Drilling Engineer up to Well Team Leader over an 8-year period. The projects involved all aspects of well engineering, from planning through to operations across all areas of the UKCS, the Falklands and West Africa for a variety of operators using jackup and semi MODUs. This included working for newly established operators drilling their first wells in the UKCS, to planning a remote location campaign in the Falklands within an accelerated timeframe.

Chris has an engineering degree from RGU and is an enthusiastic sportsman with a passion for football and rallying.
Ross Nicholson

VP - Asia Pacific
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Ross Nicholson

VP - Asia Pacific

Ross has over 16 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry and is an experienced senior management professional with extensive commercial, operational and business development experience across the Asia Pacific sector.

Ross began his career in Aberdeen working for oil field services companies where he was given exposure to a variety of commercial, operational & HR roles. Following this, Ross joined a well management company as part of their UK-based consultancy team and in 2009 relocated to Perth, Australia to lead their Asia Pacific consultancy division. In 2011, Ross began a successful leadership career with two industry-leading global oil & gas technical engineering manpower organisations, this included 9 years of managing complex and high-value regional P&Ls (USD$200m+) across Asia Pacific.

Ross has significant experience building multi-discipline teams within the drilling & wells disciplines and is a solutions-focused individual, always striving to work with clients to understand their challenges, objectives and deliver tailored solutions accordingly. Ross has an MA(Hons) degree from Aberdeen University and completed further study with the Australian Institute of Company Directors including Governance for Directors; Finance for Directors; and Strategy & Risk for Directors.

Ross enjoys playing and coaching ice hockey & football as well as going to the beach with his family.
Louise Wood

Recruitment Director
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Louise Wood

Recruitment Director

With over 30+ years in recruitment and talent acquisition, Louise has developed her career from a practical hands-on recruiter to a seasoned professional in the recruitment industry who has managed multi-million-pound campaigns for leading organisations. After 15 years developing her career within large corporate recruitment businesses, specialising in permanent recruitment at executive level, Louise was headhunted in 2006 by one of her top clients to join Prodrill.

Louise is passionate about providing the right recruitment solutions to clients in the ever-changing workforce landscape across the energy sector. She has built up an extensive knowledge of contractor management as well as knowledge of IR35 (off-payroll) legislation. Louise was a key contributor to the OEUK (formerly Oil & Gas UK) working group that developed the initial Off-Payroll (IR35) guidance for OGUK members. She continues to collaborate closely with corporate member bodies, passing her knowledge willingly to both clients and contractors to aid them in their recruitment strategies. With her extensive knowledge across Drilling and Wells, Technical and Commercial disciplines, Louise heads up the recruitment team for Zenith/Prodrill in the UK supporting both international and UK projects for the group.

Louise by nature is a people person, driven, she loves to discuss challenges and find solutions to problems. You will find Louise walking her dogs across Scotland’s hill and glens, visiting St Andrews beach, and enjoying some of Scotland’s fine larder where she has a passion for quality food, travelling and gin.
Jay Kelly

Wells Manager
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Jay Kelly

Wells Manager

With over 22 years’ experience in the drilling and wells space, Jay has an extensive managerial and engineering history working in the energy sector. He began his career with ADTI as a graduate engineer and worked his way up to Engineering Team Leader, working on numerous projects within the UKCS, for a diverse client base with a variety of different operations. Jay subsequently developed further experience, working in roles of increasing seniority for a subset of operators in the UKCS. During this period, he constructed, developed and led a large, in-house, multi-disciplined, wells and operations team.

Jay joined the Zenith management team in January 2024 having spent the previous five years as Wells Manager with Ithaca Energy, where he was also a member of Ithaca’s Senior Management Team.

In his downtime, Jay enjoys travelling with his family, golf and skiing/snowboarding.
Chris Murphy

Head of Wells – Asia Pacific
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Chris Murphy

Head of Wells – Asia Pacific

Chris joined the Zenith Energy team in May 2024. He has over forty years experience in the international oil and gas business and has extensive knowledge of well construction, well decommissioning and small offshore facilities decommissioning. He was previously global Head of Wells and Production Technology for British Gas and more recently Vice President - Global Marine Solutions for Wild Well Control Inc. In the latter position, Chris headed up a team that decommissioned over 400 wells and 60 small platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and international locations. From 2020 to 2022 has was a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University “Oil and Gas Innovation Centre”, Perth, Australia. Chris has been active in the well decommissioning space since 2006 and is considered a subject matter expert. From 2022 to 2023 he worked with ExxonMobil in Melbourne on well decommissioning operations after which he went back to independent consulting.

Chris graduated with a BSc Honours in Mining Engineering from Leeds University, UK in 1979.

He is co-author of a US patent:

Annulus cementing tool for subsea abandonment operation
Patent number: US20130269948A1 (Granted 08 Nov 2016)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130269948

We are always on the lookout for talented well engineering personnel to join our team. If you are interested in working with Zenith, please visit our dedicated careers and job listing site for the latest openings.

165 +

Projects Delivered
67 +

International Clients
26 +

Countries Operated
32

Years Experience

Martin Booth

Managing Director

Chris Collie

Operations Director

Ross Nicholson

VP - Asia Pacific

Louise Wood

Recruitment Director

Jay Kelly

Wells Manager

Chris Murphy

Head of Wells – Asia Pacific

People are our most important asset

We can become a vital part of your drilling operations.

165 +

Projects Delivered

67 +

International Clients

26 +

Countries Operated

32

Years Experience