Ian Wilson

About Ian Wilson

Proud father of three amazing boys (who are growing up far too fast!) and grateful to call Houston home.Currently serving as Director of Corporate Authorizations at ConocoPhillips, I bring over 18 years of diverse industry experience across strategy, portfolio and planning, assurance, geostatistics, subsurface uncertainty, and resource development.Throughout my career, I’ve worked across conventional and unconventional assets (carbonate and clastic systems) in basins around the world. I’ve specialize in advancing opportunities from basin and total petroleum system analysis through to play, lead, and prospect maturity, with a strong focus on data-driven decision-making and risk-informed exploration.As the founder and leader of the Global New Ventures Global Studies Team, and co-architect of the ConocoPhillips Exploration Analytics Platform, I helped drive a global approach to total petroleum system and play fairway analysis—integrating subsurface analogues, commercial metrics, and competitor intelligence to sharpen strategic insights.I’ve also authored internal best practices in risk and volumetric characterization, performance uncertainty, and play-based exploration, contributing to consistent technical standards across the enterprise.

Experience

1. Director, Corporate Authorizations

   ConocoPhillips

   Jan 2025 — Present · Houston, TX, US

   The Director of Corporate Authorizations oversees the Corporate Assurance and Approval processes for significant financial commitments that require approval from the Executive Leadership Team or the Board of Directors. The goal is to ensure that ConocoPhillips makes consistent and robust investment decisions while managing risk across its global operations. This is achieved through seamless reviews by corporate subject matter specialists and the incorporation of critical cross-functional feedback.

Education

• University of Reading

  BSc 1st Class Honors, Geology

  2003 — 2006

• University of Aberdeen

  MSc, Integrated Petroleum Geology

  2006 — 2007

Skills

• Characterization
• Modeling
• Petroanalyst
• Petrel
• Risk Assessment
• Reservoir Engineering
• Mineral Exploration
• Structural Geology
• Sedimentology
• Geology
• Reservoir Characterization
• Arcgis
• Exploration Geology
• Seismology
• Uncertainty Analysis
• Petroleum Geology
• Oil
• Petroleum
• Geostatistics
• Upstream
• Stratigraphy
• New Ventures
• Geological Mapping
• Sequence Stratigraphy
• Geomodelling
• Microsoft Excel
• Powerpoint
• Petrosys
• Seismic Interpretation
• Microsoft Word
• Basin Analysis
• Production Geology
• Analysis