IAN PALMER joined the company as a partner in January 2003. Previously he was a Geomechanics Specialist with BP in Houston. He has served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Society of Petroleum Engineers. His expertise includes sand prediction and management, reservoir and wellbore geomechanics, compaction and subsidence, cavity completions in weak sands, coalbed methane completions and stimulations, stress-dependent permeability and matrix shrinkage in coalbed methane, fracture mechanics and the design/analysis/modeling of hydraulic fractures. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and has worked at Los Alamos National Laboratories, Oral Roberts University, University of Arizona, National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research, and Amoco’s Tulsa Research Center.