Perth-based, double Queen’s Award-winning Merlin ERD has recruited Alistair Blair as a Senior Drilling Engineer.
After successfully navigating the recent downturn, Merlin is now delivering against ambitious growth targets.
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Managing Director and founder Iain Hutchison said “We sacrificed profit to keep our technical team together and are now reaping the rewards, but we don’t expect it to be all plain sailing by any means. Fortune favours the brave and you don’t become special by swimming with the crowd.”
The Merlin team love a challenge and have built a reputation of designing and delivering supposedly “impossible” wells to tap reserves previously deemed out of reach. “Unconventional could be our middle name” states Hutchison, who founded the business in Perth, Scotland, ignoring advice that it should be in Aberdeen. “We seem to have done OK” he says with a rueful smile, at a time when the company has gathered a range of accolades from peers, banks, clients and Her Majesty the Queen. Their HQ has five acres of grounds with deer in the garden, staff use an Aston Martin pool car and in 2017, the business became Employee Owned, a brave innovative step. “Don’t tune out just yet, the best is still to come” suggests Hutchison.
Alistair Blair joins with over 20 years’ drilling engineering experience. Ali has spent many years working in Aberdeen and latterly specialised in shale plays and drilling long horizontal wells while working in Houston, Texas. A graduate of Robert Gordon University (RGU), Ali has previously worked with some of the Merlin team and is looking forward to working on not only record ERD (Extended Reach Drilling) wells but also cutting drilling risk, time and cost on “everyday” wells by applying ERD techniques. Ali comments “Merlin ERD has an exceptional reputation and I relish the opportunity to work in this dynamic environment. It’s a great opportunity, I’ve already been assigned some challenging tasks. I look forward to settling my wife and son into their new surroundings in glorious Perthshire”
