After graduating from  Cambridge in 1968, Mike began his career as a chemical engineer with Shell International. During his 33 years of service with Shell he worked in facility operations, facility design, project management and HSE management in the heavy petrochemicals and the upstream oil and gas industry. Towards the end of his time with Shell, Mike became involved in the carbon capture and storage arena, which was a new and emerging field of technology. He is thus in the  fortunate position of having worked in the carbon sequestration sector from the beginning and consequently has a deep understanding of the processes which produce greenhouse gas emissions and the technologies and systems which can be deployed to reduce them.

His Shell career included 6 years in the Sultanate of Oman, 4 years in Sarawak, Malaysia and 17 years in the Netherlands. He has extensive experience of safety issues having spent 4 years in this role including a period in which he conducted safety audits and Hazops on many of Shell's  major new Oil and Gas production projects and operating facilities worldwide.

After retiring from Shell in 2002 Mike took up a part time position as a project manager with the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development programme  (IEAGHG) based in Cheltenham UK. He held this position for 9 years before fully retiring in 2011. Since then he has maintained an active interest in CCS

by continuing to undertake review and consulting work in the field of CCS.