James graduated from Bedford College, London in 1979 joining Gearhart-Owen in the same year as a mudlogger. After a little over a year spent mainly in the North Sea and Yemen, James joined Baroid, also as a mudlogger and worked in Kuwait, Libya, and Angola before being transferred to Thailand in 1982. Work throughout the Far East was followed in late 1984 with a position as MWD engineer at Teleco in Aberdeen. During his year at Teleco, James operated mainly formation evaluation tools and was involved with a joint mud logging – MWD service in the United States.

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