Welcome to Skolithos, a small geological consultancy company based in Stockport, NW England, providing sedimentological, stratigraphical and petrographical services to the oil and gas sector. Our aim is to offer experienced staff to work with companies on exploration, appraisal and development projects. We also supply high quality multi-client reports and field-based training courses.

The company is run by Drs Andrew Thurlow and Andrew Taylor. We both have over 20 years of industrial experience in the consultancy sector with Norsk Hydro, Ichron, RPS Energy and East Cheshire Geoscience.

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The company name reflects our interest in trace fossils; Skolithos is one of the earliest burrows to be identified as such. It was first described by Haldeman in 1840, although its subsequent history has been rather turbulent; it underwent several name changes and suffered numerous spelling variations, incorrect authorship attributions and multiple misspellings of the original author’s name. The burrow itself comprises simple, unbranched, variably lined, vertical tubes. These often occur in crowded abundance, resulting in the host rocks being termed ‘pipe-rocks’ and, fittingly, reflect the opportunistic colonisation of a new substrate. The other aspect of the name we like is that it can be conflated from our SK postcode and the Greek for stone, effectively meaning ‘Stockport Rock’. So, there you have it, given our collective ages, we are essentially offering pipe rock and slippers to the petroleum exploration and production industry.

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