LEADERSHIP TEAM
While headquartered in Stafford, Texas, SAExploration operates regional offices in Alaska from Anchorage, South America from Bogota, Colombia, Southeast Asia from Singapore and Canadian operations from Calgary, Canada.
SAExploration maintains offices and / or operations in the United States (Stafford, Texas and Anchorage, Alaska), Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
Executive Team
Forrest Burkholder – President AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Forrest Burkholder started his career in the geophysical industry in the mid 1980s, holding various field operations positions in North and South America. Prior to joining SAExploration in 2011, he worked for Veritas in management roles for both Land Library and Land Acquisition in Anchorage, Houston and Calgary. He has worked several capacities on seismic crew around the world, learning the business from the bottom up. He has held management positions with progressively more responsibility, culminating in his appointment as Executive Vice President of Operations in 2020.
Richard O’Brien – Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Richard O’Brien has served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of SAE since September 2024. From 2019 until joining the Company, he served as Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for TETRA Technologies, a publicly-traded energy services and solutions company. Mr. O’Brien also previously served in several senior finance positions with progressively increasing responsibility during 17 years at BHP Petroleum. Mr. O’Brien received his B.A. degree in English Literature from Cardiff University in Cardiff, Wales, and is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
David Rassin – Vice President, General COUNSEL, Secretary and
Chief Compliance Officer
Mr. Rassin is Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary and Chief Compliance Officer of SAE. In addition to leading the Legal Department at SAE, Mr. Rassin is responsible for the Company’s Human Resources and IT functions. Prior to joining the Company in April 2020, Mr. Rassin served as Sr. Counsel – International and Director of Ethics and Compliance for Patterson-UTI, a publicly-traded oilfield services company based in Houston. Mr. Rassin served in previous roles as Compliance Counsel for Chicago Bridge & Iron and as an Anticorruption Attorney for KBR, Inc. Mr. Rassin started his legal career at a Houston law firm, focusing primarily on litigation and general commercial practice. Mr. Rassin received his Juris Doctor from Tulane University Law School and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Calgary.
Bruce McFarlane – Vice President of Operations
Bruce McFarlane began his geophysical exploration career in 1995 with Veritas in Canada where he held various operations roles across many different environments and regions. He completed his time at CGGVeritas as a Field Service Engineer. Since joining SAE in 2012, Mr. McFarlane has helped grow SAE into an integrated logistics and geophysical company, taking on the role of the Global Technical Manager in 2016. Under his leadership, the R&D and technical groups have been instrumental in giving SAE a competitive edge as the company became an early implementor of nodal technologies and high-density seismic acquisition across the globe.
Mark Farine – Vice President Business Development
Mark Farine joined Digicon Geophysical’s engineering department in 1982, marking the start of his geophysical industry career. Two years later, he moved to the engineering department of Syntron Inc where he helped develop the Syntron digital streamer system. When Sercel acquired Syntron in 1999, Mr. Farine was named Vice President of Sales & Marketing for North and South America, also assuming global responsibility for the Sercel Marine product line. After 27 years, he left Sercel to become CEO for PanAmerican Geophysical. In August 2012, Mr. Farine joined SAExploration as Vice President of Business Development with a focus on marine OBN and new market land acquisition markets.
Arturo Mendez Pardo, Vice President of South America Operations
Arturo Mendez Pardo, Professional Geologist, joined the geophysical industry in 1991 after graduating from the National University of Colombia. During his career, he worked in various field and management positions throughout North and South America, including Corporate HSE Manager at Veritas DGC in Houston. This internship role, reporting to the Senior Vice President of HSE, was designed to give senior operations management the experience necessary to ensure HSE became a fundamental component of all business decisions, a tradition that continues to this day. In 2006, Mr. Mendez Pardo and a handful of select industry professionals founded SAE. In developing the company, he served as SAE’s general manager in several South American countries and was fundamental in growing the business and forming the foundation of what SAE is today.
