• P. Richard "Dick" Gessinger has joined Connecticut-based GE Commercial Finance Energy Financial Services as vice president of origination in its oil and gas unit. He previously headed energy corporate finance for Bear Stearns. He was also with capital-arranger Ammonite Resources, E&P company The Meridian Resource Corp. and investment-banker Rauscher Pierce (now part of RBC Capital Markets). • Matthew P. LeCorgne has joined Howard Weil as director of investment banking and Lester F. Alexander III has been named a managing director, investment banking. • Natural Gas Partners, Irving, Texas, has promoted William J. Quinn to managing partner. • Oklahoma-based Americrest Bank has changed its name to Coppermark Bank. • Karla S. Mercer has joined Dallas-based Energy Spectrum as a senior vice president and is working within its Energy Trust Partners team. Mercer was previously with Madison Energy Advisors, Albrecht & Associates Inc., Snyder Oil Corp. and Ladd Petroleum, an E&P business of GE. • E&P sellside analyst Van Levy and investment banker Charles Parkerson have joined start-up investment-banking firm Dahlman Rose & Co. LLC in Houston. Levy is a managing director; Parkerson is a director. They were previously with CIBC World Markets in Houston. Prior to CIBC, Levy was with Jefferies & Co., Howard Weil, Texaco and Getty Oil. • More than 6,000 aging wells offshore the U.K. Continental Shelf are experiencing some sort of structural integrity problem and even more operators expect this incidence will increase, according to 83% of operators interviewed in a recent study. The study was conducted by Douglas Westwood Ltd. for UWG, an Acteon company. • Ronald D. Ormand has joined WestLB AG as managing director and head of the North American oil and gas group, based in Houston. Ormand was previously head of oil and gas for CIBC World Markets in Houston. WestLB, Germany's largest commercial bank, is based in Dusseldorf. • Deutsche Bank has named Thomas K. Barber to the firm's global banking division as vice chairman of the corporate advisory group in the Americas. Barber will also be chairman of Deutsche Bank Securities Ltd. Barber was chairman and chief executive officer of Credit Suisse First Boston Canada. • A favorite 11-year-old, oil-industry tutorial has been renovated and reopened at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. One of the new offerings is a 160-degree movie of oil exploration across the U.S. and under water. The renovation's sponsors include Saudi Aramco, ConocoPhillips, EOG Resources, Halliburton, Marathon Oil, ChevronTexaco, BP, Burlington Resources, ExxonMobil, Simmons & Co. International, Anadarko Petroleum, Devon Energy, Apache Corp. and Apache chairman Raymond Plank. For more information, go to hmns.org. • The search for unconventional, long-life gas resources is expanding around the world. Gilford Securities Inc. in New York recently raised $5.6 million in two days for coalbed-methane (CBM) development in India, according to Barry Sahgal, Gilford senior vice president.