THE head of BP’s North Sea business is to retire from the group at the end of the year, the oil and gas giant has said. Mr Garlick has spent the last five years as regional president North Sea, running a unit that has extensive operations off Scotland and Norway. The business has invested billions of pounds developing giant fields off Shetland under Mr Garlick. However, BP has shed 300 jobs in the UK North Sea this year in response to the plunge in the crude price. A graduate in petroleum engineering from Heriot Watt University, Mr Garlick joined BP in Norway in 1985. He has been in managerial roles in the North Sea since 1999. He will be succeeded by Mark Thomas, currently the Houston-based vice president of technical functions for BP’s Upstream global operations unit. The Canadian has a background in chemical engineering and has spent more than 30 years in the oil and gas industry. He has worked in the North Sea with BP’s oil and gas production operations off Scotland and the Netherlands.