NORTH Sea veteran Mark Hughes has joined the board of Independent Oil & Gas as the company firms up plans to bring its first fields into production in the area.
Mr Hughes has become chief operating officer of Independent following a 39 year career in the oil and gas industry.
An engineer by training, Mr Hughes has held senior positions with firms ranging from Shell to Germany’s RWE.
While at RWE he led work on the development of the Clipper and Breagh fields in the Southern North Sea, which are now operated by Ineos.
Independent has developed plans to develop two groups of fields in the Southern North Sea by linking them with the Thames pipeline it acquired recently.
House broker Finncap said the projects have the potential to unlock material gas resources. It reckons the delivery of the projects has the potential to catapult Independent into the UK exploration and production Premier League.
Independent’s chief executive Andrew Hockey said: “As we move towards the full development of our SNS assets Mark’s North Sea experience and commercial expertise perfectly complements the rest of the senior management team.”
Independent’s progress will be followed with interest in the North Sea industry. Oil and gas firms cut investment in development projects in the area in response to the sharp fall in the oil price from 2014.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here