THE chief executive of a North Sea gas company has quit with immediate effect – a day after the company announced it had suffered major setbacks with flagship projects.
IOG announced that Andrew Hockey had decided to retire as chief executive and step down from the board straight away after nearly five years in the role.
The company, which is backed by billionaire US investor Warren Buffett, said Mr Hockey would be replaced by chief financial officer Rupert Newall.
The change comes a day after shares in IOG slumped more than 60 per cent as the company slashed production estimates from two key gas fields amid a series of technical problems.
Mr Hockey said it had been a “real privilege” to serve as IOG's chief executive since 2018. “We have made great progress in that time and with IOG now established as a gas producer, it is the right time to pass on the baton,” he added.
Mr Newall said Mr Hockey had taken IOG from “an unfunded micro-cap to an established, cash-generative UK gas production company.”
IOG became the UK's newest gas producer in March this year when its Blythe and Elgood fields – part of a cluster of gas fields off the Norfolk coast called Saturn Banks – produced their first gas.
Producing more gas domestically is “the right thing” for the UK to do in the current energy crisis, Mr Hockey had said at IOG’s half year results in August.
But the company has been plagued by production delays and technical problems.
On Wednesday, IOG cut production estimates for the second time in three months as it warned that it expected to recover less gas than hoped from its Blythe and Elgood wells.
On another Saturn Banks gas field, Southwark, work on one well has been suspended because of “drilling fluid losses,” but IOG still hopes to produce first gas from a second well on the field as planned in the fourth quarter of the year.
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