Preng & Associates places T. Mitch Little as a Board Director of Helix Energy Solutions Group.

Preng & Associates assisted Helix in another Board search. Houston-based offshore well intervention firm Helix Energy Solutions has appointed T. Mitch Little as a new member of the board of directors.

Little, 58, served as Executive Vice President – Operations for Marathon Oil Corporation from August 2016 until his retirement in December 2020, where he was responsible for all operations and development activities.

Before that Little served in a variety of roles at Marathon, including Vice President – Conventional & Oil Sands Mining Assets, Vice President – International & Offshore Exploration & Production Operations, Managing Director – Norway, and General Manager – Worldwide Drilling & Completions.

Little joined Marathon in 1986 and has over 30 years’ experience in the petroleum industry in various technical, supervisory and senior management positions.

He previously served as the Chairman of the Oilfield Energy Center, a non-profit venture dedicated to expanding awareness of subsurface hydrocarbon energy resources and supporting global stewardship in the communities that develop those resources in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. Little will serve as a Class I director whose term will expire at Helix’s next Annual Meeting of Shareholders.

Primoris Services Corporation (NASDAQ GS: PRIM) today announced the results of the Company’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders held on May 4, 2021, at 9:00 a.m. Central time at the Company’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

At the meeting, stockholders approved the election of nine directors. The directors are: David L. King, Chairman, Primoris; Stephen C. Cook, President and Principal Stockholder, Fieldstone Partners; Carla S. Mashinski, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Cameron LNG; Terry D. McCallister, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, WGL Holdings, Inc. and Washington Gas; Thomas E. McCormick, President and Chief Executive Officer of Primoris; Jose R. Rodriguez, former senior audit partner at KPMG LLP; John P. Schauerman, former Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Primoris; Robert A. Tinstman, former President and Chief Executive Officer, Morrison Knudsen Corporation; and Patricia K. Wagner, former Group President of U.S. Utilities for Sempra Energy.

Preng & Associates assisted in the search.

The stockholders also approved the ratification of the selection of Moss Adams LLP as the Company’s independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021.

David L. King, Chairman of the Board, said, “I want to thank our two retiring board members, Tom Tucker and Pete Brown, whose wisdom and counsel over the past decade have been invaluable. I also want to welcome our new board member Jose Rodriguez, who brings with him a wealth of knowledge in accounting, auditing and corporate governance gained during his illustrious career with KPMG.”

“We want to thank our stockholders for their participation in our annual meeting and for their continued confidence in our strategy and management,” said Tom McCormick, President and Chief Executive Officer of Primoris. “We remain committed to earning that trust every day.”

About Primoris

Founded in 1960, Primoris is one of the leading providers of specialty contracting services operating throughout the United States and Canada. Primoris provides a wide range of specialty construction services, fabrication, maintenance, and engineering services to a diversified base of blue-chip customers. For additional information, please visit www.primoriscorp.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that state Primoris or its management’s intentions, beliefs, expectations or predictions about the business, financial performance and prospects of the Company, which, by their nature, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated above include, among others, the risks and uncertainties discussed from time to time in the Company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release speaks only as of the date hereof, and the Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210505005946/en/

(April 13, 2021) Oil and gas company Apache has appointed Tracey K. Henderson as its Senior Vice President, Exploration. Henderson joins the company from Kosmos Energy, where she served as Chief Exploration Officer. Preng & Associates assisted in the search.

“While at Kosmos, she contributed to the discovery of the Jubilee Field offshore Ghana, one of the largest oil discoveries offshore West Africa in a decade,” Apache said.

Henderson was also a key member of the technical team responsible for the Tortue, Marsouin, Teranga and Yakaar natural gas discoveries offshore Mauritania and Senegal, which together opened one of the largest new hydrocarbon basins along the Atlantic Margin.

Prior to joining Kosmos, she served as a project geologist at Triton Energy working on the Ceiba, Okume and Oveng oil discoveries offshore Equatorial Guinea. Henderson earned a master’s degree in geophysics and a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Texas at Dallas.

“We are thrilled to welcome Tracey to our team. Her global experience and technical expertise will be a strong complement to our exploration efforts and recent discoveries offshore Suriname,” said John J. Christmann IV, APA’s chief executive officer and president.

“Tracey’s track record of exploration success includes notable and significant discoveries across the world including major oil and gas resources offshore Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, and Equatorial Guinea. We are looking forward to the expertise, energy and leadership she will bring to APA.”

View Source Version: https://www.oedigital.com/news/486795-kosmos-energy-exploration-head-moves-to-apache

Preng & Associates is delighted to be a Bronze Sponsor for the Africa E&P Summit | 22 & 23 September 2021. The Summit will be hybrid event, encompassing an in-person conference in London in which an online audience also participates.

The Africa E&P Summit brings together Africa’s upstream industry for a unique event shaped for companies active in Africa’s oil and energy game and provides unrivalled insight into the Continent’s fast changing exploration and energy horizon. The Africa E&P Summit will be hybrid event, encompassing an in-person conference in London in which an online audience also participates.

Hear directly from key players and decision-makers from corporate players active in Africa through to fast-moving independents, finance, legal and service & supply companies and African governments and NOC’s seeking investors.

For Tickets & More Information > https://www.frontierenergy.network/africa-e-p-summit

Preng & Associates is proud to sponsor the NextGen Energy Summit. On February 25th, 2021, Jozsef Marton will be speaking during Session 1 of the NextGen Energy Summit. Vince Pizzoni will be speaking during Session 4. They will be discussing how energy companies can attract and retain the brightest and most innovative minds. A new generation of leaders will need to tackle the challenges faced by all companies from oil and gas to clean technology. This is a fascinating topic at a time when many are thinking about leaving the industry or not joining it at all. 

NextGen Energy Summit Agenda

Register for the NextGen Energy Summit here!

(Feb. 8, 2021) Independent Oil and Gas (IOG), and oil and gas company focused on the UK North Sea, has has appointed David Gibson as its new Chief Operating Officer.

“David has extensive relevant North Sea engineering and project management experience over a near 30-year energy industry career, culminating in a number of executive management positions over the past decade,” IOG said.

Having started his industry career at Foster Wheeler Wood Group and Amec, he spent 15 years at Marathon Oil UK Ltd before moving to TAQA Bratani, where he was Technical Director until 2019.

Most recently he was with Ithaca Energy, where he led the integration of the North Sea assets acquired for $2 billion from Chevron and subsequently was appointed Assets Director.

“David’s appointment as COO, which is not initially intended to be a board position, follows an extensive and thorough search process managed by a leading sector-focused executive search firm, Preng & Associates, which covered a diverse range of candidates. It also enables Rupert Newall to step back from his Interim Project Director role and continue in his permanent role as Chief Financial Officer,” IOG said.

Andrew Hockey, CEO of IOG, said: “We are delighted to welcome David to lead the operating team at IOG where he will be a key contributor in successfully delivering on our ambition to be a safe, efficient, low-carbon developer and producer of high-value gas. In so doing he will build on strong existing foundations and I thank our CFO Rupert Newall for fulfilling the Interim Project Director role very effectively over recent months.

“David joins the company at an exciting time with Phase 1 construction in full swing and development drilling expected to start in around two months, targeting first gas in Q3 this year. Supported by an excellent team already in place across all disciplines, David will be able to hit the ground running and I have no doubt he will have a very positive impact across our business.”

IOG last year saw its field development plan for Core Project Phase 1 in the UK North Sea approved by the UK Oil and Gas Authority.

The Core Project comprises gas resources across six discovered UK Southern North Sea (“SNS”) gas fields. Phase One, approved by the OGA, will focus on the development of Blythe, Elgood, and Southwark fields.

The company in January said that work on the construction of the two platforms being built for the project was progressing well with delivery scheduled for 1Q 2021.

View Source Version: https://www.oedigital.com/news/485138-independent-oil-and-gas-names-new-coo

Preng & Associates remains devoted to an inclusive workplace of women in leadership. Over the past 7 years, we are proud that 50% of our Board placements have been women. Below are some of the fantastic leaders that Preng & Associates placed in recent years.

Preng & Associates conducted a survey of the financial community to better understand their perspective of the energy industry and future leadership. The survey includes responses from both the public and private equity investors, as well as bankers and consulting advisory firms. To those who participated, we want to express our deepest gratitude! Below is a summary and the key opinions expressed. Below are the full results.

There is a consensus that the oil and gas industry needs to focus on exceeding its cost of capital, generating free cash flow, and cutting costs, while reserves and production growth are consistently ranked as least important. Additionally, investors want their investments to pay off; public equity wants to see dividends and private equity wants profitability. Capital discipline is the key factor effecting the industry over the next five years. Oil and gas prices and ESG are also seen as very impactful. However, just as companies cannot control oil and gas prices, ESG risks are also inherent to fossil fuels and therefore ESG ranks low on what oil and gas companies should focus on today. Once oil and gas companies can survive and thrive, then the focus turns to ESG and building public trust once again.

The financial community agrees that leadership, capital discipline, and financial acumen are the most important qualifications of an executive. Executives who are focused on cash flow and corporate returns are also preferred amongst the financial community. While compensation structure did not rank highly, a handful investors ranked it as paramount; executives need to have their compensation more closely tied to shareholder returns. The investors felt that most current executives do not understand how to make money and many expressed a desire for youth as the old way of doing things is not working and new faces need to rise within the industry.

While diversity consistently ranked as the least important qualification for executive leadership, many believed it was important for boards. Public equity investors ranked diversity as most important and also felt that experience from other industries was the least sought-after trait for board members but not necessarily undesirable. Only 20% of survey participants would only consider board members with energy experience. The industrial, financial, and technology sectors led in desirability for non-Energy industry board members. Survey participants want to see board members who understand the investor and share a similar background in the financial industry. They also want to see board members who are innovative, which the technology industry is best known for. While no bankers or consultants recommended tobacco industry experience, investors saw the benefit of hiring from an industry that already had to adapt to adverse ESG pressures.

In conclusion, our industry needs to focus on free cash flow and return of capital with a long-term outlook towards ESG and companies need board members who understand the investor and can bring new ideas from outside the energy sector.  

Thank you again to those who participated and made this a success!

Preng-Associates-2020-Survey-Results

Speaking exclusively with Deblina Roy from Oil Review Africa (ORA), Jozsef Marton, Managing Director, London, Preng & Associates, has highlighted the recruitment landscape in Africa’s oil and gas and energy sector and how identifying and attracting talent around the world will impact shareholder value

ORA: Please brief about Preng’s operations. What the company specialize in?

JM: Preng & Associates are the only specialist fully retained boutique international executive search firm working exclusively in the energy sector. We are headquartered in Houston with offices in Chicago and London. We work across three core areas; oil and gas, energy services and equipment and renewables, power and utilities. Founded in 1980 and partner-owned, we handle board level and senior appointments including technical, finance, commercial leadership roles.

We are a specialist firm with a long track record of working with Africa focused energy companies with a proven track record of “appointing locals in senior in-country roles” where working with partners and managing operations are crucial to the growth and success of the company.

We operate in West Africa predominantly, followed by East Africa and North Africa. We work with medium sized companies and not with the majors such as BP, ExxonMobil, Shell etc. In many of the “in-country” roles that we handle our aim is to persuade local candidates to move back to the country where they are from. Recently we worked with a US independent operating in Cote D’Ivoire to recruit a new country manager and we appointed, an Ivorian, Khady Dior Ndiaye. We have also recently worked with another US independent and persuaded a Ghanaian to relocate to Malabo to lead their country operations in Equatorial Guinea. Also we have persuaded a local Nigerian candidate relocate from Abu Dhabi back to Lagos for a West African focused, London-listed oil and gas company.

Local content agenda is always our priority and we believe it is really important. Companies need to identify and attract locals to senior leadership roles. As the governments want to work more closely with companies and want indigenous companies to become more pervasive in the future, the only way to do that is to teach local candidates from operations and technical programmes. Then, in the future, they can go out and set up their own companies. Here, we are playing an important role in terms of the future development of local oil and gas companies in Africa. Not only this helps an individual’s career, but also helps the country build a better energy sector that serves the population and actually delivers value for people living there.

ORA: In terms of talent pool, what is going on in the oil and gas sector? What kinds of talents are in?

JM: Companies are interested in candidates who can efficiently integrate upstream operation, asset management and business units. With the downward pressure of oil prices, the companies are focused on generating profit at even US$40 per barrel price. They have had to really look very closely at operations and reduce the barrel cost while generating profits. For this, there is a much greater push for integrated operations and need for people who can bring together multi-disciplinary teams and get them working together, collaborating well and bringing about efficiencies. It’s not easy because there aren’t many people out there that have that expertise.

Finding people who is ready to get out into the field is another key area that the companies are looking for. With the strange consequences of COVID-19, people are mostly working from home. But in oil and gas, there has been a much greater push to getting people out in the field, working closely with the technical teams, getting to know their suppliers, government representatives and partners, rather than working from corporate headquarters. Our clients want more people to get out on the fields and perform on the ground. These are the two major areas where we have seen a much greater focus and desire from candidates and I think it will continue going forward.

ORA: How do you think recruitment has been impacted due to COVID-19 crisis?

JM: Well, some people thought recruitment will become more difficult, particularly in the virtual interviewing process and hiring. This is something the companies have never really entertained in the oil and gas industry. They always want to meet the candidates in person and get to know their personality. However, more and more companies are embracing the technology these days. We have recruited people virtually now for the first time ever. For the Marathon’s role, the candidate has never met anyone from Marathon in person and the recruitment has been done virtually.

We have actually seen a slowdown in areas such as board level roles and CEOs. For this, companies still want to wait until they can meet the individuals before hiring. Now, of course, if the pandemic continues for another year or two, that attitude might change. However, the industry is expecting 2021 to be better than 2020.

ORA: How you are addressing the importance of diversity while recruiting senior roles?

JM: Diversity has always been important not just because companies need to do that, but actually, we like to challenge our clients and bring them a diverse range of options to choose from. About diversity, age is more important. The oil and gas is an industry that has people at the senior level mostly over 50 years of age. The average age in London is more than 60 years for a non-executive director. To bring a different perspective in this senior management segment, we encourage bringing in someone of about 40 years of age group.

Another area where diversity really adds value is bringing people from outside the sector. Khady was a managing director at city bank in Senegal. She never worked in the oil and gas industry. But she has an outstanding ability to transition good relationship and leadership skills, banking to oil and gas. It was a diverse appointment because she brought that different perspective and skillset from another sector.

ORA: What are the top five sectors in oil and gas which will see more recruitment drive in the coming days?

JM: In the upstream segment, production operations will be a top sector in driving recruitment. Every company needs to make their production as efficient as possible and as high as possible. Then comes financial skillsets. While doing deals or partnership agreements, ensuring that right commercial agreements put in place is going to be critical to make sure companies can make money. Third one is managing government relationships. This is going to be critical because due to COVID-19, a lot of governments, particularly in Africa and other emerging markets, are put under pressure. Companies need to find people who can manage that pressure and ensure relationships are strong and positive. The fourth segment is attracting the next generation leaders. In the next five years, a lot of people are going to retire from the industry or can not be in the leadership roles. A big challenge is how to replace those individuals. Hence, the competition for talent is going to increase. The fifth call is around the ESG agenda. People are still working out what ESG means for a particular company and how it can help improve performance and attract new investment. Therefore, finding people who really understand those areas are going to be crucial.

View source version on OilReviewAfrica.com: https://www.oilreviewafrica.com/exploration/industry/jozsef-marton-from-preng-associates-highlights-trends-in-africa-s-oil-and-gas-recruitment

MIDLAND, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)– ProPetro Holding Corp. (“ProPetro” or the “Company”) (NYSE: PUMP) today announced the appointment of David Schorlemer as Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”), as well as the planned departure of Darin Holderness, the Company’s former CFO. Mr. Schorlemer assumed all duties of CFO effective October 23, 2020.

Preng & Associates assisted ProPetro in its search.

Mr. Schorlemer joins ProPetro with broad experience in oilfield services, most recently as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Secretary of Basic Energy Services, Inc., a Fort Worth, Texas-based oilfield services company. David brings more than 25 years of experience in senior level positions with public and private companies spanning such areas as finance, technology, business process integration, strategic and organizational planning, M&A and capital markets transactions. In his role as Chief Financial Officer, he will be responsible for overseeing and managing ProPetro’s finance, technology and accounting responsibilities. David holds an MBA from Texas A&M University and a bachelor’s degree in finance from The University of Texas.

“I’d like to formally welcome David to the ProPetro team. We look forward to his future contributions as our CFO,” Phillip Gobe, Chief Executive Officer said. “With David’s talent and experience in our sector and in public company governance, we will have a key player at a critical role going forward to help us remain competitive in a dynamic environment.”

“I would also like to thank Darin for offering his expertise and hard work as he helped the Company navigate through some trying times,” added Gobe. “Darin’s efforts throughout his tenure have laid a strong foundation for our finance and accounting operations moving forward and we will always be grateful for those contributions.”

About ProPetro

ProPetro Holding Corp. is a Midland, Texas-based oilfield services company providing pressure pumping and other complementary services to leading upstream oil and gas companies engaged in the exploration and production of North American unconventional oil and natural gas resources. For more information visit www.propetroservices.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201026005701/en/