Peter Coleman
EXXONMOBIL’S operations manager when the Longford gas plant fatally exploded in 1998 has been named Woodside Petroleum managing director and chief executive.
Peter Coleman, 51, a little-known 27-year Exxon veteran, will officially take over from fiery Nebraskan Don Voelte on May 30, ending a global search for the new leader of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company.
The Victorian government criticised Mr Coleman for his performance as an operations manager for Exxon subsidiary Esso during the 1998 explosion.
The accident – which left two people dead, eight injured and cut Victoria’s natural gas supply for several weeks – was not mentioned on the version of his CV that Woodside released yesterday.
But despite the omission, Mr Coleman said the tragic events of Longford would have a significant influence over his leadership at Woodside. ”I still mourn the loss of the people who were killed and hurt at Longford and I think about them each and every day,” he told BusinessDay last night.
The explosion dragged Esso into six years of court battles, including a royal commission, a coronial inquest, a criminal prosecution by WorkCover, a 10-week Supreme Court trial and ultimately a $32 million class action payout.
But the Victorian government accused Mr Coleman of lacking detailed knowledge or understanding of certain crucial systems, amid a corporate culture of lax training standards.
Mr Coleman said the tragedy had given him ”tremendous learnings” that he would use for good at Woodside.
”You’ve got to reflect on these things and say how am I going to respond to it, and the way you respond is to make sure you learn from it and you make sure you apply those learnings each and every day in the way you go about your work,” he said.
”We’ve learned a heck of a lot from that and you will find that’s reflected in the business we run today.”
Electrical Trades Union secretary Dean Mighell said he hoped Mr Coleman’s pledge held firm.
”Safety doesn’t appear to have been the priority in the past, and we can only hope he gets it right,” he said. ”A lot of workers in Victoria are still traumatised by the events of Longford.”
Woodside has long been touted as a potential takeover target for bigger companies, including BHP Billiton, which last year sounded out WA Premier Colin Barnett about a takeover.
Mr Coleman’s pay deal includes a clause under which his entitlements will be paid out in the event of a takeover. Despite not working under such a clause in his previous role, he said it was a standard feature for many companies.
”A ‘change of control’ clause is very standard for companies the size of Woodside any CEO taking on any role will want to understand where they stand on those sorts of provisions and in my mind it’s just a standard provision that should be in a contract like this,” he said.
He will earn a base salary of $2.1 million a year, with a range of short-term and long-term incentives, including Woodside shares worth $3 million.
Mr Coleman was born in Sale, barely 50 kilometres from the small town of Woodside after which the company took its name in 1954.
Sale is headquarters for Exxon’s Bass Strait joint venture with BHP Billiton, and after joining the group – through subsidiary Esso – as an engineer in 1984, he spent the next 27 years in various roles with the company.
He vowed that the ambitious corporate strategy fostered by Mr Voelte over the past seven years would continue under his leadership.
Woodside expects first gas from the massive Pluto project this year and is hoping to add two more processing trains at the site. The company has flagged an expansion of the $30 billion Browse LNG project from three to four trains, and is also trying to strike a deal with the East Timorese government to work on the Sunrise field north of Darwin.
Despite speculation from some analysts that the company had taken on too much and would have to refine its goals, Mr Coleman said he planned to continue with Mr Voelte’s ambitious corporate strategy.
”There’s no thought at all of spinning off any assets,” he said.
A slump in oil prices on Wednesday night pushed oil and gas stocks down yesterday, with Woodside shares falling $1.17 to $45.03.
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