Voser leaves stable legacy in helping Shell weather stormy time

Peter Voser’s decision to retire brings the curtain down on a 29-year career at Royal Dutch Shell that coincided with one of the most volatile periods in the history of the oil industry.

Widely respected in the industry for his financial competence and deft stewardship of Europe’s largest oil company by market value, the departing chief executive will be remembered for delivering a series of costly, long-life projects designed to underpin cash flow growth for years to come.

But some investors have criticised him for maintaining high levels of capital spending on new projects at the expense of increasing Shell’s dividend. The company did not see a big increase in production on his watch, reflecting the difficulties all the majors face in trying to raise output and reserves.

“His legacy won’t be one of growth but stability and cash generation from big, capital-intensive projects,” said Jason Kenney, an oil analyst at Santander.

Simon Henry, Shell’s chief financial officer, said that Mr Voser had had “quite some time in the limelight” after nine years on the Shell board, and there was a “general expectation that everyone moves on at some time”.

A Swiss national, Mr Voser joined Shell in 1982 after graduating in business from the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich. He went on to work in various business and finance roles in Switzerland, the UK, Argentina and Chile.

He became Shell’s group chief internal auditor in 1997 and later took senior finance roles in the company’s oil products business.

In March 2002 he began a two-year stint as chief financial officer of engineering group ABB, before moving back to Shell as chief financial officer in 2004. He assumed the role of chief executive five years later.

As chief financial officer, he was credited with restoring the company’s battered reputation with investors in the wake of the accounting scandal in 2004 when it emerged Shell had overstated its oil reserves – a crucial measure of an oil company’s performance.

He put his stamp on the company in 2009 with a wide-ranging overhaul aimed at simplifying Shell’s complex structure, speeding up decision-making and ensuring projects came on stream faster. The move came amid widespread criticism of Shell for a series of delays and cost overruns at some of its most high-profile projects.

As a result of the reorganisation, Mr Henry said that Shell’s headcount fell from the “high 90,000s three to four years ago” to 87,000 full-time employees at the end of last year.

Jorma Ollila, chairman, praised Mr Voser for his success in “reorganising the company, delivering growth and developing a clear forward strategy with a strong portfolio of new options”.

During Mr Voser’s tenure, Shell brought on stream some of the largest, most expensive projects in its history, among them the $18bn-$19bn Pearl gas-to-liquids venture in Qatar which turns gas into diesel and other high-value oil products, and a massive liquefied natural gas project, also in Qatar.

He also oversaw Shell’s big bet on Brazilian biofuels and its groundbreaking decision to create a floating LNG production venture in Australia, a first for the industry. But he also presided over missteps in Alaska, where the company has spent $5bn without completing a single well. Its exploration campaign in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska has been hit by a series of equipment failures, regulatory issues and legal challenges.

Mr Henry praised Mr Voser for his strategy of “high levels of investment to develop a business that’s capable of sustainable growth through the business cycle”. He said Shell now had a “more sustainable conveyor belt of opportunities that now exceeds our capacity to construct and invest”. This meant the company was “less exposed to the vagaries of the short-term cycle”.