Woodside CEO sets retirement date

Chief executive officer (CEO) of Australian energy major Woodside will be retiring from the company on 3 June 2021.

Woodside said on Tuesday that CEO Peter Coleman will leave the company on 3 June. He will also step down from the board of directors on 19 April 2021 and continue to work with Woodside until his retirement date.

The energy giant added that Meg O’Neill, Woodside’s executive vice president of development and marketing, will be appointed acting CEO from 20 April 2021.

This decision follows the announcement from December 2020 when Coleman’s made his retirement intentions known. At the time, no exact date was set except that it would be in ‘the second half of 2021’. By the date of his retirement, Coleman will have served ten years in the role of CEO.

Coleman has been Woodside’s chief executive since May 2011 when he replaced former CEO Don Voelte. He has worked in the oil and gas industry for 37 years, 27 of which with ExxonMobil.

Woodside chairman Richard Goyder said: “Peter has been an outstanding CEO, creating a resilient and future-focused organisation. Throughout his time at the helm of Woodside, Peter has demonstrated a commitment to promoting inclusion and diversity, operational excellence, a safe workplace, prudent capital management and maintenance of a strong balance sheet.

“The board is very pleased to announce the appointment of Meg O’Neill as acting CEO. Meg has demonstrated that she is an extremely capable executive, underpinned by her extensive experience and track record in the global energy sector”.

Joining Woodside as a chief operations officer in May 2018, O’Neill currently has accountability for Woodside’s development and marketing activities.

She, like Coleman, joined Woodside from ExxonMobil where she held a variety of senior leadership roles in operations and developments and country leadership in Norway and Canada.

Woodside did remind that the board’s internal and external search for the company’s next chief executive was progressing.