Affiliates
Nick van Ooyen
Nick van Ooyen has 31 years of international experience across various Shell companies spanning exploration, development, HR and commercial departments. His various roles provide him with a valuable combination of practical and strategic perspectives.
His extensive career has included managing the delivery of a range of global exploration and development projects, bidding for exploration license awards, setting country strategy, leading economic assessments and negotiations with stakeholders across a variety of commercial deals, and hands-on experience managing large departments across multiple locations.
Nick has particular expertise in exploration and new business development. His executive positions at Shell included:
- From 2006-2010 Nick was Exploration Manager Atlantic Margin & Sweden – responsible for all exploration activities in UK, Ireland, Faroes, Norway and Sweden with an annual budget of $200 million
- He was a member of the Norske Shell Leadership team
- Nick was the leader of Shell’s shale gas venture in Sweden and subsequently advised on technical, commercial and socio-political issues regarding shale gas projects in Europe
- From 2004-2006 he was Shell’s Exploration Global Skillpool Manager – managing resourcing and capability responsibilities for 800 staff globally (based in Netherlands).
- Prior to this Nick held business development, exploration and strategy roles in Nigeria – for example, he was head of the department responsible for Shell exploration and portfolio strategy, maturation of exploration, unitisation & crude handling agreements and new business development. He also headed a multi-disciplinary team tasked with realising value from conventional exploration, appraisal and field development business opportunities (e.g. farm-in/farm-out, divestment, alternative funding arrangements innovative subsurface and surface development methods)
- Nick has performed a number of technical roles throughout Shell including seismology, geology and geophysics.
Nick holds an MsC in Geology from Leiden University in The Netherlands and speaks English, Dutch, German, French and Norwegian.
