About Stuart McGeoch

I left Shell International in 2022 after 35 years working in a variety of upstream oil & gas leadership roles in Africa, Australia, Europe and the US. During that time, I held roles as a decision preparer/opportunity manager, as a decision taker/executive and as a trained independent decision facilitator. I have worked on all sides of corporate decision making. 

An early role as leader of Shell’s Upstream graduate entry training program exposed me to the rapidly developing science of the psychology of decision making. Over the years since I have gone out of my way to build a library of leadership tools that can make a real difference to decision quality in business, while remaining pragmatic and scalable. 

I finished my career as the lead of Shell’s oil exploration program in the US Gulf of Mexico. After 4 years I was proud, in addition to having an excellent discovery record, to have had a leading role in a sea-change in the culture and diversity of the organization. My contribution as a member of US GOM leadership team, was to have brought a much increased level of strategic integration between the multiple different exploration, development and production assets and functions working across Shell’s Gulf of Mexico Upstream business. 

Before the US GoM, I led Shell’s first bids to enter the newly opened upstream oil & gas sector in Mexico. This was in many ways a continuation of my previous role based out of the Netherlands, as a venture start-up specialist. I led the set-up of new Shell companies in several African countries: Tanzania, Benin, South Africa (offshore) and Namibia. Overseeing the first seismic and/or well operations in these remote and potentially high-risk locations undoubtedly left many battle scars but was deeply rewarding and extremely educational. Venture entry roles come with particular challenges, including working with governments often unfamiliar with oil & gas exploration, new or ill-defined legislation, poor track records on bribery & corruption, the absence of any support infrastructure for finance or HSSE management etc. We had to navigate balancing the need for a pragmatic approach to challenging and time pressured business objectives, with the very real need to meet Shell’s obligations of full compliance with laws and regulation, both local and global.

Six years in Nigeria preceded that role, starting as a technical geoscience manager in Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta but finishing with 3 years as commercial strategy & portfolio manager in Lagos. I was lucky enough there to find myself at the centre of the debate over new oil & gas legislation in the country. I led both Shell’s and later the wider industry’s, response to the new legislation. Working with management consultants McKinsey we illustrated the potential impact of the legislation and advocated for alternative approaches. Stakeholders included the different political and regulatory elements of government themselves but also major international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. This was a great experience in learning how to translate complex topics to different audiences and to work with senior leaders in multiple organisations with very different cultures. 

Having joined as an engineer, earlier roles in the Netherlands, Gabon, the UK and Australia were naturally more technical, primarily in petroleum engineering as a petrophysicist. I was, however, lucky enough to also have taken instructional side steps into learning & development, where I had almost 3 years directing a variety of Shell graduate and leadership courses, and in research & development where for 4 years I led several teams working in exploration research, primarily on rock properties and seismic amplitude interpretation.

In summary a highly varied career from which there is a great deal of useful experience to share.