Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has announced the appointment of Steve Phimister, currently Shell’s vice president of Upstream in the UK, as PDO managing director to succeed Raoul Restucci in July 2021
An experienced strategic leader of large businesses and organisations, Phimister has a varied background in technical, commercial and management roles working with Shell for nearly 30 years across Europe, Australia, Asia and the Americas. In his latest role, he was leading Shell’s Upstream business in the UK, a major operated business with a diverse workforce of 1,500 people engaged in exploration, production, development, decommissioning and energy transition activities across the North Sea.
He is also a senior member of several UK government-industry bodies and a director on various energy-related boards.
Restucci, who is retiring after a career spanning more than 40 years in the energy industry, has been managing director since October 2010. He led the Sultanate’s largest enterprise with a continuous rise in oil production, and championed a wide range of PDO priorities including health and safety, extensive social and In-Country Value programmes, lean continuous business improvement and diversity and inclusion for all its staff.
He also championed PDO’s transition to a fully-fledged energy company with the recent establishment of Energy Development Oman (EDO) for the accelerated pivoting to renewable energies, and PDO-Services, as a platform for leveraging differentiating company capabilities alongside strong partnerships with local SME, academia and accelerator hubs.
Restucci was listed in the Forbes top 100 CEOs for MENA earlier this year and has just been awarded the ‘Honorarium Medal’ by His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tariq.
