Australia’s Beach Energy said on Tuesday its managing director and chief executive officer Matt Kay would leave the company to pursue other professional opportunities.
Kay joined the company in May 2016 as CEO but also took over the role of managing director in February 2019.
Beach said in a statement it has appointed Morné Engelbrecht, who is currently chief financial officer, as acting CEO while it conducts a search process to find a replacement.
The company’s chairman Glenn Davis “paid tribute to Kay for his leadership in transforming the company into a strategically diverse business.”
According to Davis, Beach is in a good position to deliver material gas production into the tightening Australian East Coast, New Zealand but also international LNG markets.
“Over nearly six years, Matt delivered on the company’s growth ambitions via the strategic acquisition of Lattice Energy and oversaw the commencement of our current development programs in the Victorian Otway and Perth Basins,” Davis said.
Kay said given Beach’s current “strong position”, he felt now was an appropriate time to depart to pursue other professional opportunities.
He said he had joined Beach to help the firm grow from a single basin operator and diversify the company’s business.
“This was capped off by the sanctioning of the Moomba carbon capture and storage project this week,” Kay said.
Besides taking the FID on the Moomba CCS project with operator Santos, Beach has recently signed a heads of agreement to supply LNG to a unit of energy giant BP, the company’s first such deal.
Under the deal, BP Singapore would buy about 3.75 million tonnes of Beach’s expected LNG volumes from the second stage of the Waitsia gas project.