History

Everard Energy Limited, formerly named HH Laps Ltd, was purchased from Avista Capital Partners in December 2019 by John Martin, Patrick Kennedy, Simon Lunn and Simon Tortike who were the former management team of Hansa Hydrocarbons. HH Laps was a wholly-owned UK subsidiary of Hansa Hydrocarbons, a private company founded in 2007 to pursue a strategy of developing stranded gas assets in the Southern Permian Basin of NW Europe.  Avista Capital Partners provided an initial funding of $100 million in July 2008. In 2013 Hansa Hydrocarbons purchased the interests in the Malory, Lancelot and Guinevere fields from Noble Energy. With the exception of its UK subsidiary (HH Laps), Hansa Hydrocarbons was sold to Discover Exploration in 2018.

Hansa Hydrocarbons was named after the Hanseatic League, which was a medieval trading alliance founded on the principals of cooperation and with a similar geographical footprint. To continue the Hanseatic theme, the company is named after Edward Everard (1699-1769), who was an important merchant, brewer and Mayor of King’s Lynn in the 18th Century.  With the decline of the influence of the Hansa, in 1751 Everard bought the Hanseatic Warehouse in Kings Lynn from the Mayor of Lübeck for £800 and he subsequently largely rebuilt the site in c. 1755. The company logo is a modern, dynamic, reinterpretation of the traditional estoile that appears commonly in heraldry of the time, including featuring in the coat of arms of Edward Everard.

Board

Everard Energy has a strong management team with extensive international oil and gas experience, including over over 50 years of collective experience in the Southern Permian Basin of NW Europe. Working together over this period they have delivered significant value to shareholders including the play opening Ruby (N05-1) gas discovery in the Netherlands.

John Martin, Chief Executive Officer

John Martin

John Martin has 30 years of experience in the upstream oil and gas sector mainly focused in the areas of projects, business development and exploration new ventures. In 2008, John co-founded Hansa Hydrocarbons, a successful private E&P company operating in the Southern North Sea, where he was CEO until its acquisition in 2018 by Discover Exploration, a Carlyle-backed company. John began his career as a project engineer in the North Sea, but since then has gained significant international experience across Middle East, North Africa and Latin America with Total, Enterprise Oil, Shell and BG Group. Of particular note was his leading role in building a material position for Enterprise Oil in Brazil where he secured a Campos Basin deepwater development project and built a significant exploration portfolio. Prior to founding Hansa Hydrocarbons, he was responsible for managing the Nile Delta exploration portfolio and business development activities out of Cairo for BG Group. A Chartered Petroleum Engineer, John holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London (MEng), an MBA from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.

Patrick Kennedy, Chief Financial Officer & Company Secretary

Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy has over 30 years of experience in the oil industry, across finance, treasury, tax, joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions. In 2008, Patrick co-founded Hansa Hydrocarbons and was CFO until its sale in 2018.  His oil industry career started at Enterprise Oil where he enjoyed a wide variety of finance roles, including running the finance function in Brazil for Enterprise’s first operated field development, arranging asset based financing in Italy, providing financial management for various assets in the UK and various corporate treasury positions.  He then joined Vetco International in 2004 as a main board director responsible for corporate finance, treasury and risk management and was part of the team that sold Vetco Gray to GE and the remaining Aibel business to Ferd private equity in 2007.  Patrick is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (ACMA) and a fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers (FCT).

Simon Lunn, Chief Technical Officer

Simon Lunn

Simon Lunn is a geophysicist and has over 40 years of experience in the international E&P business with bp, Enterprise Oil, Lunn Upstream Consultants and Hansa Hydrocarbons, in a range of technical and managerial roles. Simon co-founded Hansa Hydrocarbons, where he served as Chief Technical Officer until its acquisition in 2018 by Discover Exploration, a Carlyle backed company. In this capacity he was instrumental in developing the Basal Rotliegend play across the median line between the Netherlands and Germany. The first test of this play in the Netherlands resulted in the Ruby (N05-01) discovery, one of the largest in recent years in the Southern North Sea. Subsequent drilling has proven up further reserves on this play. Simon holds degrees in Environmental Sciences (BSc) and Geophysics (MSc) and is a fellow of the Geological Society of London. He was also a co-founder of MapStand Ltd where he serves as a non-executive director.

Simon Tortike, Developments Director

Simon Tortike

Simon Tortike has over 35 years of experience worldwide in reservoir and petroleum engineering management. In 2008, Simon joined the Hansa Hydrocarbons management team as the Developments Director shortly after the founders had closed the funding and served in this capacity until its acquisition by Discover Exploration in 2018. He began his oilfield career with several years of operational experience in the international upstream service sector. This was followed by an academic career on the petroleum engineering faculty at the University of Alberta, Canada, largely focused on the in-situ recovery from heavy oil and tar sands. In 1994, Simon left academia and moved to Australia to manage the implementation of reservoir and surface network modelling software for large-scale gas field developments in the region. In 2002, he founded IMI Innovations which provided reservoir engineering management services for development projects to Pemex, BP, and BG in the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Egypt and Kazakhstan. Simon holds degrees in petroleum engineering from Imperial College (BSc) and the University of Alberta (PhD), an MBA from Deakin University, Australia, and is a life member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Strategy

Everard Energy is led by a core management team with a proven-track record of project delivery and value creation from technically and commercially challenging assets in both the North Sea and the international arena.   Everard Energy is a financially robust business and provides a stable platform upon which management aim to leverage their regional knowledge and rigorous technical work.  The company will pursue a cautious approach to growth through both acquisition and licence applications drawing on the experience within the management team that cover the key technical, commercial and financial disciplines.

Our initial focus area of the Southern North Sea means that our strategy is based on a gas play.   We believe that conventional natural gas will play an important role in the energy transition and that the efficient exploitation of domestic gas production makes sense as an (is a preferable) alternative to increasing gas imports.   As the larger companies continue to rationalise their portfolios, the company believes there will be a steady flow of opportunities to assess for potential acquisition and investment by an established and focused player.