History

Everard Energy Limited, formerly named HH LAPS Limited, 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 principles 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 Lubeck 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 30 years of experience in the oil industry in finance related roles, most recently serving as Chief Financial Officer of Hansa Hydrocarbons from its founding in 2008 until its sale in 2018.  Prior to that in 2004 he became a main board director for Vetco International Ltd, the private equity backed acquisition of ABB’S upstream oil services business, 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.  Earlier in his career he enjoyed a wide variety of finance roles at Enterprise Oil plc, 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 has extensive experience of finance, treasury, tax, joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions, both on corporate and asset deals. Patrick is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (ACMA) and a member of the Association of Corporate Treasurers (MCT).

Simon Lunn, Chief Technical Officer

Simon Lunn

Simon Lunn has 35 years experience in the international E&P business with bp, Enterprise Oil, Lunn Upstream Consultants and Hansa Hydrocarbons. A geophysicist by training he has a strong technical background and has worked across the full cycle of the E&P business, from exploration to abandonment. Simon has significant international experience in a wide variety of basins and plays in Latin America, Africa, Europe and India. As co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Hansa Hydrocarbons he was instrumental in developing the Basal Rotliegend play, that resulted in one of the largest gas discoveries in the Netherlands in recent years. Simon is also co-founder and non-executive director of MapStand Ltd. He holds degrees in Environmental Sciences (BSc) and Geophysics (MSc) and is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London.

Simon Tortike, Developments Director

Simon Tortike

Simon Tortike has over 30 years experience worldwide in oil and gas developments as reservoir and petroleum engineer for multinationals and NOCs, and in a leading service company. After gaining experience in the service sector across the Middle East and North Africa, he moved into academia where he achieved a professorship of petroleum engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada. In 1994, Simon moved to Australia to promote and guide the implementation of reservoir and surface network modelling tools for gas field developments in the Bass Strait and the NW Shelf areas of Australia and offshore Malaysia. At Paradigm Geophysical, his particular focus was the better integration of seismic information with reservoir engineering decisions. 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), and an MBA from Deakin University, Australia.

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. Although a non-operated business today, our strategy is to pursue a mix of operated and non-operated projects; we have established the capacity to successfully and safely operate smaller developments but want the benefit of a wider portfolio without over-stretching our internal resources. As a joint venture partner, we aim to hold material equity positions where we can justify dedicating resources to add-value through conducting proprietary work.

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 will continue to receive strong government support.  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.