Andy Brown has been Shell Country Chairman in Qatar since 2004, and has been with Shell for over 20 years. He talks about his roots, his career and, more specifically, about his role in the lead up to the development of Shell’s multi-billion dollar Pearl GTL project in Qatar – Shell’s largest equity investment anywhere in the world to date, and a project of which he feels very proud and personally accountable...

Q. Where were you born and brought up?

I was born in Bristol and was the youngest of six children. As the youngest child I had to fight for space and attention – and I have been fighting ever since! My father was an eminent ophthalmic surgeon. My mother is a physicist and used to teach physics.

I was educated at Clifton College in Bristol, a good British private school. After school I took a year off to gain work experience with Rolls Royce in its Aero Engine division, then went to Emmanuel College at Cambridge University to study Engineering Science.

I am a Mechanical Engineer but my speciality is in rotating equipment, of which we have a lot at the Pearl GTL [Gas to Liquids] project here in Qatar. The project has a total of 1.2 gigawatt of rotating equipment!

In my youth I was a keen sportsman and liked rugby and athletics. My brother-in-law played rugby for England so this acted as a driver for me. However, my best sporting achievement was running in the 400-metre event, for which I held the school record for a while. I think the 400-metre race remains symbolic of my character in that the most important ingredient for success is determination and perseverance to win and you have to be prepared to put yourself through a lot to succeed.

I met my wife, Julie, before I went to university and got engaged to her during my final year at university.

Q. What was your first job?

Since university, I have always worked for Shell. I applied to Shell whilst I was at university, and when I graduated I went to Holland to undergo Shell’s standard six-month induction and training programme. This made my personal life a little difficult as I had just become engaged and my fiancé had not finished her studies. However, Shell then made my personal life even more challenging by sending me to New Zealand for my first assignment!

I applied to Shell for a job because the oil industry offered opportunities for travel and the job certainly lived up to my expectations. I also wanted to join an oil company because I believed that people in the oil business were given extraordinary and varied challenges.

My job in New Zealand was as a mechanical engineer with Shell BP Todd, based in New Plymouth and working on the company’s offshore development in the Maui ‘A’ Field. Shell BP Todd was a small company and I was thrown in at the deep end, managing projects from the moment I arrived.

After six months I was given leave to go back to the UK and within five days of landing I married my fiancée, and she has been my wife ever since. We returned together to New Zealand, where we had our first child, a boy called Richard, who is now 21.

Q. Where were your next postings with Shell?

My next posting was to The Netherlands, where I worked in Central Engineering for NAM [Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij], Shell’s upstream operation in Holland.

After 18 months I was assigned to work on the development of the F3 project, which was to become the largest gas production platform, at 6,500 tonnes, in the Dutch part of the North Sea. I started off as the Rotating Equipment Engineer on the project but was later appointed to be Construction Manager. It was during this time in Holland that my second child, a daughter, Emma, was born.

I was then transferred to Taranto, in southern Italy, to manage the construction of the F3 platform. This was a demanding job but I worked with a great team of people. I learned to speak Italian as that was essential to communicate safety messages to the workers. I enjoyed my time in Italy enormously, the project was very successful and the F3 platform had a very successful production history.

My next posting was to Brunei in a process engineering role. I was Head of Front-End Engineering and in this role I managed the conceptual engineering of the Offshore West part of Shell’s infrastructure in Brunei. We had over 100 platforms and the long-term maintenance of the infrastructure, from pipelines and platforms to living quarters and wellheads, was challenging. During my time there I initiated a project to completely redevelop and simplify the offshore infrastructure, bringing people and equipment onshore.

In Brunei we had our third child, a son called Oliver. Life in Brunei was great fun. I was in charge of the Cub Scouts and we would take the kids into the jungle to catch enormous insects and to camp out. It was a great time and place to have young children.

My next posting was to Oman, where I was initially in charge of Planning at PDO [Petroleum Development Oman] for the company’s oil operations. My boss in those days was Abdallah Lamki, who is today still Deputy Managing Director at PDO. I really respect him and he taught me a lot.

I think PDO is still one of the best oil companies in the Middle East, with an enormously challenging task. The company is heavily Omanised, with a high level of operational excellence, which I think is greatly under-appreciated.

I was later assigned to be the Manager of the Bajah Rima Asset. This is an asset in central Oman with 33 fields and I was in charge of everything, from exploration to production.

At that time the Bajah Rima Asset produced around 125,000 barrels of oil a day, which represented around 15 per cent of PDO’s oil production. So this was a fair-sized operation and the work gave me a good introduction to the breadth and depth of the oil business in the field.

Q. Why were you posted back to London?

Despite my relatively short time in the Middle East, it was decided that I had become a Middle East expert and I was assigned to Shell Centre in London as Senior Advisor to Jeroen van der Veer - now Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell - who at that time was Vice Chairman of Shell and who had a regional responsibility for Shell’s activities in the Middle East and the Former Soviet Union.

This was a fantastic job that encompassed 46 countries in which Shell had, or aspired to have, operations. The role was very much one of a corporate ambassador, representing Shell. A good understanding of the politics of the regions was essential and I was called upon on a regular basis to come up with independent advice on a wide range of topics.

It was during my time in London that my wife and I had our fourth child, Sophie.

I got a lot out of that job but was only in that position for 18 months before Phil Watts was appointed to the role of Chairman of Shell and I was assigned as the Private Assistant to the Chairman.

This role gave me enormous opportunities. I travelled the world and met many Heads of State, Prime Ministers, Rulers and other celebrities. One of my most notable memories is going, with Phil Watts, to see Tony Blair, then the British Prime Minister, on 17th September, 2001, just six days after the terrible tragedy of 9/11 had struck. Clearly, 10 Downing Street was in a crisis mode but Tony Blair still wanted to meet with representatives of Shell because, as an international operator, the company had a broad view on what was going on around the world and what may happen next. This was a fascinating period of time. I learned a tremendous amount about strategy and planning and about how international relations worked.

Q. How did your relationship with Qatar begin, and how did Pearl GTL come about?

In 2001 Phil and Linda Cook, Head of Shell Gas and Power, were keen for Shell to get a position back in Qatar. I remember that we were at an OPEC seminar in 2001 in Vienna and had a series of meetings lined up with various energy ministers. Naturally, one of the ministers we wanted to see was Qatar’s Energy and Industry Minister, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah. However, we had not been able to secure an appointment with him and our meeting list was full. Suddenly the phone rang and it was the Director of the Minister’s office, Abdulaziz Al-Malki, who called and said Minister Al-Attiyah would like to meet us in 45 minutes. We postponed our other meetings and off we went. This turned out to be a very good decision!

In 2002 I was then given the job of Project Director to lead Shell’s efforts in Qatar, to develop the Pearl GTL integrated development project. At that time Shell had established a GTL plant in Malaysia and was examining the possibility of setting up new GTL plants in places like Argentina and Iran.

As Shell had left Qatar some years before, we needed to put in a lot of focus and effort to re-establish a business position in the country. We were convinced that Qatar was the best choice for GTL, due to its resources, infrastructure and transparent leadership, but we also knew that we needed to work extra hard to build a new relationship with the Qatari Government to establish a GTL project in the country.

Our efforts proved successful and in early 2002 a Letter of Intent was signed to proceed with studying a GTL project in Qatar. Rob Dakers and Ton Ten Have were instrumental in getting the Letter of Intent signed and in October 2002 Shell started commercial discussions for real with Qatar Petroleum. I led the commercial team.

In October 2003 a Heads of Agreement was signed after Shell had undertaken what was, in our industry, a relatively short period of negotiations. During all of this time I was working with Shell Global Solutions and our Exploration & Production colleagues to get the project defined and working through the various stages of project development.

In 2004 we signed the Production Sharing Agreement [PSA]. We matured the project and I then moved to Doha with my wife and two younger children to head up the project on the ground.

When I moved to Qatar I did so in my role as Managing Director for the Pearl GTL project, and in 2005 I was appointed Shell Country Chairman in Qatar. This was a fantastic move for me and an appointment which I hold to this day.

Pearl GTL is Shell’s largest equity investment project anywhere in the world.

The major milestone for me will always be the decision to take the FID [Final Investment Decision] in 2006, which required securing approval from Qatar Petroleum and the Government of Qatar for the Final Development Plan and securing the budget approval from the Shell Board of Directors. I had been involved with the project from the original commercial discussions to project execution today, so this was an enormous personal achievement for me.

Because of my involvement from the very beginning I have an enormous sense of accountability for this project. I was involved in setting up the commercial deal and selecting the project team, so my sense of accountability is very strong, and I think that is very important.

Q. As the Pearl GTL project comes together, how is Shell’s relationship with the Government of Qatar and Qatar Petroleum?

I think Shell’s relationships with the Government and with Qatar Petroleum are good and it is my goal to always be completely transparent in our dealings with them. We receive strong support and governance from Qatar Petroleum, with representatives from Qatar Petroleum chairing all our important governance committees.

The Government of Qatar, represented by Qatar Petroleum, is the resource holder and owns the gas. Shell invests 100 per cent of the money in the project and cost recovery and profit sharing have been agreed under a PSA.

Q. How is the Pearl GTL project progressing, and what are the particular challenges you have faced to date?

The Engineering, Procurement and Construction market is very tight. It has been challenging getting sufficient materials and human resources, but I am glad that we have been successful and we remain broadly in line with the cost and schedule targets we set when we launched the project in 2006. The Pearl GTL project will sell high quality liquid fuels and products, the prices of which are linked to the oil price so the economic outlook for the project at high oil prices looks good.

I am proud of where we are today and of the fantastic team that I have here in Qatar. I have really good people working with me, whom I can trust, and we have received an enormous amount of support from all over the world.

When I started working on Qatar in 2002 there was no-one from Shell in-country. By the end of 2008 there will be over 1,000 Shell people working on the project, with a total workforce of over 35,000 people.

The Pearl GTL project has acquired a number of superlatives. It will have the largest quality base oil plant in the world, the largest oxygen plant built at one time, the largest industrial water re-use scheme in the world with zero liquid discharge, one of the largest hydro-crackers in the world and, for Shell, it covers the largest single construction site we have ever managed. So, obviously, there have been many challenges on the way to get to where we are today.

Rob Kretzers, the Project Director for Pearl GTL, is doing a splendid job and has broken this vast project down into a series of small, manageable parts, with an excellent organisational structure to clarify accountability.

One of the greatest concerns has, naturally, been safety in a project of this size. How can I be sure that every day when I go home I will not have to answer a phone call that tells me someone has died or been badly injured on site? So safety has been a priority at all times. Our safety record to date has been good. We have had no fatalities and our TRCF [Total Recordable Case Frequency] stands at 1.2 per million man hours worked. Our target last year was 3 and our target this year is 2.5. Our performance is well below the global Shell average but we will never be complacent about the need for safety at all times.

Another challenge we have faced and try hard to overcome has been to ensure the health and welfare of our workers. The workers live in what we like to call the ‘Pearl Village’ which is run by a town mayor and where we have established recreation, communication, health and commercial facilities.

Shell also understands its responsibility to give back to the communities in which it operates. Our Social Investment Programme would make an article in itself but, in brief, we have recently opened the Qatar Shell Research and Technology Centre, where we will invest up to $100 million over the next 10 years in technology, and some of our social initiatives include the setting up of Shell’s Intilaaqah Youth Enterprise programme in Qatar, supporting the establishment of a substantial nature reserve, or biosphere, running a national road safety campaign and backing the launch of the Women in Business Award in Qatar.

Q. It’s an enormous job. What do you do to relax?

I like living in Qatar and I like the fact that the pace of growth is so exciting here. The people are friendly and approachable and the emphasis on relationships is remarkable.

I play some golf and have a handicap of 13. I try to take all of my annual leave and enjoy travelling with the family. For the last couple of years I have made time to walk around England’s Cornish Coastal Path. Every year I walk about 50 miles over three days and this year the walk will be from St Ives to Penzance. It gives me time to think about things other than work.