OREANDA-NEWS. January 23, 2014. A year ago we merged two of our businesses – one based in Aberdeen, UK, and the other in Stavanger, Norway. This is not the first time such a move has taken place within the industry. Other energy companies have also tried to integrate their businesses on different sides of the North Sea.

What was distinctive about our move is that we were merging businesses at different ends of the operational spectrum. While our focus offshore UK is primarily as a mature, revenue-producing basin with growth prospects, in Norway we are concentrating on exploration and preparing for the start-up of our first major project.

We made this change so that we could better share lessons learned and best practices of working in this exciting and challenging basin,” said Andy Samuel, Managing Director of Europe E&P, who was responsible for the integration. “By combining the two businesses we also aimed to cut back on duplication of responsibilities and establish clear accountabilities through a simplified leadership structure.

Open, transparent and engaging
The team tasked with overseeing this complex integration adopted a way of working which focused on an open, transparent and engaging approach right from the start. “Many organisational changes are done behind closed doors with a small project team concentrating on getting the right people and structure in place,” said Andy.

We deliberately moved away from this mentality by building broad awareness of the process among employees. This openness proved a critical element behind the success of the integration with a strong sense of engagement and shared ownership in what we achieved together.

"Throughout the process the leadership team engaged with everyone working in the two businesses to understand how and where they would best fit in following the integration. We took great care to match the skills and capabilities of our employees with the needs of our company."

Andy Samuel Managing Director of Europe E&P

Learning lessons
During the integration, we wanted to learn from the experiences of others, both working within BG Group and externally,” said Adam Prince, who managed the integration of the Norwegian and UK businesses.

So we brought on board a colleague who had experience of organisational change in QGC, our Australian business, and we spoke with the team out in Brazil. We also went out and interviewed people from Conoco Philips, Hess, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and other oil and gas companies who had been involved in similar programmes involving integrating their offices in Norway and the UK. They also passed on useful lessons which we fed in to our own plan.

This approach has continued since the merged business has been up and running, with employees going out and speaking with colleagues throughout the company.

“We went out in the BG family to find examples of assets working well with partners in fields where we are not the operator. We took on board the successful approach adopted in Brazil and incorporated some of the ideas they shared in the fields where we are non-operator in the North Sea,” said Ernst den Hartigh, Vice President of Assets at Europe E&P. “Although we already had strong relationships, hearing a fresh perspective from another asset helped us refine our approach and enhance our relationship with the operators of these fields even further.

Opportunities for employees

A further benefit of the integration is the variety of opportunities and different kinds of work created for employees.

Previously, employees working in either Aberdeen or Stavanger may have had to re-locate in order to take on new challenges or get broader exposure to different areas within their respective disciplines, but this is now no longer the case,” said Nikki Fox, Vice President for Human Resources and Business Support. “Staff can now take on a variety of roles without having to move country. This means that a subsurface professional can work on the full life cycle of a project and someone who has been focusing on exploration in a new basin can also get exposure to working in a mature basin.