Andrew Benitz

Chief Executive Officer

Andrew Benitz was a Founding Director of Jersey Oil and Gas E&P Ltd (now a subsidiary of Jersey Oil and Gas plc) and has over 17 years’ experience in financial markets and company management. Prior to co-founding Jersey Oil and Gas, Andrew was Chief Executive Officer and Director at Longreach Oil and Gas Ltd, a TSX-V listed company. He joined Longreach in 2009 as Chief Operating Officer when it was a small private company and helped oversee the company’s growth, building a significant portfolio of oil and gas assets in Morocco.

Prior to his move into industry, Andrew worked at Deutsche Bank AG as an Analyst within the Oil and Gas Investment Banking Group as well as within the Equity Capital Markets team, where he worked on a broad range of oil and gas M&A transactions, together with equity and equity related financings. Andrew is also founder and Director of Titan Properties SL, a real estate business in Spain. He completed his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh University graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours).

Graham Forbes

Chief Financial Officer

Graham Forbes is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry.  Prior to joining Jersey Oil & Gas in 2021, Graham was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Ithaca Energy from 2010 to 2020. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers before moving to ExxonMobil, where for over five years he worked on a variety of operational and acquisition-based projects. In 2002, Graham joined First Oil Group where, as Finance Director and then Executive Director, he helped develop the business into the UK’s then largest privately owned E&P company.  Following his move to Ithaca Energy in 2010, Graham was instrumental in transforming the company into a major independent UKCS operator through both organic developments and multiple acquisitions. He has extensive quoted company and corporate finance experience, having completed various debt and equity market offerings and the US$1.2 billion sale and subsequent delisting of Ithaca Energy.

Richard Smith

Chief Commercial Officer

Richard Smith joined the Jersey Oil & Gas executive team as Chief Commercial Officer in 2021. Richard has over 20 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry and wider energy sector, in various senior business development, commercial, corporate finance and strategy positions. He was previously Corporate Development Director at Ithaca Energy, where he spent 10 years working to deliver its successful growth from a small-cap E&P business into one of the largest independent UK North Sea oil and gas producers. Prior to joining Ithaca Energy, Richard spent eight years with TotalEnergies working in its UK North Sea business and at its head office in France. He commenced his career in the energy industry as a consultant at EA Technology, working on various financial and regulatory assignments associated with liberalisation of the European electricity and gas industries.

Stephen Kirby

Project Manager - Greater Buchan Area Development

Stephen Kirby is a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers with 25 years of greenfield & brownfield project development experience in the upstream oil and gas industry.  Stephen started his career working for engineering contractors on developments in the UK, Denmark and Brazil on projects for both manned & unmanned fixed platforms, floating production facilities and subsea tie-backs.  In 2001 Stephen moved to work for Kerr-McGee (North Sea) Ltd as Quality, Health, Safety & Environment Manager for the Maclure & Tullich field developments, following which he joined Nexen Petroleum (UK) Ltd.  Working initially as Health, Safety, Environment & Social Responsibility Manager, before moving to Facilities Engineering Manager, Stephen was part of the project management team that successfully delivered both the Buzzard and Golden Eagle field developments from concept selection to production.

David Larcombe

Deputy Project Manager

David Larcombe is a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Chemical Engineers with a broad knowledge of the oil and gas industry. David commenced his career as a Process Engineer with CB&I where he designed oil and gas platforms, LNG facilities and pipelines. Building on David’s technical foundation of the Oil and Gas Industry, he moved to IHS Markit to focus on the commercial aspects of the industry. He spent a number of years in the Upstream Oil & Gas Asset Valuation Team, responsible for the valuation of global oil and gas assets and field development planning.

David moved to Jersey Oil and Gas in 2016 where his focus is the commercial and technical valuation of oil and gas assets and corporates, to deliver JOG’s production focussed acquisitions strategy. David completed his undergraduate studies at The University of Birmingham graduating with a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering (1st Class Honours).

Dr Mohit Khanna

Subsurface Manager

Mohit has almost 30 years of upstream experience in leading teams and providing geological knowledge across the full value chain in oil & gas exploration, development and production operations. Mohit started his career in Norway working for Norsk Hydro and Statoil (now Equinor) for their International operations as well as North Sea assets before moving on to international roles with BG and Salamander in India, Indonesia and Thailand. In 2013 Mohit joined Petrofac to establish their Technology Centre in Delhi, India, before moving back to the UK as Chief Geologist. He subsequently became head of Subsurface leading projects to deliver Field development Plans for onshore and offshore development.

Mohit is an AAPG certified Petroleum geologist with a PhD and is also the European councillor for the AAPG’s Division of Professional Affairs.

Sean Rush

Legal Counsel

Sean Rush has been a UK oil and gas lawyer for over 20 years having worked at senior levels in house for ENI and Petro-Canada and as a partner in a London city law firm. Mr Rush was a member of the former UK industry – Government steering group ‘PILOT’ and has served on Oil & Gas UK’s legal sub-committee as well as being a Chairman of the UK Energy Lawyers Group. Sean has a Master’s in Petroleum Law and Policy (with distinction) from Dundee University’s Centre for Energy, Mineral and Petroleum Law and Policy.

Rebecca Gibbs

Group Financial Controller

Rebecca Gibbs joined Jersey Oil and Gas plc in 2011 becoming the Group’s Financial Controller in 2014. Rebecca’s career in accounting started in 1998 at PwC followed by Arthur Andersen. In 2001 Rebecca founded BXI, a company specialising in outsourced accounting solutions, before joining Jersey Oil and Gas plc.