Michael Zechner selected Managing Director of Wintershall Dea Norge
Wintershall Dea has selected Michael Zechner to be the new Senior Vice President and Managing Director of its Norwegian subsidiary, Wintershall Dea Norge. The native Austrian will begin in his new role this coming March. Zechner has been working for Wintershall Dea since 2003 and currently serves as Senior Vice President Global Exploration. He will be succeeding Alv Björn Solheim, who has been Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Wintershall Dea Norge since 2019 and will now be retiring.
Over the past 19 years, Zechner has held various technical and management positions at Europe’s leading gas and oil producer. He has already worked in numerous fields, including as an Unconventional Operations Manager in Argentina, as an Exploration Coordinator, and as a Senior Geophysicist in Stavanger. Since the merger he has been Senior Vice President for Global Exploration.
He started his career in the SPEAD Programme and later worked in a variety of technical and managerial positions in Argentina, Norway, and corporate units. Zechner holds a diploma in Applied Geosciences from the University of Leoben, Austria and a postgraduate degree in Petroleum Economics from the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Wintershall Dea CEO Mario Mehren and COO Dawn Summers thank Alv Björn Solheim on behalf of the Executive Board and staff: “We would like to thank Alv for his longstanding commitment and strong leadership within #teamwintershalldea. He has played a significant role in the success of our company. On behalf of the board of Wintershall Dea, we wish him all the best.”
Major player on the Norwegian Continental Shelf
Norway is one of Wintershall Dea's core areas for growth. The company is now one of the leading gas and oil companies on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, having operated there for more than 45 years. Wintershall Dea has more than 100 licences on the shelf and is operator in around a third of them, for example the producing fields Brage and Vega. The portfolio is being expanded further with smart technical solutions. For instance, the company is attracting attention with projects such as Nova. This field is being developed by means of a subsea tieback, with production facilities on the seabed connected to an existing platform.
About Wintershall Dea
Wintershall Dea is Europe’s leading independent natural gas and oil company with more than 120 years of experience as an operator and project partner along the entire E&P value chain. The company with German roots and headquarters in Kassel and Hamburg explores for and produces gas and oil in 13 countries worldwide in an efficient and responsible manner. With activities in Europe, Russia, Latin America and the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa), Wintershall Dea has a global upstream portfolio and, with its participation in natural gas transport, is also active in the midstream business. More in our Annual Report.
As a European gas and oil company, we support the EU's 2050 carbon neutrality target. As our contribution we have set ourselves ambitious targets: We want to be net zero across our entire upstream operations – both operated and non-operated – by 2030. This includes Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) greenhouse gas emissions on an equity share basis. In addition Wintershall Dea will bring methane emissions intensity below 0.1 per cent by 2025 and maintain zero routine flaring of associated gas in its operations. The climate goals are to be achieved through portfolio optimization, emissions reduction through more energy efficiency, investments in nature-based compensation solutions and in future technologies such as hydrogen and CCS. You can find more about this in our Sustainability Report.
Wintershall Dea was formed from the merger of Wintershall Holding GmbH and DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG, in 2019. Today, the company employs around 2,500 people worldwide from over 60 nations.
