Zoe Yujnovich will succeed Andrew Smith as chair of the Shell companies in Australia from April 1, 2017.
Mr Smith will return to London in May to take up the position of executive vice president trading and supply, assuming responsibility for all of Shell’s trading and shipping activities globally.
Ms Yujnovich, Executive Vice President Oil Sands based in Calgary, Canada, will relocate to Shell’s Australian headquarters in Perth to assume both Mr Smith’s Executive Vice President Australia and New Zealand position and responsibility as Country Chair.
Before joining Shell in 2014, she held frontline and management roles in mining across three continents, having joined Rio Tinto in 1996 after gaining an engineering degree from the University of Western Australia. Her Rio Tinto roles included company president in Brazil and CEO of the Iron Ore Company of Canada.
Mr Smith says the period in which he has led Shell in Australia has set the company up to play a major role in global energy markets for decades to come.
“The years since I returned from London in 2010 have transformed Shell’s 116-year-old business in Australia,” he said. “Consistent with Shell’s global strategy to simplify its portfolio and only invest in the most compelling projects, we went about reshaping the business. We took the difficult decisions to sell the refining business, including the profitable retail division, moved our upstream business into operatorship – through the acquisition of QGC and progress of the Prelude floating LNG project – and saw first gas flow from Gorgon LNG.
“Today Shell’s Australian portfolio is a globally significant LNG export business that will continue to make a tangible contribution to Australia’s economy.”
