New Managing Director at RWE Dea UK Helm

As of today, Hans-Joachim Polk is the new Managing Director of RWE Dea UK. Polk joined RWE Dea AG as early as late 1991, immediately after earning his Master’s degree in crude oil and natural gas exploration and production technology at Clausthal-Zellerfeld University.

In the course of his professional career, Polk spent three and a half years working for RWE Dea in Cairo before returning to Germany, where he was responsible as Head of Operations for production from Germany’s largest oilfield, Mittelplate. In the past 2 years as Managing Director of RWE Dea Norge, Polk optimised the licence portfolio and intensified exploration activities in Norway. It was possible to achieve major oil and gas strikes during this period.

“RWE Dea UK plays an important role in our international growth portfolio. We plan to drive our highly promising projects forward at speed and to increase our production in the wake of intensified field development activities,” says Polk. “I look forward to making a key contribution to our growth targets in collaboration with our team in London.”

Polk is successor to René Pawel who will be relocating to RWE Dea’s Headquarters in Hamburg as Senior Vice President for Production in Europe. With immediate effect, Pawel will be responsible for the entire operations in Germany, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The scope of his activities comprises both the production of crude oil and natural gas as well as the storage of gas.

RWE Dea has had a presence in the United Kingdom since 2002 and maintains a solid licence portfolio. This is one of the key regions for the upstream business of RWE Dea AG. Recently, a major milestone was achieved with the successful production launch of the natural gas field Clipper South. Natural gas production in the southern British North Sea has meanwhile been continually stepped up from about 270,000 cubic meters of gas per day in 2005 to a current level of around 1.5 million cubic meters of gas a day. “In developing the Clipper South field, as operator we were able to acquire key expertise that will turn out to be highly useful and worthwhile for our forthcoming projects. We will continue our investment programme in the UK,” says Polk in confirming the long-term commitment to the Company’s activities on the British continental shelf. Successful exploration and field development projects are to remain the basis for production at a high level in future, too.