Tributes have been flooding in for Jim Buckee, the founder and chief executive of Talisman Energy, who died recently.

Well-known for his academic interest in the cosmos, his E&P legacy was tarnished in some circles by a controversial deal that took Talisman into a multibillion-barrel play in Sudan in the late 1990s during a bitter, long-running civil war, eventually exiting in 2003, News.Az reports, citing Sudan Tribune.

Born in Winchester, England, in 1946, Buckee moved to Australia where he gained a physics degree, before returning to the UK to complete a PhD in astrophysics in 1970.

Buckee trained as an engineer at BP and, in 1991, was appointed president of BP Canada, orchestrating a buyout that created Talisman Energy two years later.

He retired from Talisman in 2007, replaced by another former BP executive John Manzoni, with the company ultimately being acquired by Repsol in 2015.

Ian Moffat, Talisman's head of exploration between 1993 and 2010, described in a LinkedIn post how Buckee rapidly grew production at Talisman from an initial 35,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to 500,000 boepd by 2000, taking the company beyond its Canadian comfort zone into the international arena.

Describing Buckee's management style as “very hands-on”, he recalled how “heated debates with the senior-most scientists and engineers in the company were common”.

Nevertheless, Moffat said Buckee was “always collaborative in such discussions, seeking opinions and never pretending to be the smartest guy in the room — even though he was almost certainly that”.

“It was his ability and willingness to make decisions quickly which helped guide Talisman to its success,” said Moffat.

After retiring from Talisman, Buckee took on board roles including chairman of EnQuest, but also found time to give university lectures on climate change and peak oil.

LinkedIn comments described the Talisman founder as one of a kind, with Steve Jacobs, the company's operations manager in the Asia-Pacific, recalling how he was fired and re-hired by Buckee in the same meeting after listening to Jacobs' rationale for a propsoed drilling operation.

Paul Blakeley, a director of Singapore-based junior Tiger Energy — who headed Talisman's UK and Asia-Pacific businesses for years — remembered Buckee as “a brilliant, thoughtful revolutionary who was always looking to take the contrarian view and bring all his people on a journey of excitement and adventure... teaching us to be curious, sceptical but to always get into the details”.

Ed Paszkiewicz, who worked for Talisman for 16 years in Canada, said Buckee was a “salt of the earth” individual who “shaped the CEO suites in Calgary for last several decades”.

Buckee's enthusiasm for astrophysics never left him, with many former colleagues describing how animated he became when discussing the cosmos.

Energy advisor Roy Kelly said: “Jim had the brain the size of a small country. I worked for him in London, Alaska and Calgary. It was always a pleasure and a journey of adventure... especially when you let him wander into the cosmos - his true passion.”

In the media, one controversy Buckee will long be remembered for is taking Talisman in Sudan in the late 1990s, years before the end of civil war resulted in the independence of oil-rich South Sudan.

This decision was continually castigated by human rights activists, amid allegations that oil revenues were funding the Khartoum government's battle with forces from southern Sudan and that oilfield airstrips were bing used to support its operations.

Talisman's participation in a 10 billion-barrel oil consortium was under pressure almost from the beginning, and quarterly results calls began to be dominated by questions on Sudan. At times, Buckee's patience wore thin.

The pressure increased with a campaign pushing for Talisman to quit the country after allegations Sudan's government in the north had been using revenue from the oil asset to fund its civil war against the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army in the south.

Talisman always denied allegations about complicity in human rights abuses, but exacerbated matters by limiting media access to Buckee.

Buckee eventually buckled and in late 2003 Talisman sold its Sudan holdings to India's ONGC Videsh, which had few qualms about entering the war-torn nation.

News.Az 

By Faig Mahmudov