Songa Offshore has appointed Bjørnar Iversen as its new CEO just months after he joined the company as president of Songa Rig AS.
Iversen will take up the new role, based in Cyprus, replacing interim CEO Jens Wilhelmsen, effective as of June 1.
"After a long search process and assessment of numerous candidates, we increasingly realised that we already had the ideal candidate within our own company," said interim CEO and chairman of the board, Jens A Wilhelmsen.
"Bjørnar understands the industry after 17 years with Odfjell Drilling; he has extensive international and operational management experience and, importantly, a unique knowledge of the Category D project. My key task as interim CEO was to steer the company through a few critical short-term challenges and find a permanent successor. I am happy to now step down, knowing that both tasks have been successfully accomplished."
Before joining Songa in February this year, Iversen held a number of senior management positions and been member of the executive leadership team at Odfjell Drilling for 12 years.
His latest position was President and CEO of Odfjell Galvao in Brazil. During his 17 year's tenure at Odfjell Drilling, he has been executive vice president for Corporate Business Development, Odfjell Drilling Technology and Odfjell Well Services.
He has a Master of Science in Business (siviløkonom) from the Norwegian School of Business and Economics (NHH), and various management courses from Harvard Business School.
"I am very excited to get this opportunity," he said. "Songa is uniquely placed to take a leadership position within the mid water segment in the North Sea. The company enjoys an excellent relationship with Statoil and is in the process of building four new Category D rigs, all with long term contracts to Statoil. Yes, there are short-term financing challenges but none that can't be satisfactory resolved.".