Buckee bids farewell at Talisman

Of all the varying opinions about Jim Buckee’s 14 years as chief executive officer of Talisman Energy one was unanimous — he never marched to someone else’s drumbeat.

Ending several years of speculation that he was on the verge of stepping down, Buckee, 62, announced May 30 he will leave Sept. 1, passing the controls to John Manzoni, 47, most recently the head of BP’s refining and marketing operations and once seen as a leading candidate to replace chief executive officer John Browne.

Buckee, backed by a doctorate in astrophysics from Oxford University, was president and chief operating officer of BP Canada in 1991 when it spun off its Canadian assets at that time to create Talisman.

He gained the top job at Talisman two years later, turning the Canadian independent into an enterprise with far-reaching global interests.

By far his most controversial move was taking a 25 percent stake in Sudan’s Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., plunging Talisman into the thick of a drawn-out, bloody civil war.

Despite Buckee’s claims that revenues from Greater Nile were an essential part of Sudan’s economy and the fact that Talisman took an active role in building educational and medical facilities in the operating region, he and Talisman were scorned by human rights and church groups, along with some Canadian and US politicians, as well as investors.

In the end, Talisman sold its Sudan interests to India’s ONGC Videsh in 2003 for US$750 million and Buckee never wavered in his insistence that Talisman played an important role as a go-between from the outside world to the Sudan government. “We did good things in there,” he said.

Talisman stayed out of oil sands

At a more conventional level, he was instrumental in steering Talisman to annual production of 485 million barrels of oil equivalent from its start-up rate of 85 million boe, opened up successful new ventures in places such as the British North Sea, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia in Southeast Asia, Trinidad, deep gas plays in Appalachia and northeastern British Columbia and recently participated in making two major oil finds on Alaska’s North Slope.

Despite seeing a tenfold increase in Talisman’s share value, he and many analysts felt the company never gained its market dues, paying a price for its Sudan adventure and failing to take a more aggressive role in acquisitions over recent years.

Even Buckee, in a rare concession, said Talisman succeeded from the takeover during the price weakness of 1998 and, given its success then, should probably have “continued more acquisitively” after 2000.

He insists his departure to spend more time with his grandchildren in England is not prompted by any plans for the sale or restructuring of Talisman.

Those prospects gained added weight earlier this year when U.S. activist investor Carl Icahn bought 4.8 million Talisman shares for a 0.4 percent holding and is rumored to be pressing for a corporate breakup. Buckee said only that he has had no discussions with Icahn.

— Gary Park