Herbjørn Hansson, Executive Chairman and Class C Director
Herbjørn Hansson (MBA) has graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics
and Business Administration and attended Harvard Business School. He has served
as our Executive Chairman since our inception. In 1974 he was employed by the
Norwegian Shipowners' Association. In the period from 1975 to 1980, he was Chief
Economist and Research Manager of INTERTANKO, an industry association whose members
control about 70% of the world's independently owned tanker fleet, excluding state
owned and oil company fleets. During the 1980s, he was Chief Financial Officer
of Kosmos/Anders Jahre, at the time one of the largest Norwegian based shipping
and industry groups. In 1989, Mr. Hansson founded Ugland Nordic Shipping AS, or
UNS, which became one of the world's largest owners of specialized shuttle tankers.
UNS became a public company in 1993. While under Mr. Hansson's management, UNS
increased dividends paid to shareholders each year for nine years. He served as
Chairman in the first phase and as Chief Executive Officer as from 1993 to 2001
when UNS, under his management, was sold to Teekay Shipping Corporation, or Teekay,
for an enterprise value of $780.0 million. He continued to work with Teekay, most
recently as Vice Chairman of Teekay Norway AS, until he started working full-time
for NAT on September 1, 2004. Mr. Hansson is the founder and has been Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer of NAT since its establishment in 1995. NAT was listed
on the NYSE in 1997. Since then, NAT has paid dividends 70 times, with total dividend
payments of $45.38 per share from the fourth quarter of 1997 to the date of this
report. He also has been a member of various governing bodies of companies within
shipping, insurance, banking, manufacturing, national/international shipping agencies
including classification societies and protection and indemnity associations.
Mr. Hansson is fluent in Norwegian and English, and has a command of German and
French for conversational purposes.
Marianne Lie, Class C Director
Marianne Lie has served as our Class C director since December 2013. Having
broad international experience, she has been and still is a board member of
several Norwegian companies mainly within the shipping, offshore business, energy
and finance industries. She was until recently a member of the shareholders
Committee of the Central Bank of Norway. She was in the Norwegian Shipowners
Association from 1988 until 1998, after which she was managing director of the
Norwegian Branch of Vattenfall, a Swedish based energy group. Ms. Lie was also
a board member of the Finnish energy group Fortum. She was managing director
of the Norwegian Shipowners Association from 2002 to 2008. Ms. Lie has studied
law and political science at the University of Oslo.
Paul J. Hopkins, Class B Director
Paul J. Hopkins has been a director of the Company since its inception and was
a director of NAT from June2005 until December 13, 2013. Until March 2008, Mr.
Hopkins was also a Vice President and a director of Corridor Resources Inc.,
a Canadian publicly traded exploration and production company. From 1989 through
1993 he served with Lasmo as Project Manager during the start-up of the Cohasset/Panuke
oilfield offshore Nova Scotia, the first offshore oil production in Canada.
Earlier, Mr. Hopkins served as a consultant on frontier engineering and petroleum
economic evaluations in the international oil industry. Mr. Hopkins was seconded
to Chevron UK in 1978 to assist with the gas export system for the Ninian Field.
Previously, beginning in 1973, he was employed with Ranger Oil (UK) Limited,
being involved in the drilling and production testing of oil wells in the North
Sea. Through the end of 1972 he worked with Shell Canada as part of its Offshore
Exploration Group.
James Kelly, Class B Director
James Kelly has been a director of the Company since its inception and a director
of NAT since June 2010. Mr. Kelly has worked for Time Inc., the world's largest
magazine publisher, since 1978. He served as Foreign Editor during the fall
of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War, and was named Deputy Managing Editor
in 1996. In 2001, Mr. Kelly became the magazine's managing editor, and during
his tenure the magazine won a record four National Magazine awards. In 2004,
Time Magazine received its first EMMA for its contribution to the ABC News Series
"Iraq: Where Things Stand." In late 2006, Mr. Kelly became the managing
editor of all of Time Inc., helping supervise the work of more than 2,000 journalists
working at 125 titles, including Fortune, Money, Sports Illustrated and People.
Since 2009, Mr. Kelly has worked as a consultant at Bloomberg LP and taught
at Princeton and Columbia Universities.
David M. Workman, Class A Director
David M. Workman has served as our Class A Director since December 2013. Mr.
Workman was, until recently Chief Operating Officer and member of the Supervisory
Board of Stork Technical Services having guided, as Chief Executive Officer,
the sale of the RBG Offshore Services Group into the STS Group. Mr. Workman
has 30 years of broad experience in the offshore sector ranging from drilling
operations/field development through production operations and project management.
He has worked with a wide variety of exploration and production companies in
the sector and has balanced this with exposure to the service sector, working
with management companies. As part of his experience with these different companies,
he has had extensive exposure to the North Sea market. Mr. Workman graduated
from Imperial College London in 1983 with a Masters in Petroleum Engineering
and spent his early years as a Drilling/Production Operations Engineer with
BP. In 1987 he joined Hamilton Brothers Oil and Gas who were early adopters
of floating production systems. In 1993 he joined Kerr McGee as an operations
manager for the Tentech 850 designed Gryphon FPSO, the first permanently moored
FPSO in the North Sea. In 1996, Mr. Workman established the service company
Atlantic Floating Production, which went on to become the management contractor
and duty holder on the John Fredriksen owned Northern Producer and on the Petroleum
Geo-Services (PGS) owned Banff FPF. In 2003, Mr. Workman was instrumental in
founding Tuscan Energy which went on to redevelop the abandoned Argyll Field
in the UK Continental Shelf. In 2009, Mr. Workman was appointed as Chief Executive
Officer and led the sale of the RBG Group to Stork Technical Services in 2011.
Tor-Øyvind Bjørkli, Chief Executive Officer
Tor-Øyvind Bjørkli has served as our Chief Executive Officer since
March 2014. He graduated from Vestfold University College with a Bachelor of
Science degree in Marine Engineering in 1992. He completed the Royal Norwegian
Naval Officer Training School in 1993 and his Master of Science degree at Norwegian
University of Science and Technology in 1999. For the last eight years he has
been a Partner with RS Platou ASA's offshore sale and purchase and newbuilding
division. Before joining RS Platou ASA, a major international offshore and shipbroking
firm, he held the position as a Surveyor with the classification society, Det
Norske Veritas' (DNV GL) in the Miami office.
Turid M. Sørensen, Chief Financial Officer
Turid M. Sørensen has 30 years of experience in the shipping industry.
She has served as our CFO since our inception. She was appointed Chief Financial
Officer & Executive Vice President of NAT on June 1, 2012. She previously
served as Chief Financial Officer of NAT from February 6, 2006. Ms. Sørensen
has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from the Norwegian School
of Management, an M.B.A. in Management Control from the Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration and has completed an Advanced Management
Program from Harvard Business School. During the period from 1984 to 1987, she
worked for Anders Jahre AS and Kosmos AS in Norway and held various positions
within accounting and information technology. In the period from 1987 to 1995,
Ms. Sørensen was Manager of Accounting and IT for Skaugen PetroTrans
Inc., in Houston, Texas. After returning to Norway she was employed by Ugland
Nordic Shipping ASA and Teekay Norway AS as Vice President, Accounting. From
October 2004 until her appointment as Chief Financial Officer of NAT in February
2006, she served as the Treasurer and Controller of NAT.
Hermitage Offshore Services Ltd currently has 5 employees.