General counsel and chief compliance officer | Total E&P Qatar
Rowan McBrien
General counsel and chief compliance officer | Total E&P Qatar
An expert energy lawyer, Rowan McBrien moved to Total as a senior legal counsel in 2011 and remembers his first major transaction with the company, the farm-in of 33.3% of the Bokhtar production sharing contract in the eastern Amu Darya basin of Tajikistan as a particular highlight: ‘This was the first significant transaction I worked on in-house. I was a key part of this frontier transaction from start to finish and was involved in all elements of it, including extensive travel and unexpected things like negotiating the lease for our new office in a building which had not been built yet. This helped me to see the bigger picture of such transactions, manage external legal counsel in a remote region and develop more commercial instincts’. In addition to his success on transactions, McBrien has been proactive in ensuring proper compliance across the company, a key consideration for all major companies given the value of corporate reputations: ‘I have simplified and adapted our compliance procedures to make them more relevant to our working teams, and thus help them to follow the rules. Actions in this respect have included preparing and giving explanatory presentations on specific subjects, individual meetings with each internal department to discuss common subjects we have as well as summarising the compliance procedures relevant to the department’s activities, and training and supervising our local Qatari ethics officer’. McBrien will move back to Total’s Paris headquarters in September to take up the position of vice president legal, Europe and Central Asia in the E&P (upstream) branch.