Berry Corp. hired industry veteran Fernando Araujo to serve as the successor of retiring COO Gary Grove, the Dallas-based company said in an Aug. 20 release.

Araujo joins Berry with 30 years of experience including with Shell Oil, Repsol SA, Apache Corp. and, most recently, Schlumberger Ltd.

In a statement commenting on Araujo’s appointment as COO, Berry CEO Trem Smith said: “We are excited to welcome Fernando to the Berry team. Fernando’s wealth of knowledge and experience will be a great complement to our team. Fernando brings an entrepreneurial spirit that will help us achieve our goal of building shareholder value by maximizing our assets, leveraging the application of the latest technologies to improve efficiencies while protecting our people and the environment and partnering with the state of California to responsibly provide affordable energy and meet environmental goals.”

At Schlumberger, Araujo served as Schlumberger Production Management’s director for western hemisphere assets based out of Houston. In the role, he has been responsible for over 260,000 boe/d of production from fields in Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, according to the Berry release.

Berry, which changed its name from Berry Petroleum earlier this year, is an independent upstream energy company with a focus on the conventional, long-lived oil reserves in the San Joaquin basin of California. The company also has acreage in Utah’s Uinta Basin and the Piceance Basin located in northwestern Colorado, according to its website.

In his statement, Smith also thanked outgoing COO Grove: “We are deeply appreciative of the solid operational foundation Gary Grove established during his tenure with Berry and wish him well in his retirement.”

Grove had served as executive vice president and COO of Berry since June 2017.

Previously, Grove had served as COO of Bonanza Creek Energy and a number of its predecessor companies. He has also held various reservoir engineering and management positions with UNOCAL and Nuevo Energy.

Grove also currently serves as president and CEO of his consulting firm Greyhaven Energy LLC, which provides strategic planning, technical and acquisition advisory services to oil and gas industry clients.

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