Premier Oilfield Group Taps Paddy Keenan For CEO Role

Premier Oilfield Group LLC named Patrick (Paddy) Keenan as CEO on Oct. 29, replacing Matt Bell, who had served as head of the Houston-based service company since 2017.

In its release, Premier noted that Keenan, who has served as a director of the company since it was founded, is an executive with “unique experience” in both the U.S. and international oil and gas industries.

Since beginning his forty-five-year oilfield career, Keenan has held leadership roles in a number of oilfield service companies and was also the CEO of an E&P company. These include GeoMechanics International, Coherence Technology Co., NUMAR Corp. and FRAM Exploration ASA.

Keenan spent the early part of his career as a petroleum geologist providing mudlogging and wellsite geological consulting services both on- and offshore in the U.S., the North Sea, West Africa and the Middle East.

After leaving the field, he spent the subsequent 14 years in various international and U.S.-based operations, sales and marketing management positions, initially at Baker Hughes Co. and, later, at Sperry-Sun Drilling Services, and Baroid Corp. (now Halliburton Co.).

Most recently, Keenan served as CEO of Guardian Global Technologies Ltd., a company based in Pyle, Wales in the U.K. that was acquired by Core Laboratories NV in September 2018.

His appointment at Premier went into effect Oct. 28.

Commenting on the appointment, Premier Chairman Steve Horn expressed excitement in the addition of Keenan, who he said has an “outstanding track record of successfully building oilfield service technology companies.”

“With our expanding growth opportunities in both North America and overseas, Paddy brings strong leadership, great experience, knowledge and relationships to take the company to the next level,” Horn said in a statement.

Premier Oilfield Group was formed in May 2016 under the private-equity sponsorship of CSL Capital Management. The testing-focused lab company generates, aggregates, interprets and delivers consistent, high-quality data on completions and reservoir solutions in unconventional and conventional plays.

The company’s former CEO, Bell, was responsible for integrating and re-branding Premier through five private-equity-backed acquisitions in the data generation, aggregation and analysis space, according to Bell’s LinkedIn profile.