Low-carbon energy company ENGIE announced last week that its board of directors has appointed oil services executive Catherine MacGregor as its new CEO, effective January 1, 2021. MacGregor is the former president of oil and gas services provider TechnipFMC, a role she held for slightly less than two years.

MacGregor has over two decades of experience in the oil industry, most of it spent with oilfield services company Schlumberger, where she held a number of senior roles. Her new role at ENGIE, where she will be expected to lead the company's strategy towards renewable energy and clean power sources, is a considerable change of direction. However, ENGIE's Chairman Jean-Pierre Clamadieu has said he sees no contradiction, according to a Reuters report.

“One should not reduce Catherine MacGregor to someone who comes from the oil industry. She has had a career in services to the extractive industries, but more than that she is someone who has major operational experience in complex environments and who has overcome all those challenges successfully,” he said.

Thanking the board of directors for the appointment, MacGregor said: "On the strength of our shared industry culture and my operational experience, I will work with all of our teams to achieve our goal of enabling ENGIE to accelerate the energy transition.”

MacGregor's work at TechnipFMC also relates to renewables, as she headed the energy transition strategy of the company's engineering and construction activities division. And it is not uncommon for oil executives to make this change, as major oil and gas companies have been developing alternative energy sources for some years now. Many of the skill sets have proved transferable within companies and more broadly, within the industry.