Andy Brown: executive vice president and country chairman at Qatar Shell

Qatar Shell executive vice president and country chairman, Andy Brown, also managing director of Pearl GTL has been awarded an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services to Qatari – British business relations in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list.
Responding to the news, Brown said: “I am delighted and humbled by this honour and particularly pleased because it recognises the importance of the relationship between Qatar and the UK.”
Brown said he was surprised when he was informed that he was to be a recipient of the OBE.
He said: “We have enjoyed enormous support in meeting our business goals from Qatar and from the government and businesses in the United Kingdom. More than $1bn of work for Pearl GTL was executed in the United Kingdom, including considerable engineering design, materials and equipment fabrication.
“We have been enormously impressed by the visionary leadership of the State of Qatar and the transparent business climate established here. We believe Qatar is a great place to invest.”
Brown joined Shell in 1984 following completion of a degree in engineering at Cambridge University. During a career of 27 years with Shell, he worked in various engineering, project management and asset management leadership roles in New Zealand, Netherlands, Italy, Brunei and Oman.
In 2000 he moved to London in support roles for Shell’s senior leadership and in 2002, he was appointed to lead Shell’s re-entry into Qatar.
Over the last nine years, under Brown’s leadership, Shell invested $20bn in Qatar and is now the largest foreign investor in the country. He has led the Pearl GTL project from its early design stages. The project was inaugurated by HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in November last year.
Qatargas 4, in which Shell is a 30% shareholder, was brought onstream in early 2011. Shell has recently expanded further into joint exploration and chemicals projects with QP.