Kassel, Germany - May 22, 2015, Kassel, Germany - Wintershall, a crude oil and natural gas producer, announced that Mario Mehren will take over as chairman of the board of executive directors on June 1, 2015.
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The business graduate Mr. Mehren has been a member of the Board of Executive Directors since October 2011. He is responsible for the activities in Exploration & Production Russia, North Africa and South America.
After completing a course in business administration at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, he began his professional career in 1998 as specialist adviser in BASF's Group Accounting section in the Corporate Finance Department. In 2001, Mr. Mehren became Head of Finance and Accounting at BASF Schwarzheide, and in 2003 he moved to BASF in Chile to become Managing Director of Finance and Administration.
Mr. Mehren joined Wintershall in 2006 as Vice President Finance & Information Management in the former "Finance & Russia" Board Department headed by Dr. Ties Tiessen. He is a member of the Supervisory Boards of Russian joint ventures of Wintershall and was involved in the recent expansion of cooperation with Gazprom.
Mr. Mehren will continue to act as head of Board Department 3 (Exploration and Production in Russia, North Africa and South America) for the time being.
He is a successor to Rainer Seele, who will leave the company at the end of May to move to Austria's OMV on July 1, 2015.
The chemistry graduate Mr. Seele has been at the helm of Wintershall Holding GmbH in Kassel since October 2009. After his studies at the University of Göttingen, where he obtained a doctorate in chemistry, Mr. Seele joined BASF in Ludwigshafen, initially to conduct chemical research. After working in a number of different functions between 1987 and 1996, he was appointed head of Research Planning and Control of BASF’s Main Laboratory in 1996.
In 1996, he became head of Strategic Planning at Wintershall in Kassel, and in 2000 he transferred to its subsidiary WINGAS, where he became Managing Director with responsibility for sales.
As Chairman of WINGAS from 2002, he was above all responsible for alerting the public to the significance of cooperation with Russia for Europe’s gas supplies. In 2002, Mr. Seele was also appointed to the Board of Executive Directors of Wintershall with responsibility for Natural Gas Trading. He became Chairman of the Wintershall Board in 2009. ■