Senior Economist - Upstream Oil and Gas

About the role

The Senior Economist owns economic modelling, valuation and investment analysis across UCC Holding's upstream oil and gas portfolio. The role supports exploration, development and producing assets and transactions by turning technical assumptions and commercial terms into assessments of value, uncertainty and capital requirements. It reports to the Director, Portfolio, Exploration & Commercial.

Key responsibilities

• Economic evaluation: build, maintain and document models of production, development and operating costs, fiscal terms, abandonment obligations and transaction assumptions, and assess NPV, IRR, breakevens, cash flow, payback and funding exposure.
• Fiscal and commercial analysis: model production sharing contracts, concessions, royalties, cost recovery, profit sharing, taxation and ownership provisions, and quantify proposed terms, pricing, tariffs and risk allocation for negotiations.
• Exploration economics: evaluate exploration and appraisal opportunities using risked valuation, decision trees and scenarios, applying resource ranges and probabilities from subsurface specialists.
• Portfolio analysis: maintain comparable valuations and investment metrics, analyse capital requirements and cash generation, and screen acquisitions, divestments and farm-ins/farm-outs.
• Model governance: maintain templates, assumptions registers, version control and checks, coordinate evaluation conventions with the Director, Finance and technical teams, and prepare models for independent review.
• Investment decision support: prepare summaries and presentations for stage gates and investment reviews, explain valuations to technical and non-technical stakeholders, and transfer approved baselines to asset teams.

Required profile

• Degree in Economics, Finance, Petroleum Engineering, Geoscience, Mathematics or a related discipline.
• Minimum 10+ years of applied upstream economics experience in an operator oil and gas company or investment banking.
• Ownership of economic models across exploration, development, producing assets and transactions, with exposure to multiple fiscal regimes.
• Experience supporting investment committees, project sanctions or acquisition decisions, and combining technical and commercial inputs into investment recommendations.

Required skills

• Strong upstream economic modelling, valuation and fiscal analysis, and practical accounting knowledge.
• Exploration economics, decision analysis and treatment of uncertainty.
• Excel for economic and financial modelling; experience with upstream economics software and industry datasets.
• Good working knowledge of applied statistics is desirable.