Neil McCulloch — Adura
Full name: Neil McCulloch
Occupation: Chief Executive Officer, Adura
Based: Aberdeen, Scotland
Profession: Chartered engineer
Full name: Neil McCulloch
Occupation: Chief Executive Officer, Adura
Based: Aberdeen, Scotland
Profession: Chartered engineer
McCulloch is a chartered engineer who studied Chemical Engineering at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, before completing a Master's degree with Distinction in Petroleum Engineering at Heriot-Watt University in 1993–94.
McCulloch began his career as a Graduate Trainee Petroleum Engineer, working on assets in the East Irish Sea, and started out professionally at consultancy PGS before joining British oil and gas firm BG Group in 2001. He spent 11 years at BG Group in asset and functional general management roles, including a period managing daily production of around half a million barrels from a cluster of mega-projects in Egypt, and rose to become Vice President for UK upstream.
He went on to hold the role of Senior Vice President, Engineering and Production, at OMV in Vienna, before becoming Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of EnQuest plc. In March 2018, McCulloch joined Spirit Energy as Executive Vice President for Technical & Operated Assets, where he led delivery of the company's capital investment programme, its decommissioning activities, and its technical functions. He was appointed Chief Executive of Spirit Energy in February 2022, a role in which he championed the company's world-leading Morecambe Net Zero (MNZ) carbon capture and storage project and positioned Spirit as a leading energy-transition company while continuing to deliver value from its existing production assets.
In September 2025, McCulloch was confirmed as the first Chief Executive of Adura, the incorporated joint venture combining Shell and Equinor's UK offshore oil and gas assets, first announced in December 2024. Adura, headquartered at the Silver Fin building in Aberdeen city centre and jointly owned 50/50 by Shell and Equinor, became the UK North Sea's largest independent producer upon its launch in December 2025. McCulloch leads the business alongside inaugural chair Nicoletta Giadrossi, with his priorities centred on operational excellence, safety, competitiveness and maintaining secure domestic energy supply from the UK Continental Shelf.
McCulloch brings more than 30 years of energy-sector leadership experience and has built a reputation for improving operational and safety performance across the organisations he has led. At Spirit Energy, he was closely associated with advancing the Morecambe Net Zero project, described as the UK's largest carbon dioxide storage development, and he has served as a public voice on the role of oil and gas within the UK's broader energy transition, including panel appearances at SPE Offshore Europe. He has also held external advisory roles, including as former Co-Chair of the UK CO2 storage sector body.
No independently verified net-worth figure for McCulloch has been publicly published. His financial position is tied to his executive compensation at Adura and prior roles at Spirit Energy, EnQuest, OMV and BG Group, none of which have been disclosed in detail.
A chartered engineer with three decades of North Sea and international upstream experience across BG Group, OMV, EnQuest and Spirit Energy, Neil McCulloch now leads Adura at a defining moment for British oil and gas — steering the country's largest independent North Sea producer through a landmark industry consolidation.