Sirius Petroleum has appointed Ed Johnson as commercial director. Ed will initially be advising the Company on its acquisition strategy where Sirius is currently considering a number of opportunities in the oil sector with particular focus in Nigeria. As the Company executes its acquisition strategy, Ed will advise on the development programme and build out the operational management team in line with the Company's strategy to grow its oil & gas assets under management.

Ed Johnson, age 33, joins from Renaissance Capital, an international Emerging Markets Investment bank where he was Head of the New Markets Oil Team for Investment Banking and Financing, covering all Emerging Markets outside Russia and Ukraine, with particular focus on the Upstream sector across Africa. He was responsible for the origination and execution of M&A mandates, as well as Equity Capital Markets and Debt Capital Markets transactions across the oil & gas sector.

He was previously Head of Oil & Gas Specialist Sales at Canaccord Adams in London, responsible for primary deals and secondary trading in the oil space, placing primary equity in deals across all geographies and international listing locations. Prior to his appointment at Canaccord, Ed was a Partner at NewSmith Capital Partners, responsible for the Resources & Energy fund, and also worked at Merrill Lynch and Barclays Capital.

Commenting, Ed Johnson, said: "I am delighted to be joining Sirius Petroleum at such an exciting juncture in its business. Nigeria presents one of the very few scaleable oil opportunities in the Upstream space globally, and Sirius' existing management has done a first-class job in lining up an exciting pipeline of potential high-impact oil projects there. I look forward to assisting in driving that pipeline into development phase and delivering real growth to our shareholders."

Commenting, Jack Pryde, non-executive chairman, said: "Ed's appointment will bring significant additional expertise to Sirius, particularly as we execute our strategy to acquire high quality marginal field oil & gas assets. His focus as we acquire assets will be on building a senior operational team managing a dynamic and growing upstream business.

Tags: Sirius Petroleum