• CERAWEEK 2025 | March 10-14, 2025
  • CERAWEEK
  • March 10 - 14, 2025

Kevin McLachlan

TotalEnergies

Senior Vice President, Exploration

Kevin McLachlan is Total EP’s Senior Vice President of Exploration as of 2014. Within Total’s Exploration & Production, he is now responsible for managing the exploration organization globally with five exploration hub locations. Mr. McLachlan joined Mobil in 1985 as an Interpretation Geophysicist in Canada working in Exploration and Development. In 1995, he moved to the United Kingdom and worked on Exploration in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Norway until 2000. He held various management positions in ExxonMobil from 2000 to 2005 in the United Kingdom and Canada. He notably provided leadership and management for Exploration teams to evaluate the un-drilled frontier Orphan Basin and to manage all of the Canadian East Coast’s exploration and appraisal assets. Mr. McLachlan joined Nexen Petroleum in the United Kingdom in 2006 as Europe Exploration Manager, later as Vice President of International Exploration and Vice President of Global Exploration until 2013. As a Member of the Executive Management Committee, he contributed to corporate strategic priorities, decisions, and Exploration-Production operations. In 2013, Mr. McLachlan assumed the position of Executive Vice President of Global Exploration and Business Development at Murphy Oil. He was responsible for conventional and unconventional Exploration, New Ventures, and Business Development activities from 2013 to 2014. Mr. McLachlan earned his BSc in geophysics from the University of Calgary in 1985 and is a 2003 graduate of the INSEAD Business Program.

Sessions With Kevin McLachlan

Tuesday, 10 March

  • 11:30am - 12:30pm (CST) / -

    Role of "E" in "E&P": The future of exploration
    Upstream Oil & Gas

    Globally, conventional exploration and discoveries are at the lowest level in seven decades—not from lack of resource potential, but from lack of investment by a financial market disenchanted by lower returns from North American unconventional production onshore. Larger operators are determining strategies that emphasize financial returns, but with lower growth; however, financial market distrust is driving investors out of the upstream sector altogether. Conventional NFW drilling has shifted towards maturing phase basins, close to infrastructure, and with faster cycle times. Could disenchantment with onshore NA production drive operators back to conventional exploration in the medium term? Will a push to generate value versus volume growth hurt conventional exploration or reward those companies that show that a relentless focus on exploration generates value? Will the role of future exploration programs be to find new, highly competitive basins or to improve the value of larger, maturing basins? In lower oil and natural gas demand scenarios, will investors still be interested in even highly successful exploration?