Santos angrily rejects suggestion boss Kevin Gallagher could take Chris Ellison’s job at Mineral Resources

Santos has launched an extraordinary angry rebuttal of a throwaway suggestion that chief executive Kevin Gallagher could fill Chris Ellison’s shoes at scandal-ridden Mineral Resources. In a highly unusual move, Santos has gone public to rubbish the idea as “completely fabricated, without foundation and false”, despite Mr Gallagher briefly standing for the MinRes board two years ago. MST Marquee energy analyst Saul Kavonic — an often left-field observer who takes a bigger picture view of his coverage portfolio than most of his peers — on Wednesday speculated in his daily newsletter that MinRes’ corporate governance crisis could see Santos’ long-running chief executive considered as a replacement for Mr Ellison, who will be ushered out of the miner in the next 12 to 18 months. “We wonder if (the crisis) could present an opportunity for (Mr Gallagher) to step into the leadership role there, rekindling Gallagher’s ambition to join MinRes in early 2022,” Mr Kavonic wrote. On that occasion, Mr Gallagher agreed to take up a non-executive directorship at Mineral Resources, only to be forced into an embarrassing retreat just a month later in March 2022 after a backlash from Santos shareholders. Mr Kavonic, who is currently in Perth talking to energy companies and visiting sites, recalled that at the time, the board seat for Mr Gallagher had been seen “as a possible stepping stone for a life after Santos”. The 59-year-old Scot is Australia’s longest-serving energy company boss after nearly nine years at the helm of the Adelaide-based Santos. However, Mr Kavonic noted that despite Santos succession planning in the past two years, “many in the market see Gallagher’s tenure lasting a few more years”. That qualification wasn’t enough to appease Mr Gallagher’s apparently over-sensitive minders at Santos. Most companies wouldn’t even have bothered responding, at least publicly, to Mr Kavonic’s hypothetical scenario Instead, a Santos spokesperson said: “Suggestions made today that Kevin Gallagher could join MinRes are completely fabricated, without foundation and false.” Mr Gallagher has done well in the past from being linked to other jobs, notably in 2021 winning a $6 million incentive to remain at Santos after unfounded rumours he was in the running for the top job at Woodside Energy, which later went to Meg O’Neill. MinRes last week announced that it had launched a global search for a replacement for its founder after releasing damning interim findings from a long-running probe that discovered “at times Mr Ellison has not acted with integrity” and that he “failed to be as forthcoming with the board as he should have been”. Mr Kavonic’s suggestion of Mr Gallagher as a possible replacement is not without merit. The latter has worked in Perth previously, migrating to the city to join Woodside in 1998 before running Clough for five years. He also has experience in running large assets and projects and is believed to get on well with Mr Ellison, who could continue to exert an influence at MinRes as its biggest shareholder after his proposed departure.