Oil Search chairman Keith Spence is to head rival energy firm Santos, stepping down from his current role in the Papua New Guinean focused gas company.
Mr Spence will replace Santos' chairman Peter Coates in February 2018.
While Mr Spence will join the board on January 1, 2018, he will only officially step into the role upon retirement of Mr Coates the following month.
Mr Spence has spent more than three decades working in the oil and gas industry. In joining Santos, Mr Spence will retire from the board of energy rival Oil Search, although he remains a chairman of mineral sands company Base Resources, and a director of gold miner Independence Group and engineering and contracting firm Clough. Mr Spence was also briefly acting CEO of Woodside.
Oil Search and Santos have a shared asset in PNG LNG.
The market reacted positively to the new appointment and the company's share price closed at $4.30 after reaching an intra-day high of $4.32.
This new appointment follows the company's third quarter results last week, which saw it outperform market estimates by up to 15 per cent due to the PNG LNG asset running well above nameplate capacity at at 8.6 million tonnes of LNG per annum for the quarter - the highest rate since it began operations.
Santos lifted its forecast guidance range on sales volumes from 77-82 MMboe to 79-82 MMboe, also adding another million barrels of oil into its production guidance, to sit between 58 and 60 MMboe.
