By Andrew Callus
THE HAGUE, May 21 (Reuters) - The hunt for Royal DutchShell's next chief executive is underway, its chairmansaid on Tuesday, after CEO Peter Voser made what could be hislast appearance at the oil group's annual shareholder meeting.
Voser announced his surprise decision three weeks ago tostep down in the first half of 2014, before his 56th birthday,and less than five years into the role.
"The process has started," Shell chairman Jorma Ollila toldReuters after the meeting when asked about the succession plan.
Ollila chairs the three-man nomination and successioncommittee that will choose Voser's replacement.
Voser has been a pillar of Shell's new-found stability sincehe re-joined the company as finance director in October 2004 aspart of a wholesale clear-out of disgraced former top managementfollowing a reserves accounting scandal.
Employees of the 180-year old Anglo-Dutch group, whichtraditionally grows its own top executives, believe an import isunlikely to get the top job, but Voser is only the second personto hold the CEO role under a simplified corporate structureintroduced in 2005.
A small investor in the company told Reuters he expectedShell to appoint someone in Voser's mould and he thought itlikely to be an internal candidate.
"I am not expecting any great changes in management style atall. It will be more of the same at Shell," Chris White, aportfolio manager at Premier Fund Managers, said.
Inside Shell, the current finance director, Simon Henry, isregarded as a potential front-runner, along with Marvin Odum,the company's head of upstream operations in the Americas.
Henry has a mathematics and accounting background eventhough, like Odum, he joined the company as an engineer. Odumwould be Shell's first American CEO.
Andrew Brown, who became head of international upstream lastyear, could be a candidate too, as could director of projectsand technology Matthias Bichsel. One company source said Brown'srelatively recent appointment may make him an outside bet, whileBichsel, born in 1954, might be considered too old for the job.
Shell, the world number two investor-controlled oil companyby production behind Exxon-Mobil, has said it will lookoutside for Voser's replacement as well as inside.
Voser leaves Shell with a leading global production andtechnology position in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and gas toliquids. Shell is also strong in oil exploration and offshoreproduction in the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa, and has awell-developed relationship with China, where the oil industryhas strong growth potential, plus long-term assets in Canadianoil sands.
But the group suffers regular sabotage and theft from itsonshore installations in Nigeria, where it is the biggestwestern producer, and has made little progress with its costlyArctic drilling programme in recent years.
Like its big rivals, Shell is being squeezed by risingfinding and development costs as prices and demand stagnate.
The other two members of Shell's succession committee, drawnfrom the ranks of its non-executive directors, are JosefAckermann, the former Deutsche Bank chief, and Hans Wijers, whoran Dutch chemicals group Akzo Nobel until 2012.
