Ben Fischer

Ben is a wells professional with over 35 years of experience in the global energy industry. Throughout his career, he has held numerous engineering and operational roles across a diverse range of onshore and offshore projects.

His expertise spans well engineering across all project phases, including design, contracting, approvals, and execution. He has extensive experience with onshore and offshore drilling operations involving jack-ups, moored and dynamically positioned (DP) semi-submersibles, and DP drillships.

Additionally, he has been deeply involved in drilling rig and MODU design, upgrades, reactivations, assurance, and acceptance, as well as regulatory approvals and compliance, including environmental approval consultations.

Ben has a proven track record in complex well control and recovery operations, drilling interventions, and plug and abandonment. His technical experience covers extended reach drilling, horizontal multilateral wells, HPHT design and operations, deepwater drilling, and complex mooring.

He has played a key role in developing and implementing management systems and technical standards across the well lifecycle.

His expertise also extends to incident investigations related to both technical and safety events, and he has served as a party-appointed technical expert in international arbitration under the LCIA framework.

Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) (University of Queensland)

Bachelor of Economics (University of Queensland)

Fellow to the Institution of Engineers Australia

35 years’ experience with Operating Oil and Gas Companies.

Roles held include

  • Operations Manager and Drilling Superintendent
  • Senior Drilling Engineer
  • Mechanical Engineer

Specialist in:

  • Rig operations, mooring and site approvals, contract management and rig start-up
  • Drilling and Completion operations
  • Drilling and Completion Engineering
  • Subsea operations
  • Well control (training, practices and well control event management)
  • Rig interfaces with platforms and rig modifications
  • Approvals (Safety Cases & Environmental Plans) and Stakeholder Engagement

Co- Authored APPEA guideline for mooring MODUs in Australian Tropical Waters.

Co-authored the Energy Institute HPHT Operations Guide (Model Code of Safe Practice Part 17)

Expert witness at the London Court of Arbitration.

Experience working for Chevron, Shell and TotalEnergies with broad knowledge of industry best practices across major operators.