Private player Greenland Gas & Oil (GGO) has hired a former Enterprise Oil executive as its boss.

The Greenland-focused explorer has named Mark Bilsland chief executive, with Rockhopper Exploration boss Sam Moody also joining the board as a non-executive director.

Bilsland, who has sat on GGO’s board since September, has more than 30 years of experience in the industry, half of that at Enterprise - which was taken over in 2002 by Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell in a $5 billion deal.

He also worked for Khanty Mansiyak Oil Corporation (KMOC) in Moscow before it was sold to US independent Marathon Oil.

A qualified petroleum engineering with a degree in Geology, Bilsland has worked in a number of core regions, including the UK North Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Australia.

GGO is focused on the onshore Jameson basin in Greenland. Last summer it was awarded the first exclusive onshore exploration and production licences under the autonomous Danish territory’s new hydrocarbon strategy.

Licences 2015/13 and 2015/14 are located on the Jameson Land peninsula in south-east Greenland, explored by Arco in the 1970s and 1980s. They cover about 42,000 square kilometres in total.

(Click here to read an in-depth Upstream interview with GGO founder Roderick McIllree.)