Upstream journalist Vahe Petrossian has died in London at the age of 78, writes Nassir Shirkhani.

Vahe helped turn Upstream into the oil publication of choice for many readers seeking to increase their knowledge of the Middle East where his expertise lay.

He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Iran, his country of birth, breaking exclusive stories on a regular basis while explaining a complex Iranian political scene with an insight that came with decades of devotion to the subject.

Vahe won the trust of successive Iranian oil ministers and senior industry officials thanks to his long journalistic experience and unrivalled knowledge of the Iranian oil industry. He also brought boundless enthusiasm for his subject.

Vahe was also a much loved presence in the Upstream London office where his professionalism, perspective, sense of humour, and willingness to endlessly provide food, much of it from his Suffolk garden, will be sorely missed.

Born to Armenian parents in the north-western Iranian Azeri provincial capital Tabriz, Vahe was sent to a boarding school in France as a child to receive a Western education.

He later moved to the US, where he trained as an aeronautical engineer in Chicago. Vahe turned to journalism after a visit to a Boeing assembly factory in Seattle convinced him he was not made for the workshop.

He began his career as a newsreader in the mid-1960s with an Iranian radio station and later turned to print journalism in Tehran where he worked for a number of newspapers including the then leading English daily Tehran Journal, which he edited.

At the height of events leading to Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, he joined the London-based Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), considered the bible of the contracting community in the Middle East. His association with MEED lasted over two decades before he joined Upstream where he worked for the rest of his life.

"Vahe was an exceptional reporter and a magnificent man who was greatly loved by colleagues and contacts. His capacity to grasp the essentials of complex issues was unrivalled and his insights were invaluable. Vahe was a joy to work with and a pleasure to know," said former MEED editor Eddie O’Sullivan.

Erik Means, executive editor of Norway’s Rystad Energy and former editor-in-chief of Upstream who worked with Vahe for almost two decades, added: "Vahe impressed me to no end from the moment I met him. Smart, incredibly kind, a brilliant writer, wonderful sense of humour, uncompromising integrity, a fantastic colleague, a perfect gentleman."

"Vahe was a great journalist, but most of all he was our friend," said Upstream editor Mark Hillier.

Vahe is survived by his partner Liz.