Beach Energy gets new boss from Woodside BEACH Energy has appointed Woodside Petroleum senior executive Rob Cole as its new chief executive. MR Cole has been appointed on a fixed salary of $1.2 million before incentives. He will replace Reg Nelson, who has led the Cooper Basin-based mid-cap oil and gas player for nearly 25 years. Mr Cole is an executive director and vice president of corporate and commercial at Woodside, Australia's largest pure play oil and gas company. Beach chairman Glenn Davis said Mr Nelson had transformed the company into Australia's largest onshore oil producer and a leader in Australian shale and basin centred gas exploration. "Reg Nelson has led Beach Energy for nearly 25 years, and in that time has transformed Beach from a company on the brink of liquidation to a $1.4 billion ASX top 100 company," Mr Davis said. Mr Cole will take over at Beach on June 1 2015. "Mr Cole brings tremendous industry experience and understanding, with a deep skill set in values-based leadership, strategy planning and execution, and the board was impressed with Rob's clarity of purpose and communication," Mr Davis said. Mr David and Mr Nelson both said at Beach's annual general meeting that they thought the market had overreacted to the 30 per cent fall in the oil price in the past few months. Beach's share price had dipped a further 3.5 cents, or 3.23 per cent, to $1.05 by 1115 AEDT. It is down about 40 per cent since the start of August. Mr Nelson blamed the oil price falls on excess production out of Saudi Arabia, to drive down prices and hurt higher cost US and Russian producers. He predicted a pick-up in prices to up to $US100 a barrel by mid-2015. "Despite the outcomes from the excess production levels of Saudi Arabia, it is my view that the recent oil price decline is not consistent with broader economic fundamentals," he said. He insisted that Beach was still making healthy margins at current prices and had diversified itself beyond oil to soon benefit from the ever increasing demand for liquefied natural gas. That includes its deal to sell $1.5 billion of central Australian natural gas to Origin Energy, starting in 2015. Origin is a partner in one of three coal seam gas export plants being built at Gladstone, Queensland for $60 billion and due to be brought online soon which is driving demand and prices up. Beach's net profit for 2013/14 slid 34 per cent to $101.8 million, due to writedowns of assets but underlying net profit was up 84 per cent to a record $259.2 million.