Sad news came at the end of 2011. Alan Burns passed away. I’d met Mr Burns several times & always found him to be well-versed with a knowledge of information on current oil-plays. (He was convinced that Bahamas were sat on a huge oil resource.) A very well-respected man in his home country (Australia) & generally through-out the Oil Industry and the City. He did communicate with the Blog on quite a few occassions.
Our thoughts & prayers are with his family.
Here’s his Obituary.
Alan Burns, the WA entrepreneur and inventor behind the likes of oil producer Hardman Resources and wave energy company Carnegie Corp, has died in London.
Mr Burns’ eldest son, Alexander, said yesterday his father had died overnight on Wednesday after a long illness. He was 71.
Mr Burns Sr is perhaps best remembered in Perth business circles in recent years as the founder and long-term chairman of Hardman Resources, which struck oil in Mauritania and Uganda.
Together with Ted Ellyard, Mr Burns helped develop Hardman into one of WA’s biggest companies before it was taken over in 2006 by Ireland’s Tullow Oil for $1.5 billion.
He also founded and chaired Carnegie, which houses the wave power technology he invented. Carnegie’s CETO system relies on buoys anchored on the ocean floor that use the motion of passing waves to drive pumps, which then deliver pressurised water to shore.
In 1952, Mr Burns arrived in Perth from the UK as a 12-year-old “ten-pound Pom” with his family.
After working as a surveyor, he began his business career with a peat mining venture at Wanneroo in the 1960s, later partnering in a stable of exploration companies, including Magnet Metals. Subsequent interests included Airboss, the tyre developer that began life on the Perth Second Board.
Alexander Burns, the former head of Sphere Minerals, which was taken over this year, said his father had a real passion for the oil and gas sector, as demonstrated by his enthusiasm for seeking out finds in remote provinces such as the Falklands and western Siberia.
In recent years, Mr Burns had split his time between WA and a home in London, where he founded and floated Bahamas Petroleum.
He is survived by his second wife, Pamela, and their son Tom, as well as two sons and a daughter (Alexander, the renowned comedian Brendon and Stephanie, a noted artist), with his first wife, Victoria Mizen.
