Penn Virginia Corp. (NASD: PVAC) appointed Benjamin A. Mathis as Vice President of Operations, the company said in a news release Sept. 11.

Mathis has more than 25 years of energy industry experience, all of which has been in operations with a primary focus on the drilling and completion functions.

Most recently, Mathis was the drilling and completions manager for U.S. Onshore for Statoil, where he was responsible for Statoil’s drilling, completions and workover operations for the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Marcellus/Utica areas. Prior to that, he was a drilling and completions manager, as well as a drilling engineer manager, for Eagle Ford. Mathis, who has a petroleum engineering degree from Texas A&M University, has also held positions of increasing responsibility at Occidental and Unocal.

“[Mathis] extensive experience is wide ranging and will prove complementary to the deep strength we have in our technical team. We will leverage his expertise as we aggressively pursue the extensive inventory of drilling opportunities provided by our legacy assets as well as the recently announced acquisition of Devon’s Eagle Ford properties, which we expect to close no later than Sept. 30, 2017,” said John Brooks, CEO of Penn Virginia.