Ex-Tory energy minister takes on role at 3Legs
FORMER Tory energy minister Tim Eggar has been named as the new chairman of 3Legs, in his second appointment to the board of a growing oil and gas firm this year.
Eggar is already chairman of Cape, the oil services group poised to move from the Aim junior index to London’s main market, as well as a string of other energy firms.
He oversaw energy policy in John Major’s government during the 1990s, before standing down at the 1997 election.
The son of county cricket player, he was elected to parliament in the Tory landslide in 1979 after working in the City as a corporate financier at Hambros Bank.
He served as a junior minister under Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s, and went on to fulfill a variety of trade and industry posts.
After leaving parliament, he went to work in the energy industry in the United States and took up a seat as the president of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce.
Last year, then shadow chancellor George Osborne invited Eggar to review the tax treatment of the North Sea oil and gas industry.
Although never published, the review raised hopes among smaller UK oil companies that government policy might change.
It was anticipated that the report would call for a more favourable tax regime for firms operating in the North Sea – a far cry from the tax raid that was performed by chancellor George Osborne earlier in the year.