Oil Insurance Limited (OIL) Vice President Elspeth Brewin has resigned ahead of Special General Meeting to be held on September 14.

She will be departing from OIL in mid September and her resignation leaves the oil and energy mutual without a senior management figure with more than 12 months? experience. Chief Operating Officer George Hutchings, joined at the end of 2005, Robert Stauffer, took over as president and CEO on August 30, 2005, chief financial officer Ricky Lines joined in April this year and senior vice president of Oil Casualty Insurance Jerry Rivers joined in November 2005.

Mrs. Brewin who joined Oil in 2000, has not disclosed the reasons for her resignation but a company spokesperson said: ?Our policy is not to comment on personnel matters, however, we can confirm that Elspeth Brewin, Vice President of Oil Insurance Limited resigned from the company.?

?She has voluntarily resigned and the leaves us in mid-September to pursue other interests.?

In an Insurance Day article published yesterday, a market source described Ms Brewin ?an excellent line of communication with the broker market? but her departure ?shows a distinct lack of succession planning?.

Oil has a Special General Meeting (SGM) planned for September 14, 2006, this SGM meeting date was set at the Annual General Meeting of all shareholders held in Bermuda in March, 2006.

Yesterday The Royal Gazette contacted Mr. Hutchings to address claims in Insurance Day that OIL?s proposals for coverage of Gulf of Mexico (GoM) risks, which could include a plan to ring fence GoM risk in a separate pool, may not be enough to stop some members leaving.

Mr. Hutchings who is overseas, was not able to respond in full by press time, but he did say ?I can say that Insurance Day did not speak to any senior management before publishing their article?, and promised to respond today.

OIL board members met on August 19 in London to put together proposals to put at the SGM to address feelings among some members that GoM risk is not being shared in an equitable way.

Following huge losses from hurricanes Katrina and Rita that exhausted OIL?s $1 billion per occurrence limit twice in one year, one proposal being considered at the meeting will be to put GoM exposures in a separate pool of risk.

There are currently 14 members, energy companies operating in the US, Canada, Europe and South Africa, that are either directly, or indirectly, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, shareholders of sEnergy Insurance Limited.

?Our guess is there are likely to be several members who resign because OIL is less of a stable market than it used to be,? David Way Executive Director of the energy division at Alexander Forbes Risk Services in London. ?The key reason for the formation of OIL was to give stability in a market that was notoriously cyclical in premium structure but OIL suffered a large loss from the 2005 hurricanes and has turned out to be just like the other cyclical industries.?

In response to the severity of the 2005 losses, OIL told members it was ?forced to operate outside normal parameters.?

Whereas the mutual would normally have recouped losses from the storms over the following five year period, OIL made unprecedented, immediate, supplemental premium calls on members totalling $1.7 billion.

The mutual also reduced its per occurrence limit from $1 billion to $500 million with effect from June 2006.