Pierre Guillaumat - CEO of SNPA, Elf Aquitaine

Born on 5 August 1909 in La Flèche (Sarthe). Lycée Carnot (Paris), Prytanée (La Flèche), Ecole polytechnique, engineer at the Corps des mines. Head of the mining department in Indochina (1934), then in Tunisia (1939).  Director of Fuels in 1944. In 1951 he was chosen as General Administrator and Government Delegate to the Atomic Energy Commission (until 1958). He was appointed Minister of the Armed Forces from June 1958 to February 1960, then Minister Delegate to Prime Minister Michel Debré (until April 1962). He was Chairman of EDF in 1964-1965. At the same time, he continued his career in the oil industry as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the BRP (Bureau des recherches du pétrole) from 1944 to 1951; he was a member of the Conseil général des mines (1955-1958, then again 1962-1978). In 1962 he was chosen to be CEO of the UGP (General Petroleum Union), then of SNPA and ERAP. Under his chairmanship, he brought together the companies created on the initiative of the public authorities, which would later form Elf-Aquitaine, officially in 1976, but in practice, for the most part, already in 1965 and even more so when the Elf brand was chosen to unify the downstream sector. At the same time, he is a director of the CFP. He continued to build Elf by directing its upstream activities abroad outside the former colonial territories; he took Elf out of Algeria after nationalization in 1971; he developed downstream activities, in particular by bringing Antar into the Group; he launched the chemicals business and approved the creation of the health division. He became CEO of SNEA when it was created in 1976 until 1979. In addition, he was a member of the Advanced Training Council (1969) then Chairman of the Board of Directors (1971-1974) of the École Polytechnique; member of the Aquitaine Regional Economic Development Commission (1970-1973); Chairman of the Cancer League before his death in 1991.