Suncor Energy Inc. chief executive Rich Kruger at the company's office building in downtown Calgary on May 9, 2023. Photo by Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia files

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Rich Kruger, an energy sector veteran with 40 years of experience, is leaving his position as chief executive of Suncor Energy Inc. next spring, the company announced Thursday.

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Kruger, who began his career at ExxonMobil Corp. and its predecessor companies, will move on to become executive vice-chair at Suncor in April 2027. After a “rigorous succession process,” the board selected Peter Zebedee, currently the company’s executive vice-president upstream, to take over as CEO, Suncor said.

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Kruger came out of retirement in 2023 to assume the top job at one of the country’s largest oil and gas producers after Suncor faced shareholder pressure for a change in leadership over safety problems and missed production targets.

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“You can expect an intense focus on costs, organizational efficiency and operational support,” Kruger said on his first call with analysts as Suncor’s CEO in May, 2023. “We will become a simpler and more focused organization.”

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Kruger’s predecessor, Mark Little, had resigned after a series of workplace deaths and production misses that appeared to frustrate some shareholders. At the time, the company had the worst safety record among its peers, with a dozen employees and contractors dying between 2014 and 2022.

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The activist Wall Street firm Elliott Investment Management LP had publicly taken aim at a “slow-moving, overly bureaucratic corporate culture” at Suncor.

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After a months-long search, the company hired Kruger, who had a long history in the oil and gas industry.

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He started his career in 1981 and worked in various roles at ExxonMobil, which eventually included a senior position overseeing the company’s global oil and gas production operations.

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In Calgary, Kruger led Imperial Oil Ltd., majority owned by ExxonMobil, from 2013 until his retirement in 2019.

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When he returned to the industry a few years later, Kruger moved quickly to assure Suncor’s shareholders that he would steer the company in a new direction.

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“I very much believe in making money,” he said during that first earnings call. “We are in the business to make money and as much of it as possible.

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“And everybody starting with me needs to see how they do that.”

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Over the course of 2026, Kruger has been making the case that the changes he imposed at the oilsands major were creating tangible results.

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In February, the company announced that worker injuries and incidents had dropped by 70 per cent in three years. The CEO said at the time that “2025 was the safest year in company history.”

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A month before that earnings call, a worker had died at Suncor’s Fort Hills mine north of Fort McMurray, Alta., after the equipment they were operating sank into muskeg. The company told The Canadian Press after the incident that it may have been the result of a medical event.

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It was the first workplace death under Kruger’s leadership. He said in February the company’s focus on safety had generally led to fewer incidents with lower severity.