IT'S not every day that a senior executive with an oil major tells a journalist that he is ashamed about something, but a glance at Kieron McFadyen's CV tells you he is not the average oil company bigwig.

News last week that McFadyen would be entrusted with leading the global safety effort at Shell from November provided the latest distinction in a high-octane career at the firm. But McFadyen looked like he was on the fast track to the breadline when he was a teenager.

For the 45-year-old Glaswegian, who, as European technical director for Shell Exploration and Production, decides how Shell spends billions of pounds annually on things like oil and gas wells and platforms, left school aged 15 without a single qualification to his name.

Speaking affectionately of his parents' efforts to give him and five siblings a good upbringing on the huge Drumchapel housing scheme, where widespread poverty created obvious challenges, McFadyen says there was nobody to blame for his lack of achievement but himself. He is not proud of the memory of days spent playing football and jumping over the fence instead of knuckling down in class.

"I left school because I was a waster. To be honest, I was a complete waster and by the way I'm absolutely ashamed, " he admits, in a voice that remains pure-dead Glasgow.

"I remember actually walking to the dole with a girl in the same position. We were ashamed to go back to our parents to ask for the bus fare so we walked from Drumchapel to Anniesland to the dole and I remember saying to this girl 'we can't do this, it's crazy, it's totally nuts', " he continues, before finishing with the rhetorical f lourish of a true raconteur.

"And by the way that girl is my wife (Margaret) now."

The ignominy of signing-on was enough to force both to look lively in the hunt for work, which in McFadyen's case quickly resulted in the offer of an apprenticeship in engineering in a business next to Glasgow University.

Eight years later he was graduating from said institution clutching a first-class degree, after demonstrating a single-minded willingness to work hard and do without that must have stood him in good stead in his later career.

"I treated it as a job and went with one aim: to put the past right."

Where contemporaries may have spent long hours in bars, McFadyen was in the university by 7am studying. With lectures done by lunchtime he was able to spend most afternoons and evenings helping make ends meet with jobs such as selling ice creams.

Graduation was a sweet moment. "I was pleased that the past had been corrected and I was pleased for my mother in particular because I felt bad."

Further confirmation of his rehabilitation came in the form of a place on the elite graduate trainee scheme run by Unilever, the AngloDutch consumer products giant.

He only ended up at Shell, anotherAnglo-Dutch colossus, after deciding that life in a white coat at Unilever's Stork margarine plant on Merseyside was not for him.

Perched on a settee in a comfortable meeting room in Shell's huge Aberdeen office complex, the fasttalking McFadyen makes it clear that he has never had any reason to regret the switch.

After being delighted to enjoy an independent life on a good tax-free wage as a trainee in Holland, McFadyen has spent 21 years learning the oil and gas business inside out via postings in countries as exotic and challenging as Malaysia and Nigeria.

While his progression through the Shell hierarchy has been rapid in big company terms, McFadyen says a real highlight was his first job in the field as a well site engineer in Oman in the Middle East.

This involved taking responsibility at a young age for the hugely complex business of ensuring wells were drilled in the right place and were designed and built for the job. Having developed, as a rookie, innovative drilling techniques which caught on elsewhere, he has championed the benefits of being thrown in at the deep end ever since.

"I am a big believer that accountability equals learning. That's what learning is all about."

In his latest incarnation, McFadyen has had responsibility for leading a radical overhaul of the European upstream business that is a key profit centre for Shell.

In place of a collection of country businesses run as discrete units McFadyen has masterminded the creation of a single Europe-wide operation. This has been good news for Shell, according to McFadyen, who says the benefits boil down to one word: "integration".

Rather than having teams in different countries competing for resources, by treating Europe as an entity Shell can ensure that its output gets to where it is needed most and that resources like rigs and people are deployed most efficiently.

A key part of the job has been influencing and lobbying inside and outside Shell on a local, national and international level. McFadyen says that most of the time when things go wrong it is because he has not engaged effectively with the right people.

He recalls with obvious discomfort the feeling of bemused unease he endured when he sat in the family home in Helensburgh watching Gordon Brown on television last December announcing he would double the premium on North Sea tax rates to 20-per cent.

After weeks of hard lobbying by oil industry figures, this was twice what McFadyen had expected on a worst-case basis.

"I was thinking what the hell is my board (at Shell UK) going to be thinking about me, " he grimaces.

In view of last week's announcement it seems reasonable to conclude that if any senior figures were unhappy with McFadyen their displeasure was short-lived.

So long as oil prices remain at around dollars70 a barrel, McFadyen says the tax increase is unlikely to affect planning in the North Sea, although cuts in tax rates will be expected should prices fall.

With the North Sea enjoying a "vigorous middle age", McFadyen is dismayed to find himself on the receiving end of questions about Shell's commitment to the province on a weekly basis.

Unfurling a picture of the GBP25m Campus Tullos global hub that Shell recently said it would build next to the existing Aberdeen facility, he says: "We are absolutely committed to the North Sea. I do hope that the statement on Tullos, at least for the time being, puts any doubts to rest."

McFadyen is delighted that expertise based in Aberdeen will be deployed globally from the campus, relishing the fact that more than 40 nationalities are represented in the current facility.

His evident enthusiasm for the diversity that is present in Shell will stand him in good stead in his new role.

As vice-president of global health, safety and environment, McFadyen will be the first single individual to take overarching responsibility for Shell's HSE performance worldwide. This means ensuring Shell gets things right in more than 100 countries.

Given the risks to human life and Shell's reputation in getting it wrong, this is a very big responsibility.

While an accident inquiry report published in July into two deaths on the Brent Bravo platform in 2003 seriously criticised the company, McFadyen says he can't think of any company that puts more into the safety effort than Shell does.

However, in an e-mail to staff in July, Jeroen van derVeer, Shell's chief executive, said: "Our safety performance has reached a plateau - and remains below best of class in our industry. Our statistics show it. We know it."

In view of those sort of remarks McFadyen's appointment seems to be a huge vote of confidence in him from the highest levels in Shell, even if it is not technically a promotion.

But McFadyen - who says his biggest passion is watching his three boys (aged 18, 17 and 10) play sport - insists he has no particular ambitions. Laughing off suggestions that he might one day be interested in van der Veer's job, he offers a word of advice for members of Shell's latest graduate intake.

"Achieve today with the challenges that you have today, and if you continue to do that someone else will ensure your future."

Oil the way from Drum to well

Born: 1960, Glasgow.

Education: St Laurence's Primary School and St Pius X Secondary School in Drumchapel.

Family: Married with three sons.

Career: Joined Shell in 1985, after graduating with a first-class degree in engineering from the University of Glasgow. Appointed vice-president Europe in August 2002 to support the development of Shell Exploration and Production's new European organisation. Became vice-president Technology, Europe, Shell Exploration and Production, in October 2003, responsible for wells, development of new and existing reservoirs, major project delivery and technology development.

What drives you: Making a difference.

What car do you drive: Range Rover.

What book are you reading: Ihate reading. I would much rather talk to people and I don't have time for books.

What was your best moment in business: There are many best moments but to pick out one - early in my career, as a drilling engineer in Oman, designing the first medium-radius horizontal well in Shell and seeing it through construction to operation. This technology changed the way we operated in many areas.

What was your worst: In the Corrib Gas Project (offshore Ireland) when protestors went to jail as part of their objection to our project. I'm sorry that happened and take great personal learning from that.