The resignation of Cole, 52 - from his non-executive director and executive president corporate and commercial posts at Woodside - was announced this morning. He is scheduled to start at Beach in June next year.

Cole joined Woodside in 2006 and joined the board in February 2012, also serving as a member of the executive committee. Cole graduated from Australian National University with a BSc and BA Law (honours).

His functions at the major included upstream commercial, marketing and trading, legal, company secretariat, internal audit, human resources, corporate affairs, strategy and planning, chief economist, security and emergency management.

Before joining Woodside, Cole worked as an adviser to many national and international corporates, rising to partner in charge of the Perth office at what is now King and Wood Mallesons.

Beach's new managing director will be paid $1.2 million a year and will relocate from Perth to Adelaide.

The takeover from Nelson will be transitional, with an earlier start date an option if mutually agreed to by the relevant parties.

Nelson has been with the company since 1992, appointed CEO in 1995 and managing director in 2002.

The Cooper Basin visionary was chairman of the Australian Petroleum Exploration and Production Association between 2004 and 2006 and leaves big shoes to fill for Cole.

"We are delighted to have a person the calibre of Rob, an executive director at a great company like Woodside, joining us as our managing director," Beach chairman Glenn Davis said.

"Mr Cole brings tremendous industry experience and understanding, with a deep skill set in values based in leadership, strategy planning and execution, and the board was impressed with Rob's clarity of purpose and communication."

Cole joins the Cooper Basin-focused company at a promising time, with the announcement yesterday that it had achieved further positive results from its western flank development.

The company's Bauer-19 well was assessed to potentially add to reserves in the Bauer field, which has so far proved to be fairly reliable.

The news of the win was further backed up by analysts who saw the discovery as very encouraging for the company's future.

"We believe that sustaining production at current high rates will be a key determinant for the Beach share price over the medium term and anticipate further strong results from the development program," GMP Australia said this morning.

There could be interesting times ahead for the incoming managing director, however, with doubt still circulating around joint venture partner Chevron's intentions for its shared unconventional ground in the Cooper.

Beach's shares were down 3.23% to $1.05 per share this morning.