Pioneer Natural Resources Co. said Scott D. Sheffield will retire as the company’s CEO effective Dec. 31. Pioneer’s board approved a transition plan under which President and COO Timothy L. Dove will succeed Sheffield as president CEO. Sheffield will continue as executive chairman through Dec. 31, 2017 at which time he will retire as an executive and employee of the company but remain on the board. Sheffield joined Pioneer’s predecessor company, Parker & Parsley, as a petroleum engineer in 1979. Dove joined Parker & Parsley in 1994 as vice president of business development and was promoted to senior vice president in 1996 where he served until the formation of Pioneer in 1997. In 2004, Dove was named president and COO. He was elected to the board of directors in 2013.

Patricia E. Hurt has been appointed FERC administrative law judge (ALJ) by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Norman Bay. Hurt comes to FERC from the Social Services Administration, where she has served as ALJ in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review since May 2015. Prior to that, she was a trial attorney in FERC’s Office of Administrative Litigation for almost eight years, including a detail as special assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Hurt served as an attorney advisor both to former Commissioner Philip Moeller and in FERC’s Office of Administrative Law Judges, where she was a law clerk for ALJ Carmen Cintron, now the Commission’s acting chief judge. Hurt was also a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil and Civil Rights Divisions. Hurt is a 1999 graduate of the Catholic University Columbus School of Law, earned a master’s degree from Wake Forest University in 1990 and a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University in 1988. Hurt is a member of the Bars of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits as well as Virginia and the District of Columbia.