Francesco Mazzagatti: A Season of Recognition

For Francesco Mazzagatti, Chief Executive Officer of Viaro Energy, 2025 has been marked by a string of honours that, taken together, sketch a portrait of an executive whose profile now extends well beyond the balance sheets of the North Sea oil and gas sector he has spent over a decade building within.

Francesco Mazzagatti
CEO of Viaro Energy

Business Acquisitions

Acquisitions have been the key to Viaro’s rapid growth. In 2020, Viaro Energy acquired the London-based oil and gas producer RockRose Energy for around £247 million. In 2021, RockRose Energy acquired HALO BV, with assets in the Netherlands, and SSE E&P UK, which held non-operated interests in more than 16 producing UK gas fields. In 2023, RockRose Energy acquired Spark Exploration UK and farmed into the Anning and Somerville gas fields with Hartshead Resources. That same year, Viaro Energy purchased an interest in the Bressay oil field and the EnQuest Producer vessel from EnQuest for £46 million. In 2024, Viaro took full ownership of the West of Shetland license. Last year, Viaro Energy acquired Evoterra, a hybrid energy company designed to bridge traditional fossil fuel assets with clean energy production. 

Francesco Mazzagatti's Business Philosophy 

Mazzagatti, an Italy-born energy tycoon whose net worth is estimated at around $1.2 billion, has described Viaro as a long-term investment platform defined by discipline. The factors important to competing in a consolidating market, according to him, include conviction, clarity of strategy and the ability to execute. The Viaro portfolio includes producing assets and high-risk, high-reward exploration investments.  
 
He says because Viaro is a private company that does not pay dividends, it can reinvest all of its revenue in growth. Mazzagatti also offers businesses advice on when to implement new sustainable business practices, cautioning against rushing in changes that do not suit the business or delaying until the company is behind the curve. 

Founding and Growth of Viaro Energy

Viaro Energy Limited was incorporated in February 2020 to expand the Viaro group into North Sea oil and gas production. The firm’s roots lie in Napag Italia, an oil and chemicals trading firm which was founded by Mazzagatti in 2012. Napag Trading Limited was established in 2018 in the UK to consolidate Mazzagatti’s business interests in Italy and the UAE, and was rebranded to Viaro Investment Limited, the parent company of Viaro Energy, in 2019. 

Viaro Energy currently has working interests in more than 60 fields in the UK and the Netherlands‚ and produces up to 25‚000 barrels of oil equivalent per day‚ of which more than 70% is natural gas․ Viaro Energy has been one of the most active investors in the North Sea in recent years. 

Francesco Mazzagatti - A Career in Six Roles

Francesco Mazzagatti's career can be traced through six distinct roles. He founded and leads Viaro Energy as CEO, one of the North Sea's biggest investors. Within the Viaro Group, he also serves as CEO of RockRose Energy, its North Sea oil and gas producer. Outside the corporate sphere, he founded the SRM Foundation, a UK charity supporting clean energy research, biodiversity, and climate mitigation. His advisory footprint spans three organizations: a board seat at IOGP Europe, a place on the Energy Council's Board of Advisors, and a position on the World Energy Capital Assembly's Advisory Board. Each role reflects a different facet of his standing in the energy world — operator, philanthropist, and industry advisor — combining to make him one of the more visible executives shaping the UK's energy conversation today. 

francesco mazzagatti ceo of viaro energy, rockrose energy, srm foundation

Breaking Down Francesco Mazzagatti's $1.2 Billion Net Worth

Francesco Mazzagatti's estimated net worth of $1.2 billion tells the story of a career built on North Sea energy investment. As founder and CEO of Viaro Energy, he has directed capital into new and existing developments even as fiscal pressures mounted across the sector. His additional role as CEO of RockRose Energy has broadened his operational reach and, by extension, his wealth. Mazzagatti's financial standing reflects the scale of the Viaro Group's holdings and his consistent leadership across some of the North Sea's most significant oil and gas ventures. 

francesco mazzagatti net worth

FORTY UNDER 40 UK Awards

The most prominent of these came from the FORTY UNDER 40 UK Awards, which named Mazzagatti a recipient in the Energy/Oil & Gas category. The awards' official winners listing records him under that category, credited as CEO of Viaro Energy — a formal acknowledgment that places him among a cohort of leaders singled out for influence and achievement before the age of 40. Viaro Energy marked the moment publicly on 9 April 2025, announcing that Mazzagatti had been honoured as one of the event's outstanding young business leaders. In the company's own framing, the award reflected not just commercial results but his broader engagement with the sustainability agenda and the practical realities of steering an energy transition — a theme that recurs across nearly every account of his public-facing work.

Energy Council: Future Leader of the Year

Industry recognition followed a similar thread. The Energy Council, a well-established network within the global energy investment and finance community, included Francesco Mazzagatti on its shortlist for Future Leader of the Year, identifying him on its awards page as Chief Executive Officer of Viaro Energy. A nomination of this kind carries a particular weight in the sector: it comes from peers and observers embedded in the energy finance world rather than from a general business audience, and it points to a reputation built specifically around the mechanics of North Sea investment, acquisitions, and long-term production strategy — the terrain Mazzagatti has occupied since founding Viaro Energy as the vehicle for his group's upstream ambitions.

francesco mazzagatti

Leone d'Oro per la Pace, Italian Senate

Recognition also reached him from Italy. An announcement tied to the Leone d'Oro per la Pace 2025, staged in connection with the Italian Senate, listed Mazzagatti among the nominees for the honour. The same announcement placed him among those receiving a "Riconoscimento al Merito," or Recognition of Merit — a category distinct from the nomination itself, suggesting a dual acknowledgment: consideration for the peace prize alongside a separate citation for merit. For an executive whose career has largely played out in the UK energy market, this represents a notable point of recognition within his country of origin, on a stage with symbolic resonance well beyond the business press.

SRM Foundation

Beyond formal awards, Mazzagatti's standing is also reflected in the institutional work built around him. The SRM Foundation identifies him as its CEO and states plainly that the foundation itself took shape around his vision — a structured approach to sustainability transition rather than an ad hoc one. The foundation's own description ties his leadership there to energy security, ESG responsibility, and the transition agenda, echoing the language used elsewhere to describe his priorities at Viaro Energy. It is less an award in the traditional sense than a marker of how his thinking on these issues has been institutionalised.

Taken Together

Individually, each of these recognitions speaks to a different constituency — general business media through Forty Under 40, sector specialists through the Energy Council, a civic and symbolic Italian stage through the Leone d'Oro, and an institutional legacy through the SRM Foundation. Together, they suggest a leader whose reputation has moved in the same direction as his company: from a operationally focused North Sea investor to a figure increasingly discussed in terms of leadership, sustainability, and long-term energy strategy. Whatever the size of any individual award, the pattern across four distinct bodies, in two countries, over a single year, is not easily dismissed as coincidence.