Hilcorp’s founder and CEO Jeff Hildebrand has stepped down from his leadership role.

Hildebrand, who founded the Houston, Texas-based oil and gas production company in 1989, will maintain his role as executive chairman while Greg Lalicker will assume the role of CEO, according to an emailed statement from Justin Furnace, Hilcorp’s corporate director of external affairs.

The company announced the change in leadership internally in November 2017, Furnace wrote in the statement.

“The organizational change comes as the company, a longtime producer in Alaska, Texas and Louisiana, continues to see substantial growth in other legacy assets across the United States,” he wrote. “In a similar move, Jason Rebrook has assumed the role of President, which allows Hilcorp to focus simultaneously on current asset development and potential future growth.”

Hilcorp, which is still privately held, is the dominant producer of oil and gas in Cook Inlet, with a total assessed property value of about $622.6 million in the Kenai Peninsula Borough in 2016, according to the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District’s 2017 Situations and Prospects Report. The company also owns oil and gas exploration leases on the North Slope.

The company entered Cook Inlet’s oil and gas market after it purchased Marathon Oil’s southern Alaska assets in 2012. Since then, Hilcorp has aggressively purchased properties and begun developing gas exploration pads of its own. In August 2017, after a months-long natural gas leak into Cook Inlet from a damaged subsea pipeline, the company announced plans to build a new cross-inlet pipeline to carry oil and gas from the west side to the east side by pipe instead of by barge.

Reach Elizabeth Earl at elizabeth.earl@peninsulaclarion.com.