Dr. Hill: Benton Oil and Gas is a small independent oil and gas exploration company. It is based here in Santa Barbara, California. It was created in 1988 by Alex Benton. It rose spectacularly from a small penny stock to go as high as 28 at its peak and then regrettably fell from grace because of very huge and extreme financial burdens resulting in Alex's resignation and bankruptcy. I came onto the scene six months ago now as Chief Executive and was headhunted from Britain to take on this challenge. It is a small company, a market capitalization of about 70 million, debt stands at about 213 million and its current production is about 30,000 barrels a day, exclusively from Venezuela and Russia.
TWST: Are there any other management changes that have occurred recently
or are there any anticipated at this point?
Dr. Hill: Let me give a bit of my background, I had 25 years at British
Petroleum. I was the Chief Geologist at BP. I sat on the Board of BP
Exploration with John Browne when he came back to run BP in 1989. I was
his Chief of Staff and head of Human Resources and we redesigned BP in
the early 1990s. I left BP in 1994 at 50 years of age and was going to
go and go fishing but I had three years in Europe with Deminex as the
Managing Director, the largest oil company in Germany. Then this
challenge came up here in Benton which is something I was very willing
and ready to take on because of the tremendous asset base of this
company. In terms of the first thing I did ' clearly the leadership had
lost credibility so the first thing we did was change the Board. I got a
new Board of people who I knew or respected and who were minded to try
and grow this company. So I have a Board with five new faces, and also
then changed the Chief Financial Officer and the Senior Vice President
of Exploration and Production. So it is a new team, a new direction and
a new commitment to try and make this company grow.
Tickers included in this excerpt: BNO
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