George Lloyd
Independent Non-Executive Director and Chairman

Mr Lloyd has more than 25 years' senior management and listed company board experience in the resources and energy sectors with a focus on business development, corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions and exploration management. His present business interests include:

• Chairman of AWR Lloyd Limited, based in South East Asia, a corporate finance and strategy advisor to the energy, mining and metals industries in the Asia-Pacific region;
• Chairman of Cape Alumina Limited, an ASX listed company engaged in the exploration and development of bauxite deposits in the Cape York region of Queensland; and
• Director of Ausenco Limited, an ASX listed company engaged in the provision of engineering services to the global resources industry.

Mr Lloyd has a Bachelor of Engineering Science (Industrial Engineering) degree and a Master of Business Administration degree, both from the University of New South Wales. He is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program, Stanford University, California. He is also a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Justin Pettett
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

As the Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the Sterling Energy Group of Companies, Mr Pettett has broad experience as a public company director with positions in senior management.

Mr Pettett has worked successfully as a business analyst, broker and Managing Director of medium sized businesses for the past fifteen years, the last eight specifically in the U.S. oil and natural gas industry. He has participated both personally and on behalf of investors in over 100 Wilcox trend wells throughout Central Louisiana resulting in the discovery of several new oil fields and an individual well success rate in excess of 50%. He has also participated in conventional natural gas wells throughout Oklahoma and financed and co-managed the development of a CBM field also in Oklahoma consisting of over 27 CBM wells.

He has widespread industry experience, specialising in oil, natural gas and coal bed methane acquisitions and development, as well as extensive commercial knowledge in financial analysis, business development, investor relations, capital aggregation and financial and administrative management.

Mr Pettett also has experience dealing with and advising clients in Australia and worldwide on a range of commodities including base, precious metals and energy.

Ryan Messer
Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer (USA)

Mr. Messer graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in Business Administration (BS BA), majoring in Marketing and Finance and is a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Mr. Messer has thirteen years of experience in international business, five of which were in management positions focused on developing business within Fortune 500 accounts. The last eight have been in the energy sector, in the area of oil and gas project finance, asset acquisition and divestiture, asset allocation, and risk assessment. He has experience in managing field and land rig operations, developing midstream assets and assisting in the formation of technical teams, all of which were derived from the drilling of over 140 wells, and the resulting field development, spread across five basins within North America.

Of the 140 plus tests, over 100 of them were within the Middle Wilcox oil trend, wherein over 50% were successful completions. Previous to this he was responsible for the management of a CBM development play in the Cherokee Basin, Oklahoma and the building of its associated midstream infrastructure. He leveraged this infrastructure by developing third party gas contracts which increased revenues by 30% to the company.

In addition, he was involved in over 20 seismic and subsurface defined deep tests ranging from 14,000 to 18,000 feet in onshore and offshore Texas and Louisiana, which resulted in 9 producers.

Greg Short
Non-Executive Director

Mr. Short has a BSc. (Geology) (Hons) degree from the University of New England and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Mr. Short worked for 33 years for Esso/ExxonMobil, initially as a production and operations geologist, rapidly advancing to supervisory and management positions. In the 1980’s he managed Production Geoscience for Esso Australia covering major developments of several Gippsland Basin oil and gas fields. This was followed by 15 years overseas in senior exploration management assignments in the USA, Europe and Africa. In the USA Greg was responsible for all of Exxon’s exploration activities which included on-shore and off-shore Gulf Coast. He retired from Esso/ExxonMobil in 2006.

Mr. Short has a strong technical grounding in exploration development and production geoscience, exploration operations, Joint Venture management, Government relations, budgeting, contract and project management and people management. He has spent many years successfully managing large, complex projects with multi million dollar budgets, large staff and tight deadlines.

Mr. Short is also a Non-executive Director of ASX listed MEO Australia Limited, appointed in July 2008.