Mr. Ray Leonard
President, Chief Executive Officer, & Director
Hyperdynamics Corporation
Ray Leonard was born in New York, of a family of Ukrainian ancestry. He received a Bachelor of Science in Geology from the University of Arizona and a Master of Arts in Geology from the University of Texas at Austin.
His 19-year career with Amoco was entirely associated with international projects. Initial assignments were in Trinidad, Norway and West Africa. In 1989, he was appointed the Director of New Ventures for the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. He was in a unique position to view the political and economic changes taking place. In 1995, he was appointed Vice President for Resource Acquisitions, Amoco Eurasia. In June 1998, he accepted a position as Exploration Vice President for First International Oil Company (FIOC), a newly formed company in Almaty, Kazakstan. He accepted a position as Vice President-Exploration and New Ventures in Moscow for YUKOS, the second largest Russian Oil Company in January 2001 with responsibility for diversifying the YUKOS upstream portfolio out of the core areas of West Siberia and Samara, specifically to East Siberia, the Russian Shelf and Central Asia, and concluding partnership agreements with non-Russian companies.
In January 2005 he joined MOL, the Hungarian Oil and Gas Company with the highest market capitalization (approx 11 billion USD) of any company in Eastern Europe as Senior Vice President for International Exploration and Production. During his two-year tenure the company acquired assets in Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman and Pakistan, made new field discoveries in Pakistan and Kazakhstan and reached peak production of 55,000 BOPD in its Russian venture.
He accepted a position in December 2006 with Kuwait Energy Company as Vice President-Eurasia and Exploration and currently resides in Kuwait City. He built a Eurasia division consisting of properties in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia comprising a majority of Kuwait Energy reserves, and directed exploration programs in Yemen, Pakistan and Egypt. In July 2009, he accepted a position as CEO and President of Hyperdynamics, a NYSE-Amex company exploration for oil and gas in West Africa.
