Leadership
Leadership Team
Abdel (Abby) Badwi
Executive Chairman
Mr. Badwi is a geologist and petroleum industry executive with more than 40 years of international upstream experience, leading public and private energy companies with oil and gas assets in many international jurisdictions.
Toby Pierce
Chief Executive Officer & Director
TAG Oil Ltd. CEO Mr. Toby Robert Pierce, BSc., MBA, is a natural-resource executive with more than 25 years of extensive transactional and valuation experience in deal sizes ranging from several million to $1.3 billion in value.
Suneel Gupta
Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Gupta is a senior executive in the international petroleum oil and gas industry with over 30 years of experience and a successful track record of value creation in oil and gas.
Barry MacNeil
Chief Financial Officer, CPA, CGA
Barry MacNeil is a Chartered Professional Accountant who has more than 20 years of accounting experience in public and private practice. He has worked as a corporate accountant for a group of companies involved in sales and services of mining equipment to the international mining industry, as well as a lumber company with export sales to Japan, Europe and Australia.
Gamal Rezk
VP And General Manager Egypt
Mr. Rezk served as VP of Finance, and then CFO, of Scimitar Production Egypt from June 2006 until he joined TAG Oil in 2020. Prior to that he served as Finance Administration Director at VA Tech Siemens (originally VA Tech Transmission & Distribution Limited) from 1999 to 2006. He has more than 24 years of oil and gas industry experience and is a Commerce graduate from the University of Cairo.
Giuseppe (Pino) Perone
Corporate Secretary and General Counsel
Mr. Perone is a lawyer by background and has extensive corporate experience that stems from practicing as corporate counsel, as well as serving as an executive and director, for various public and private companies in the resource and technology sectors.
Brett G. Johnson
VP of Exploration and Development – Middle East/North Africa
Mr. Johnson is a Professional Geologist with 25 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. His experience encompasses many aspects of the industry from sitting rigs in the early days of his career, to managing large teams and annual drill programs of over 130 horizontal wells. He has hands on experience with many aspects of oil and gas development as well as new venture and asset evaluation for different play types, both international and domestic.
Gurpreet Sawhney
Fracmod Engineering and Completions
FRACMOD is an Oil & Gas Centre of Excellence and was founded by Gurpreet Sawhney after working in the industry for over 25 years. FRACMOD specializes in providing Fracture Modeling services and fully integrated reservoir studies to derive more value for clients, improve workflow collaboration, and provide quality insights that lead to informed and real-time decision making. FRACMOD is a one-stop-shop for sub-surface modeling and analytics.
Samir Abady
VP & Operations Manager Egypt
Mr. Abady has over 35 years of experience in the oil and gas industry in Egypt, having supervised and managed the drilling of numerous exploration and development wells in the country. His career commenced in 1986 with Khalda Petroleum Company (“Khalda”) as a Drilling Engineer and then advanced to Drilling General Manager in 2009. In 2011, Mr. Abady was appointed as Khalda’s Deputy Operation GM and a board member, and a board member in Tanmia Petroleum Company (went on to serve as their Chairman & CEO in 2017). In 2014, Mr. Abady was appointed as Chairman & MD of an Apache/Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (“EGPC”) joint venture company (Qarun Petroleum Company), and as a board member of Petrojet. In December 2015, Mr. Abady was appointed as Chairman & MD of the Egyptian Drilling Company (“EDC”), and later went on to serve as a board member of EDC and as EGPC’s Deputy CEO for Production and a board member. Mr. Abady was also a non-executive Chairman & MD of Farah Petroleum Company (PetroFarah) and General Manager of National Drilling Company. Mr. Abady obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering from Suez Canal University in 1986.
Kevin Baxter
VP & Technical Manager Egypt
Mr. Baxter is a senior leader with over 30 years of proven oil and gas management experience in developing and managing large, diverse organizations that have delivered against challenging objectives. Mr. Baxter started his career as a Production Engineer with Amoco Canada in 1994, and then with Anderson Exploration, Beau Canada Exploration, and Canadian Occidental Petroleum Yemen. Mr. Baxter then went on to serve as a manager for Nexen Petroleum, managing various operations in Yemen and the UK, including reservoir, maintenance, production, completions, drilling, engineering, and construction. Mr. Baxter went on to serve as a Technical Director for all of Bankers Petroleum’s technical functions and as General Director for all production and operations within Albania from 2015 to 2019. Mr. Baxter holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calgary that he obtained in 1990.
Board of Directors
Abdel (Abby) Badwi
Executive Chairman
Mr. Badwi is a geologist and petroleum industry executive with more than 40 years of international upstream experience, leading public and private energy companies with oil and gas assets in many international jurisdictions.
Toby Pierce
Chief Executive Officer & Director
TAG Oil Ltd. CEO Mr. Toby Robert Pierce, BSc., MBA, is a natural-resource executive with more than 25 years of extensive transactional and valuation experience in deal sizes ranging from several million to $1.3 billion in value.
Keith Hill
Director
Mr. Hill is the Chairman of Black Pearl Resources Inc. (TSX: PXX) and ShaMaran Petroleum Corp. (TSX-V: SNM), and is currently the CEO of Africa Oil Corp. (TSX-V: AOI). Prior to this, Mr. Hill was instrumental in developing Valkyries Petroleum Corp.
Shawn Reynolds
Director
Mr. Reynolds is Portfolio Manager of Van Eck Associates Corporation which he joined in 2005. He currently serves as Portfolio Manager for Van Eck’s Global Hard Assets Strategy where he is responsible for company research and portfolio construction.
Thomas Hickey
Director
Mr. Hickey is an attorney of the State of California and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. Mr. Hickey brings to TAG over 20 years’ international oil and gas sector experience in M&A, corporate governance, compliance & ethics, and group restructuring and consolidation during his time with the operators Hess Corporation and Kuwait Energy and the service contractors Transocean and Subsea 7. Beginning his career in London, England, Mr. Hickey has since been expatriated to Houston, New York, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait City and Paris to support growth strategies and implement fit-for-purpose and effective corporate governance and compliance. Mr. Hickey recently acted as Head of Corporate Legal and M&A, and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, for Roquette Frères S.A., and is currently General Counsel for INSEAD. Mr. Hickey received an MBA from Strathclyde University (distinction) and is a certified CEDR mediator.
Gavin Wilson
Director
Gavin Wilson is an Investment Manager for Meridian Group of Companies, a private investment company, which has a significant shareholding in TAG Oil. Mr. Wilson was the Founder and Manager of RAB Energy and RAB Octane, listed investment funds, from 2004 until 2011.