Management Team

Maston N. Cunningham
President and Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Cunningham was elected by the Board of Directors as President and Chief Executive Officer in March 2010. He had been Tri-Valley’s President and Chief Operating Officer since May 2009 and joined the company in January 2009 as Vice President of Corporate Development. Prior to joining Tri-Valley, Mr. Cunningham had a 22-year international career with Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy) that included over 15 years in Pakistan, Peru, and Ecuador. In 1996, he was appointed President & General Manager of Oxy’s Ecuadorian subsidiary where he led a successful oil exploration and development program and restructuring of the business unit that included renegotiation of its Oriente Basin Block 15 contract to increase oil reserves, production, and profitability. He was co-founder and first president of ASOPEC, an Ecuadorian petroleum industry association that spearheaded the industry’s efforts to secure government approval for construction of a private $1.1 billion heavy oil pipeline and marine terminal to facilitate additional heavy oil development in the Oriente Basin. Mr. Cunningham was also responsible for obtaining ISO 14001 certification in 1997 for Block 15′s Environmental Management System which, at the time, was the first Oxy operation worldwide to obtain this certification, the first enterprise in Ecuador to be certified, and only the third oil and gas operation certified in South America. Mr. Cunningham is a past president of the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA), a leading regional trade advocacy organization affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.  He currently serves as treasurer on the Board of Trustees of the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), an affiliate of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C., which implements over $50 million of projects annually to assist disadvantaged people in the hemisphere through public and private grants. Mr. Cunningham is a graduate of Trinity University and received an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Certified Public Accountant and fluent in Spanish.

Gregory L. Billinger
Interim Chief Financial Officer

Gregory L. Billinger was appointed Interim Chief Financial Officer in August 2011.  Mr. Billinger is a CPA with over 30 years of corporate financial and accounting experience in the oil and gas industry.  He most recently served as the Vice President of Finance and Administration for the U.S. operations of Ivanhoe Energy, Inc., an independent international heavy oil development and production company, a position he held from 2006 to May 2011.  Prior to that, from 2000 to 2005, he was the Corporate Controller for Ivanhoe.  Before joining Ivanhoe, Mr. Billinger spent 19 years with Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, a leader in oil and natural gas exploration and production, where he held various finance and accounting positions.

Michael P. Stark
Vice President of Exploration

Mr. Stark joined Tri-Valley as its Vice President of Exploration in June 2010.  Mr. Stark has over 35 years of experience with leading oil and gas producers in increasingly responsible positions. He was most recently Vice President of Exploration and Land for Ivanhoe Energy (USA) Inc., where he worked for 12 years. In his position at Ivanhoe, he developed a successful California exploration program that resulted in four discoveries over a three-year period.  He was also responsible for the geotechnical evaluation of Ivanhoe’s Block 20 in Ecuador acquired in 2008. Prior to Ivanhoe, Mr. Stark spent 20 years at Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation (Oxy), where he served in a variety of positions in the U.S. and abroad, including the United Kingdom and Pakistan. As Oxy’s Regional Exploration Manager for Europe, the Middle East, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, he directed an exploration team that discovered over 500 million barrels of oil in the U.K., North Sea, Russia, Oman, and the Netherlands.  After leaving Oxy in 1998, Mr. Stark co-founded Diatom Petroleum, a startup exploration company, which was acquired by Ivanhoe Energy in 2000.  He began his career as a geologist with Texaco.  Mr. Stark has a B.S. degree in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.S. in geology from Iowa State University.

Daneva Cofield
Human Resources and Administrative Services Supervisor

Ms. Cofield is Human Resources and Administrative Services Supervisor for Tri-Valley Corporation and has over 10 years of Human Resources and Administration experience. She received her certification in human resources management from California  State University, Bakersfield, in May 2008 and is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in human resources management.