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Paul W. Bateman, Chairman of the Board of Directors

Mr. Bateman is President of the Klein & Saks Group, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that advises clients, principally in the mining and metals industries, on public policy matters. He joined the firm in 1994 and became its President in 1997. A graduate of Whittier College, he began his career in the late 1970’s, as an aide to then President Richard M. Nixon. In 1981, he joined the White House Staff under President Reagan and, subsequently, served in that Administration in senior positions at the Departments of Commerce and Treasury. From 1989 to 1993, he served on President George H. W. Bush’s White House Staff as Deputy Assistant to the President for Management. Since 2005, Mr. Bateman has been the Chairman and Chief Executive of the International Cyanide Management Institute, which administers a voluntary industry program aimed at improving the management of cyanide used in gold mining. He is a member of the Economic Club of New York, the nation’s leading nonpartisan speaking forum, and was its President from 2004 to 2007. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of Green Seal, a non-profit, third-party certifier and standards development body for eco-labeling in the United States. Mr. Bateman is an independent member of our Board of Directors.

Edward M. Gabriel, Director

Ambassador Gabriel is the former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco, and, since 2002, is President and Chief Executive Officer of a Washington, D.C.-based strategic business consulting company, The Gabriel Company, LLC. Ambassador Gabriel brings a diverse background in a variety of petroleum and other energy sources. Ambassador Gabriel’s experience is both domestic and international, with extensive relationships with the U.S. and Middle Eastern governments and investment capital companies interested in energy projects. He is a member of the advisory board of Guggenheim Partners, a private wealth management firm. His career includes senior management positions with firms such as CONCORD and the Madison Public Affairs Group, where he advised Fortune 100 Companies on multi-national matters in technology, energy, banking, environmental, and tax policy. Ambassador Gabriel served the Federal Energy Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, as Senior Economic Analyst. He serves as Vice Chairman of the American Task Force for Lebanon and is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also on the Board of Directors of the American School of Tangier and the Casablanca American School. He is a Bachelor of Sciences graduate of Gannon University, where he was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws. Ambassador Gabriel is an independent member of the Tri-Valley Board of Directors.

Henry Lowenstein, Director

Dr. Lowenstein has been Professor of Management at the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina, since 2007, and from 2007 to 2009 was Dean of the College. Prior to joining Coastal Carolina University, he was Dean of Business and Public Administration at California State University, Bakersfield, from 2000 to 2007. Dr. Lowenstein has a broad background in management within business, academic, government, and public service organizations. He has served as an experienced reviewer, consultant, and on a number of committees for AACSB International, the top accreditation agency for business schools worldwide. Previous academic positions include universities in Illinois, Virginia, and West Virginia. He is Chairman of the Board of the Ocean View Memorial Foundation of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and provides economic and policy research for the Executive Committee of the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. Dr. Lowenstein has published in the fields of human resource management, public policy, and transportation. During his business career, he was a corporate officer for Kemper Group-Insurance and Financial Services, Dominion Bankshares Corporation, and Americana Furniture, Inc. He previously served as a management analyst for the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Office of Management and Budget, during the Gerald R. Ford Administration. Dr. Lowenstein received his Ph.D. in Labor and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois; an M.B.A. from George Washington University; and a B.S. in Business Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Lowenstein is an independent member of our Board of Directors. He is chairman of both the Compensation Committee and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.

Loren J. Miller, Director

Mr. Miller served as Treasurer of the Jankovich Company from 2001 until his retirement in 2008. Prior to Treasurer, he served in other positions at Jankovich from 1994 to 2001. He served successively as Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of Hershey Oil Corporation from 1987 to 1990 and Mock Resources from 1991 to 1992. He was Senior Financial Vice President & General Manager of Tosco Production Finance Corporation from 1975 to 1986 and was a Senior Auditor for the accounting firm of Touche Ross & Company from 1968 to 1973. Mr. Miller is a member of Financial Executive International, the nation’s leading senior financial executive organization and is a Past President of the Los Angeles Chapter. He is experienced in exploration, production, product trading, refining, and distribution, as well as, corporate finance. He holds a B.S. in Accounting and an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Southern California. Mr. Miller is an independent member of our Board of Directors.

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.

In 2002, Tri-Valley created a limited partnership called the TVC OPUS 1 Drilling Program, LP. The purpose of this partnership was to raise $100 million by selling partnership interests to conduct wildcat exploration. This purpose was amended in 2006 to include development of producing properties.

By year-end 2009, the TVC OPUS 1 Partnership had raised approximately $100 million since its inception and had invested in drilling several non-commercial wells and in acquiring producing properties.   TVC OPUS 1 has a 75% working interest in the Pleasant Valley heavy oil production project in the Oxnard Oil Field, with the remaining 25% held by Tri-Valley Corporation.

In 2010, Tri-Valley announced that it had established an OPUS Advisory Committee to assist the Company, as Managing Partner of the TVC OPUS 1 Drilling Program, to identify and evaluate strategic alternatives to maximize the value of the jointly-owned Pleasant Valley project in the Oxnard Oil Field. The Committee will also consider a possible reorganization of the partnership to attract the required capital for full development of the Oxnard properties.