Board of Directors

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Sara Akbar, Director and Chairwoman of the Board

  • Chemical Engineer with more than 30 years’ experience, having led and built oil and gas companies, services and projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

  • CEO and Chair of OILSERV Kuwait, a leading integrated oilfield services company in the MENA region

  • Independent Director of Petrofac, a leading international engineering and services provider in oil and gas, since 2018

  • Co-founder of Kuwait Energy Company (KEC) which developed assets in Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan, and was sold to United Energy Group in 2019

  • Chairperson of the Advisory Board to the business school of American University of Kuwait, a member of the Kuwait Supreme Council for Planning and Development and an active member of the Board of Trustees of Kuwait’s Silk Territory project

  • Serves on the board of the Merchant Fund, a fund created by ICC

Robert Bensh, Director and Chief Executive Officer

  • Texas energy executive, investor, and strategic advisor with more than two decades of experience across upstream, midstream, LNG, and global energy trading

  • Has founded, scaled, and led multiple energy ventures spanning the U.S., Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, with deep expertise in crude oil, refined products, LNG, infrastructure development, and complex cross-border transactions

  • Has worked extensively with governments, national oil companies, multilaterals, and private capital, combining commercial execution with geopolitical and energy-security insight

  • Core competencies include capital allocation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, government relations, and natural gas value chain integration

Dean Callaway, Director and Chief Financial Officer

  • Chartered Professional Accountant (MBA And BComm) with more than 30 years’ experience in the energy and finance industries

  • CFO for private and public companies for more than a decade, with experience in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, France, Namibia, Niger and the United States

  • Previous Head of Mergers and Acquisition for Terasen Pipeline

  • Corporate finance and international business development experience at Enbridge and TransAlta

  • Energy investment banking experience at Merrill Lynch

Henry Legarre, Director

  • Professional geoscientist  (MSc) with more than 30 years’’ experience in the international oil and gas sector

  • Managing Director at Addax Petroleum Services, responsible for the successful exploration and development of the Taq Taq oilfield in Iraq, sold to SINOPEC in 2009

  • Co-founder and COO for Oryx Petroleum, which explored and developed assets in Iraq, Nigeria, Senegal and the Republic of Congo

  • Started with Chevron in Bakersfield, CA, developing heavy oil assets, a post that led to work in a variety of capacities managing assets in Nigeria, Angola, China, Venezuela, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Brazil for more than 17 years

  • Currently part of executive team developing a new clean-energy-from-oil process, combining EOR and geothermal process in mature fields to increase recovery and creating net-zero electricity with no CO2 emissions