Stephen Greer is a man who spends a lot of time looking up.

Greer has a penchant for heights. The high-altitude chief executive of Antrim Energy has twice reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain peak. His aim is also stratospheric for his oil and gas company – which, of course, is situated on the 40th floor of Bankers Hall.

While most other Calgary juniors set their sights on small game close to home, the Irish-born geologist is one of the oilpatch’s elephant hunters, with his company focused on spectacular high-risk, high-impact prospects on the international stage in places including Tanzania, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Yet, the unassuming Greer prefers to play down his exotic entrepreneurial pursuits as he does his double conquest of Kilimanjaro. 1. What did it take to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro?

Dave Olecko, Business Edge
Antrim Energy Inc. chairman and CEO Stephen Greer is among the elephant hunters in the oilpatch, setting his sights high on big, risky targets.

“All it is is a hike. A really long hike, the better part of 20,000 feet. It requires the same stuff as building a business. Dedication. Single-mindedness. Being able to breathe without much oxygen. (Laughter) Stupidity. I wouldn’t put it down as one of my greatest life achievements.”

2. How did you become interested in geology?

“I loved the outdoors growing up in Ireland and that comes through in my career path. I’m a geologist through and through. If you have an inquisitive mind, it leads you to geology.”

3. How did your experience in your early years in the oil and gas business with Texaco prepare you for running your own company?

“Texaco taught me how to find oil and gas. People had longer tenures with companies then and the major companies looked at the education of geologists as a good investment. They don’t put quite as much of an investment into training as they used to. Of course, there are far fewer companies around now and less opportunities for geologists to work their way up.”

4. Why did you choose to go out on your own and launch your own company, Antrim, in 1990?

“I’m a business guy. I had an ambition to be able to control the direction of my career and life.”

5. Why did you focus Antrim on international exploration rather than Western Canada?

“Western Canada is a mature basin and does not have the huge prizes that the rest of the globe has. I’m an exploration geologist at heart and I like to explore. Exploration in Canada is more of a development or appraisal exercise in a very mature basin. The average gas well life in Canada averages three to four years now.”

6. Do you consider yourself a risk taker by nature?

“I don’t think there’s any point in being in the oil and gas business if you’re not a risk taker. It’s something that I enjoy. There are tremendous rewards in the international game and we’re searching for prizes that, in the order of magnitude, are larger than anything we could find in Western Canada, with risks that are probably several times as large as well.”

7. What’s the key to managing risk in your mind?

“It depends on the size of the prize. If the prize is small, then you want a small amount of risk. If the prize is large, then obviously you’re prepared to take a larger degree of risk to find it. Generally, what you want is a spectrum of properties, as we do. At one end of the scale, we have our production in Argentina which is very, very low-risk and much more akin to Western Canada production levels. At the other end of the scale, we’ve got a property in Australia that we’ll be drilling next and that could be several hundred million barrels. That’s something we could never find in Western Canada. We also have several properties in between those scales.”

8. How have your operations in Argentina been affected by that country’s economic crisis?

“It’s actually been a net benefit to us. The oil price hasn’t changed very much – in fact, it has probably increased – and yet our operating costs have been decreased due to the devalued Argentine peso against the U.S. dollar. As a result, our cash-flow netback has increased and we were actually in the top 10 per cent of junior and mid-sized companies in Western Canada in terms of cash flow per barrel in the first half of 2003. That’s quite a merit for us.”

9. Besides the Australian prospect, what are some of the other prospects that you’re excited about right now?

“After Australia, we’ll be drilling a very similar-sized target in Tanzania in East Africa. We have about 3 1/2 million acres in Tanzania and we own 100 per cent of that. Also in 2004, we plan to drill a large gas play in the North Sea. It will be a very exciting year. We’ve spent several years maturing these properties to the drilling stage.”

10. Why did you interlist your company on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) along with your TSX listing?

“The main reason was access to capital in Europe. The capital markets in Western Canada are very much designed to Western Canadian exploration and production companies. London has always been a centre of international finance for any kind of business, never mind the oil and gas business. That’s not to say that we’ve turned our backs on Canadian investors, not by any means. Canadian investors are still the backbone of our company. Canadian investors actually have a tremendous history and reputation for their ability and appetite for risk.”

11. Do you envision a trend where more Canadian oil and gas companies focus on international exploration?

“If the mid-sized group of companies wants to mature into something at the next level as senior companies, it’s very unlikely that they’ll be able to do that with exploration in Western Canada. If the shareholders want to take the company to the next level in production, they have to look outside of Western Canada. They have to look to overseas prospects to achieve rapid and meaningful growth in terms of their production and cash flow.”

12. What message do you want to convey to Antrim shareholders? Patience, perhaps?

“Yes, patience and an appreciation for the size of prize that we’re exploring for. A lot of Western Canadian companies do put out a lot of news on a month-by-month or week-by-week basis because that’s their drilling rate. We’re only talking about drilling three wells next year, so investors do need a great degree of patience, but they’re also rewarded with the potential of accessing a huge prize.”

13. What’s your vision for Antrim Energy?

“We’ll grow the company primarily through exploration and we will be successful in several of our exploration ventures overseas and we’ll run this company from Calgary.”

14. What are the advantages of running your company out of Calgary, when all your projects are outside the country?

“First and foremost is the professionalism and experience of the (oilpatch) workers in Calgary, which is world class. Calgary’s a growing hub for global oil and gas business and it’s very cost effective to do business from here. And, from the 40th floor of Bankers Hall, I’ve got an inspirational view of the Rockies. If we were to pay for an office in Houston or wherever, we wouldn’t have any money for drilling wells.”

15. Do you believe the surging commodity prices can be sustained or do you anticipate a downturn could be in the cards?

“I think we always plan for a downturn. A year ago, as we built up to the Iraqi war, there was talk of a price spike because of the war premium and various other excuses and reasons why we got up to $34 to $35 (US) per barrel. Well, for a spike it’s getting awfully blunt. So we may well have entered an era of higher oil prices. Nevertheless, we’re cautious explorers and we always plan for some period of depressed prices.”

16. With all your exploration overseas, how much time do you spend on the road?

“I don’t spend a lot of time away from home. I enjoy my time living in Bragg Creek (near Calgary) and I always appreciate my time here. The business has changed so much with e-mail and so on. Ten or 20 years ago, to get anything done you had to meet with the oil minister’s cousin or whatever. But the business is more sophisticated now and everything is done a professional and organized way.”

17. How would you describe your leadership and management style?

“We have a core of very experienced and very dedicated professionals in our office. They each have their own skills and I have my own skills and it’s through the mutual respect of those skills that we grow the company. We have very senior people in this office who have their responsibilities and, as CEO, I give them the authority to exercise that responsibility.”

18. What do you enjoy most about your business?

“I have a love of geology and I like puzzle-solving more than anything else. It’s always a pleasure to work on a new project. You learn to stick with it and realize that the risk does have its rewards.”

19. What’s your best advice for a young entrepreneur in the oilpatch?

“I think you have to prepare yourself for a lot of fun and I really enjoy my job. Any entrepreneur who enjoys the work is going to be successful. Otherwise, you won’t be successful. Although I’m not old at 48, I’ve lived through quite a few peaks and troughs in oil prices and seen the effect it has on business. So any young entrepreneur has to look far into the future and not only enjoy the peaks, but has to be able to manage the business through the troughs. So, one has to look beyond the peaks and troughs and focus on the larger peak.”

20. What do you see yourself doing 10 years from today?

“I can’t imagine myself retiring from this. That’s not in the cards at all. You wouldn’t put this much time and effort into something that you didn’t thoroughly enjoy.”

THE COMPANY: Antrim Eneregy
* Brass: Stephen Greer, CEO/chairman; Keith Skipper, executive vice-president; Anthony Potter, CFO.
* Profile: Antrim Energy is a globetrotting junior oil and gas company with producing wells in Argentina and potentially high-impact exploration projects in the United Kingdom (North Sea), Australia and Tanzania. The company has eight employees.
* Milestone: In 2003, Antrim became only the second
company outside the U.K. to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM). It is also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
* Recent Stock Price (AEN-TSX): $1.20 (52-week range, .62-$1.38).
* Website: www.antrimenergy.com
* Head Office: #4050 Bankers Hall West, 888 3 St. S.W., Calgary, T2P 5C5.
* Phone/Fax: 403-264-5111,403-264-5113.

IN PROFILE: Stephen Greer
* Title: CEO/chairman, Antrim Energy Inc.
* Born/raised/age: Belfast, Northern Ireland; 48.
* Education: Queen’s University (Belfast), Bachelor of Science, geology; Johannesburg University (South Africa), Masters of Science.
* Career: Greer founded Antrim Resources, a private company, in 1990 and Antrim Energy in 1999. He previously worked in the energy industry with Texaco, BP Amoco and Luscar Coal.
* Claim to fame: As a mountain climber, Greer has twice reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.
* Passions: Mountains, hiking, skiing, fishing, reading.