CFO Corner: Ron Bain, Vaalco Energy

Ron Bain is CFO of Vaalco Energy, a Houston-based upstream oil and gas company with a strong presence in Africa and Canada. Founded in 1985, Vaalco is dual-listed on the New York and London stock exchanges.

Global Finance: You have been CFO for almost four years. How has Vaalco’s competitive position changed during your tenure?

Ron Bain: It’s been an active period during which we have delivered several transformative transactions that increased scale and diversified the asset portfolio. We completed a value-accretive corporate merger with Transglobe in 2022 that saw us acquire operating assets in Egypt and Canada. More recently, we acquired a non-operating interest in a producing field in Cote d’Ivoire through the acquisition of Svenska AB.

“In addition, we continue to drive organic growth across the portfolio with drilling campaigns, while expanding our footprint by adding new licenses that provide long-term upside potential. All of this leaves Vaalco well placed to consolidate its position as a leading independent exploration and production company.”

GF: What makes this business and industry a distinctive challenge for a CFO?

Bain: It’s a very exciting, fluid, and cyclical sector in which there is a lot of deal-making, a lot of investment, and the requirement to deploy material capital across the portfolio to deliver growth. The role of the CFO is to ensure access to capital to support growth objectives as well as work with the finance team and executive to mitigate risk: for example, through implementation of hedging instruments to protect the company against commodity downside.

GF: What absorbs most of your energy and time?

Bain: Most of my time is spent ensuring we maintain a robust balance sheet that balances organic and inorganic growth alongside our commitment to shareholder return. Vaalco is dual-listed in London and New York, so I also spend a lot of time engaging with our investors and wider stakeholders, overseeing our regulatory commitments to those listings, and playing a big role in the development of our strategy and our ESG agenda.

GF: What makes for a great finance team?

Bain: It’s important to have good communication within the team, so everybody knows the objectives and their respective roles in achieving those objectives. I am fortunate to have a great finance team across all our areas. I also have a close working relationship with our CEO, George Maxwell, having worked alongside him at our previous company, Eland Oil & Gas, which achieved a good exit for all stakeholders a few years ago.

GF: What is the role of AI in the finance function? How do you see it evolving at Vaalco?

Bain: AI is already in use in finance at Vaalco. We use AI-powered software to handle data entry as well as invoice processing with optical character recognition that extracts process data from receipts and documents with minimal human intervention. We implemented a global ERP system in 2024 and are collecting huge amounts of datasets through it. With the internet of things and the ability to integrate meter readings and monitoring gauges, we see machine learning models reading and learning from these large datasets to improve our decision-making.

GF: What keeps you up at night?

Bain: Economic and market uncertainty, together with an increased administrative burden via greater government regulation. My responsibility is, first, to ensure the company is performing for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. We have a lot of employees, so we must demonstrate that we are good corporate citizens and oversee a safe working environment.

We see ourselves as partners to the host governments in the countries where we operate, so we have a responsibility to the people of those countries to deliver a positive impact through our activities. As an operator of material-producing assets, we must always demonstrate operational excellence and environmental stewardship.