Few people would have had careers as vastly different as mining and aeronautical engineering and then fuse this expertise to set up a business. But with a geologist father and a pilot mother, it was probably destiny at work for Randeep Grewal.
The chairman of unconventional mainland natural gas developer Green Dragon Gas - a 45-year-old, African-born entrepreneur of Indian descent now living in Hong Kong - earned his mechanical engineering degree with an aeronautical focus from California's Northrop University. During his study years, he had stints at New Jersey-based no-frills airline People Express, which was sold to Continental Airlines in 1987.
'Genetically, I feel I'm essentially built on two fronts - minerals mining and aviation,' said Grewal, who grew up in Zambia, a land-locked nation in southern Africa with an economy reliant on copper mining and exports.
'I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Africa, in camp grounds and in Land Rovers. Many children grew up playing with all kinds of toys, I played with rocks.' As a primary school pupil, he spent time with his father, who was prospecting for copper for the Zambian government, studying geological data and graphs.
Between 12 and 18, he attended an Indian boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas, cementing his cultural identity, before spending more than 20 years studying and working in the US. This included a three-year stint in the 1990s as corporate vice-president for defence technology firm Rada Group that deployed technology in commercial aviation for avionics maintenance.
But in 1991, he began investing in the oil and gas sector. One of the firms he put his money in was Evergreen Resources, a pioneer in drilling for natural gas trapped between coal seams, known as coal bed methane (CBM). It was acquired by New York-listed independent oil and gas firm Pioneer Natural Resources in 2004.
'Evergreen was an investment that I fell in love with, not only because it was a great commercial return, but also technically I was intrigued by it,' Grewal said. 'I was drawn by the hybrid nature of expertise - engineering and geology - that it required.'
