Kathleen Hogenson

Kathy co-founded Zone Energy and Zone Oil & Gas in 2009, the former being the operating company backed by Kane Capital. The team built a portolfio of assets focused on the waterflood and re-entry potential for the East Texas Oil Field.

Kathy had come from Santos USA Corp. where she restarted a US portfolio for a $6 billion Australian public E&P company undergoing strategic transformation. She was responsible for Santos Americas and Europe finance and accounting, exploration, development, production, sourcing and negotiating M&A transactions, environmental health and safety, reserves reporting and planning, land and legal. Beginning with an initial asset purchase of $20 million, she completed numerous acquisitions and divestitures, including two stock purchases for $80 million and $450 million. Kathy successfully created a partnership for large high risk, high potential and ultimately high reward exploration opportunity in the Gulf of Mexico operated by Santos.

Prior to Santos, she worked for Unocal Corporation and Maxus Energy/YPF for a combined 14 years in a number of capacities. She began as a reservoir engineer in the Gulf Coast region in Houston, with subsequent moves to Dallas, Texas, Quito, Ecuador, Jakarta, Indonesia and several times to Houston. Kathy joined Unocal in 1988 and was later promoted to Global Chief Reservoir Engineer, in charge of the careers of reservoir engineers in all locations, corporate governance in reservoir engineering work products and a key member of the reserve audit team. She quickly moved into executive management, as VP of Exploration & Production Technology.

Kathy began her professional career with Aminoil as a reservoir engineer. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University. She is a member and past Treasurer of the SPE, having started up a new regional office in South America. She is a trustee and member of the SEG and a member of the AAPG. She has been an active member of Houston Young Presidents’ Organizations. Kathy serves on the board of directors for 3 public companies and serves as the Chair of Audit and Nominating & Governance Committees.