From a posting in Caracas, Venezuela, to the corporate M&A group in California, to the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and supply & trading groups in Houston... As a participant in Chevron Corp.’s management development program, James Yardley rotated through each of these assignments. The geographically and operationallyvdiverse rotations provided the experience in two years that if might take two decades to gain otherwise.

Today Yardley is in charge of business planning for Chevron’s Rocky Mountain group, encompassing assets in the Piceance and San Juan basins as well as central and western Wyoming. While low gas prices continue to hobble exploration in the region, he manages short- and longer-term planning, looking forward to the time when prices might recover.

Yardley spent his early years in Birmingham, Alabama; London, England; and Houston, where his father worked for Sonat Inc. (and its merged entity, El Paso Corp.). He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in economics, just as the energy industry, shaken by Enron’s bankruptcy, was contracting. He moved to Washington, D.C., for a job in the mutual fund industry, providing economic data and analysis to the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission for three years.

With an eye still toward a career in oil and gas, he entered the MBA program at University of Texas at Austin and interned with Chevron in the summer. The company hired him into its 65-year-old management development program, which hires five to 10 new members from top business schools across the country each year.

Yardley took on the Rockies job less than a year ago. In a recent interview, he discussed his wide-ranging experiences with the international super-major.

Investor What was your first job with Chevron?

Yardley My first assignment out of business school was in Caracas, Venezuela, home to Chevron’s Latin American headquarters. It was the middle of 2007, just months after President Hugo Chavez nationalized the country’s oil and gas assets. It was a big transition for Chevron, which negotiated with the Venezuelan government and ultimately retained a partnership interest in its assets, becoming the last American upstream company in the country.

Working for the finance team down there during that time was fantastic. I was exposed to the entire business unit, which includes diverse assets in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Trinidad. When the six months was up, I was hardly ready to move back to the States—it’s a beautiful country with terrific people, and the business is fascinating.

Investor What came next?

Yardley I was assigned to the corporate M&A group at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California. It was a very small group, just six people, that screened and pursued potential M&A targets.

Investor When did you return to Houston?

Yardley The final year of the program I spent in “planning-type” roles, six months in Chevron’s Supply & Trading group and six months in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico business, each based in Houston.

Investor Then you were involved in Latin America once more.

Yardley Yes, I couldn’t escape the region. After completing the management development program, I spent the next three and a half years in our Africa and Latin America E&P operating company headquarters as the general manager’s point man for Latin America. During that time I was involved in a project that has been my most rewarding to date. I led the analysis on the $2-billion loan that Chevron made to Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, signed this past May. Chevron still has very significant assets in Venezuela, and the government had taken a lot of the residual cash flow and used it for social programs rather than maintaining and reinvesting in the business.

The government began advocating for loans from strategically aligned national governments as well as the private sector. It asked Chevron for the capital to boost production capacity by about 16%, to 127,000 barrels per day, at the Petroboscan heavy-crude joint venture in western Venezuela, in which we maintain a 40% interest.

Initially it was a sensitive project, and a small group of us worked on the deal modeling the asset that would receive the capital injection, optimizing the loan and payback structure, as well as identifying uncertainties.

Investor And now you are focused on the Rockies.

Yardley Yes. I’m developing the three-year business plan as well as our longer-term strategic plan. Additionally, each month I build a new outlook forecasting how we’ll end the year relative to our 2013 business plan goals and metrics.

Investor What is the most challenging aspect?

Yardley It really is trying to figure out what amount of money we’re going to spend and where—there is a great deal of uncertainty with natural gas prices and capital budgets right now. We’re investing a lot in West Texas, and the sheer amount of activity out there is consuming significant resources, financial and human. But the Rockies will have their day—we have plenty of reserves and resources out there, both as a company and an industry.

Investor What do you like to do in your spare time?

Yardley I played baseball growing up, but hung up my spikes after high school. Now, I’m just an avid golfer trying to lower my handicap.

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