Oil adventurers strike rich booty in Kurdistan

Payday is approaching for Tony Buckingham and Jean-Claude Gandur, the buccaneering founders of Heritage Oil and Addax Petroleum, two oil firms based in Canada that are involved in the first exports from Iraqi Kurdistan.

The two companies have much in common. Both are small international players that have scored exploration coups in politically unstable corners of Africa and the Middle East. Both maintain stock listings in London and Toronto, the two exchanges most supportive of development-stage resource ventures.

And both are led and shaped by fast-moving adventurers.