Although Heavey never got a Celtic Sea licence (or the chance to finish off JR Ewing with a second shot), 22 years later, the firm has a market capitalisation of just under stg�2.8bn ( 4.1bn) and Heavey is one of the longest serving chief executives of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange.

When asked whether, after such a long time at the helm of Tullow, he has become bored with the oil business, Heavey is emphatic.

"Tullow is enjoyable. The oil industry is a fascinating industry. When you wake up in the morning, you have absolutely no idea about what is going to happen. You get to travel around the world and meet all these fascinating people. It is a fantastic business."

Like all oil companies, Tullow has benefited from recent high oil and gas prices, which have meant that it has been able to achieve higher prices for its produce. Indeed, last year, the company's pre-tax profits rose by 47% even though production increased by just 11%.

Heavey says, however, that the company's record performance in 2006 was not down to high prices. "The high oil and gas prices obviously benefit and we had a high kick from that two years ago but, unfortunately, there's also been a big jump with the costs associated with services.

"What we've been doing is selling out of the low margin fields and concentrating on the higher margin fields. That's why if you look at last year, we had a massive jump in profitability with a smaller jump in production, " he says.

According to Heavey, Tullow takes a relaxed approach to production figures and prefers to focus on high margins, the profit it can make from each barrel of oil, rather than concentrating on producing as much oil as I possible.

"I think the biggest failing that companies have had is concentrating on production numbers, which are, by themselves, meaningless. You can buy production in countries where you get no profit . . . the far-eastern countries, Libya, places like that . . . where the margins are absolutely tiny. So you really have to focus on value areas and the best returns to shareholders."

Heavey said that low margins were the main reason why, unusually for a major oil company, Tullow does not have any interests in the Middle-East.

Instead, most of its attention is focused on Africa, where it has 54 licences and is currently exploring for oil and gas in Uganda, Namibia and Ghana.

"I love Africa, " explained Heavey. "We started off in Africa in Senegal in 1986. Our business and all our staff are used to working in Africa. It's probably the easiest place in the world to work. There's no red tape, no bureaucracy, things are done very quickly, they're very nice people to deal with and the government agencies are very well-educated and do a great job."

When asked whether part of the attraction was the fact that Tullow could get better terms from African governments than elsewhere, Heavey agrees. "If you look at the American companies, they don't really get involved in Africa except the off-shore west coast because they view it as politically risky.

It is less competitive there. The terms are generally better than you'd find in other countries except in the areas that have a lot of oil like Angola and places like that."

He also challenges the conventional view that Africa was a hotbed of political instability and denies that he had ever encountered any corruption, even though many of the countries Tullow operates in fare poorly on Transparency International's corruption indices.

"People talk about Africa but Africa is made up of 53 countries. Everybody classifies it as one area. There's a lot of different peoples, a lot of different tribes there and just because one has a bad reputation doesn't mean the whole lot has. We've been working with Africa for 21 years and we've not seen any corruption."

Over the past 12 months, Tullow's position there has come under increasing pressure from a wave of Chinese oil companies, which are investing heavily in Africa in an attempt to feed their country's increasing appetite for natural resources.

Heavey, however, is confident that Tullow can see off its Chinese challengers, even though it lacks the resources that many of them possess, due to its strong focus on corporate social responsibility.

"We're in countries long-term. We don't have a short-term view: get a licence and sell it 10 minutes later. Because of that, we get involved in a lot of corporate social responsibility and community work: we become part of the country in a way, " he says.

"Uganda is a great example of that: we went into villages with no running water, schools, clinics or commercial enterprises.

Today, even before we've produced a single barrel, the villages all have them."

Heavey says that he feels that engaging heavily in corporate social responsibility work also had huge commercial and reputation benefits for the Tullow.

"You can't have a load of ex-pats working in an area and two minutes down the road, kids dying. You have to bring it up. If you don't, you'll have strife, you'll have problem, you'll have issues. It's good for business."

Tullow's careful maintenance of its corporate image may be one of the reasons why over 75% of the company's shares are held by large institutional shareholders, something which Heavey believes is primarily due to the company's conservative approach.

"In our portfolio, we have quite a large number of low risk, medium return projects but we have the odd high impact one, such as Uganda and Ghana which are potentially high impact. We have five or six projects every year which could be big but if they don't work, all the others are still there."

He indicates that institutions and fund managers also liked the company's low-key approach, which is aimed at maintaining shareholder sentiment and avoiding large share price fluctuations.

"I think what has differentiated us in the last eight years in particular is that we taken a very conservative view: we try not to get people excited about any one project or any one area, " he said. "You're better off having a situation where you surprise people with the positive. Good news is a lot better than bad news and if you hype things up, you'll eventually have to give bad news."

According to Heavey, the one challenge facing Tullow is escalating costs, which have largely been caused by the fact that high oil and gas prices have increased the number of players carrying out exploration work.

"Costs have gone up: rig rates have multiplied by three in the past five years, all costs have gone up and that will affect profitability so the margins that you have got over the past two years will be cut. What you have to do is to work harder to maintain those margins, " he said.

"But our exploration work should deliver us a number of high-margin fields going forwards so it's just harder work but I think we'll achieve it."

CV
AIDAN HEAVEY
TULLOW OIL
Age: 54
Family: Married with three children
Career: Chief executive of Tullow Oil, founded Tullow Oil in 1985; previously a chartered accountant with Robert J Kidney and Co, Aer Lingus and Tullow Engineering
Hobbies: Golf and property investing
Founded: 1985
Turnover (2006): 853m Pre-tax profits (2006): 347.8m
Employees: 500