Tri-Valley first gained listing at number 397 in 1982 when the Journal then had a top 400 list. For the past two decades, the industry has experienced ferocious downsizing and consolidation with over 10,000 companies no longer in business, including prominent members of the original "seven sisters" like Gulf Oil, Mobil and Texaco that used to control the world oil business. Now almost all oil is owned and controlled by governments, which has drastically altered the market place and consumer costs.

Despite uncommon ongoing industry attrition over the past two decades, Tri-Valley has always made the list, steadily ascending an average of 13 places per year.

"During the really tough years, we have built a platform to deliver exceptional value to shareholders and drilling partners and now the price levels offer an extraordinary bonus on discovery success. We look to continue this uncommon rate of growth and expect our inventory of high impact wildcat prospects to provide outstanding reward for those invested with us when we bring in one of the big ones," said F. Lynn Blystone, president and chief executive officer.

Tri-Valley owns a proprietary worldwide database with data on every continent except Antarctica and currently emphasizes the California portion with 700 leads and prospects augmented by more than 20,000 line miles of digitized seismic data.

"Most people don't realize the just the region around our Bakersfield, California headquarters produces more than three times as much oil per day as the entire State of Oklahoma. This all comes from 12,000 feet and above in a valley where the sediments go down to 45,000 feet with many other hydrocarbon-bearing formations. It's a wonderful place to explore for really big, company maker type targets that will keep Tri-Valley climbing up the Oil & Gas Financial Journal list faster than our peers," Blystone said.

He noted that wildcat drilling is inherently risky with high failure rates, but the promise of big discovery makes it worthwhile, especially in the midst of the world's fifth largest economy, California, which now imports nearly 60% of its oil and nearly 90% of its natural gas needs to feed its burgeoning markets.