Last year, Senegal's voters ousted President Abdoulaye Wade, a French-educated democrat, married to a French woman, in favor of Macky Sall, a 51-year old oil geologist who owns a house in Houston and speaks English with a Texas drawl.

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Mr Leggett knows both sides of the street: a geologist by training, he made a fortune as a consultant to the oil industry before he got green religion.

ECONOMIST: Oil and the environment

Golden, then a staff geologist and now head of deepwater exploration for BP, came up with a theory that massive oil deposits lay just beyond the Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico, in waters 300 meters deep or more.

FORBES: Going deep

Michael Harris was a geologist in Rio de Janeiro for Devon Energy, a U.S.-based natural gas and oil producer, according to a company spokesman.

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