Heard was born in Highgate, north London and attended Monkton Combe School in Bath before obtaining his degree in Geology and Physics from Keele University.
[1] He oversaw early oil production from the Asab and Sahil fields, staying in remote desert camps and travelling in basic conditions and an extreme environment.
[1] In 1966, Heard was offered the opportunity to move to the fledgling oil town of Abu Dhabi, where he would have a seafront company bungalow.
A year later, he married Frauke Bey, a German student he had met in 1958 when she was working at a seaside guesthouse in Bournemouth and she travelled to Abu Dhabi to join him.
[3] Heard had been asked in 1995 by his friend, the UAE's first minister of foreign affairs Ahmed bin Khalifa Al Suwaidi, to record the history of the oil industry in the country based on the ADPC London archives and, in 2011, he stepped down from his role at the Petroleum Council to undertake research for his account, writing From Pearls to Oil,[4] the first of his five books on the history of the industry.