I’ve really enjoyed reading the “How I Got into Geology” columns in the CCGS Bulletin each month. Some geologists caught the fever early in life, some at a later date. I did both.

I admit it here publicly for the first time—I was a science nerd as a kid (see elementary school photo from the early 1960’s). In the first grade, other boys said they wanted to be a fireman, a policeman, or a cowboy, and I claimed that I wanted to be an astronomer. Later, I got interested in bugs and spent many happy hours catching and identifying them. My parents helped nourish my interest in science by buying me a net, the Golden Guide to Insects, and a small microscope.

By junior high school my chief interest had become earth science. I grew up in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where I collected and identified minerals, rocks, and fossils. I even won honorable mention in a county-wide science fair for my study of bedrock and soils. Mr. Long, my science teacher in both the 7th and 8th grades, encouraged these efforts. I believe that he secretly wished that he had been a geologist. He took several of us on weekend field trips to collect Pennsylvanian-aged plant fossils or rare minerals from the spoil heaps of 19th century chromite mines in the serpentine barrens of Lancaster County.

And then I hit high school. By the time I graduated, I had suffered through such abysmal science classes that all interest in the subject had been driven out. I entered Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC not knowing what I wanted to do. The German literature professor thought I should major in German, but I couldn’t even understand the English translations of what we read—the writings of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hegel. I liked my Old Testament religion course, but not enough to major in the subject. I finally decided, on my own, to return to an old love—Geology. My Wake Forest Physics professor suggested I get a degree in Physics and then go to grad school for Geophysics. Physics as a major, are you kidding?

Since Wake Forest did not offer Geology, after my Freshmen year I transferred, sight unseen, to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (or as I like to describe it, the original UT), primarily because my Wake Forest roommate’s Dad was a UT graduate who constantly praised the place. It was a lucky choice. Good Geology classes and profs, great rocks, and after a 40-minute drive, I could be backpacking in the Smoky Mountains, which, to paraphrase a character from the movie Jeremiah Johnson, I came to consider “God’s finest sculpturings.”

I gravitated to hard rock and Economic Geology because that seemed to me to be the discipline where ‘real Geology’ and field work were still being done. And that’s also where the bearded, flannel shirt-wearing, beer-drinking geologists seemed to be most abundant.

I liked the geographic area so much that I stayed at UT (remember, that’s Tennessee) for grad school and a Master’s degree. While in school, I landed interesting summer jobs. For two Summers I worked with Conoco’s mineral department on a geophysics crew, crawling through the swamps of Georgia and South Carolina, looking for ‘massive sulfide’ ore deposits. I also lived in extreme northwestern Alaska for three months, where I spent the July 4th Bicentennial in a small tent, weathering a snowstorm that blew over from Siberia. There were just two of us, and we worked for the Bering Straits Native Corporation out of Nome, doing regional geochemical reconnaissance of their land. Very interesting geology can be found in that part of Alaska, including placer tin and tungsten deposits. The Native Corporation didn’t take very good care of us, however. To this day, my Mom doesn’t know how close I came on several occasions to death or serious injury. There was a plane crash, a near-crash in a helicopter, and once we had to hike through 20 miles of rugged tundra after being stranded without food for four days.

It took me several years to get through grad school because my thesis advisor left after my first year to take another job, and I had to drop out a few times to earn money. I learned carpentry and built houses, I waited tables at a restaurant, and I worked in a button factory—whatever I could find. I also did a six-month stint as a geologist for Union Carbide, evaluating the uranium potential of central Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

In 1980, shortly before graduation, I considered taking a job as a mining geologist in one of the underground zinc mines in east Tennessee. Good thing I didn’t, as they soon closed. Instead, I opted to go to work for Hanna Mining Company out of St. Louis, looking for ‘Mississippi-Valleytype’ lead and zinc deposits in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. I also worked one cold winter in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in an underground gold mine where we were doing exploratory drilling. When the price of metals cratered in mid-1982, I was laid off, as was everyone else in the office.

Fortunately, I managed to get a job soon after as a production geologist with Exxon. I convinced them that the skill sets used in mineral exploration and oil and gas work were the same. Someone with Exxon said, “You—Corpus Christi!” and that’s how I ended up here. I’ll say this for Exxon, I received an excellent education, including 3-week-long in-house ‘schools’ in Houston devoted to subjects such as well-logging and drilling.

Although Exxon probably made millions from wells I proposed in Duval County, it wasn’t an ideal fit. One month, toward the end of my 4-year employment with Exxon, I was the only geologist out of about 30 who had any prospects to present at the monthly IC (Investment Committee) meeting of the geological and engineering managers. Everyone liked my ideas, and signed-off to drill 3 wells above a salt dome in McMullen County. Afterwards, my supervisor came to my office and shut the door behind him (never a good sign). He said, “You know Roger, it didn’t bother me, but it came to the attention of several people in the room that you asked them to spend a million and a half dollars wearing hiking boots and baggy pants.” My first words were, “But these are nice pants!” And they were—brand new $60 pants that my wife picked out. OK, they were a bit baggy and she is an artist. I’ll take credit for the hiking boots. I figured that since I was standing and they were all sitting behind tables, no one would even notice my feet. I guess I was wrong.

So I wasn’t really surprised when I was among about a third of the geology cadre in Exxon’s Corpus Christi office who were laid off mid-1986 after the price of oil cratered. Instead of immediately looking for another job, as I had when I was laid off from the minerals business several years earlier, I used my severance money to travel, and I vowed to not stop traveling until it was all spent. I flew to the west coast twice, spent a month in Europe with my wife, toured the national parks of Brazil, and visited game parks in east Africa. Thanks, Exxon!

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do upon returning to Corpus Christi. I considered writing to coal companies and environmental geology firms, offering to stay out of their industries, for a fee, lest those industries crater as had the minerals business and the oil field shortly after I joined each as a professional. Maybe I was a jinx. Instead, I turned to consulting. My first job was for the Wilderness Society. They wanted me to examine the data, methodology, and conclusions of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s draft assessment of the oil potential of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the North Slope of Alaska. They were hoping I could uncover a ‘smoking gun’ that would blow the government’s reserve estimates out of the water as being too optimistic. I found a few places in the reports where they might have been optimistic, but several instances where they were probably too conservative in their estimates. I also pointed out that much of the uncertainty could be resolved with a few strategically-placed drillholes. Funny, they didn’t send any additional work my way.

Shortly after that, W-2 (Dick White and Dick Wilshusen) offered me a place to work and plenty of business as a sub-contractor, doing oil and gas exploration with them, and I accepted. Two finer gentlemen could not be found in the oil and gas business, and I learned a lot about being an Independent from them both. Since Exxon was so self-contained, I really didn’t know much about geological work in that capacity. Several years later, I moved on to do consulting with Magnum Producing and Operating Company. Magnum was another great place to work, and Avinash Ahuja is a great guy to work for. In fact, that’s true, really, of everyone I had the good fortune to meet or work with as an Independent in the oil business in Corpus Christi.

In 1990, Andy Scott, who I worked with at W-2, told me about a newspaper ad that he had seen for a job teaching Geology at Del Mar College. I applied, was hired, and changed careers one more time. (Thanks again, Andy!) I tried to keep doing consulting work while also teaching, but soon found that there wasn’t enough time for both. After a decade, I had to apply and interview at Del Mar a second time, because my job became a tenure-track position. Teaching college, which I’m still doing in the capacity of Associate Professor of Geology at Del Mar College, is a good fit for me. In a way, I was preparing for teaching my whole career--I collected tons of rocks and photos from all the places I had worked or visited, and I now use them as teaching specimens and examples. (My daughter claims that the only reason I ever photographed her as a kid was to provide scale next to an interesting outcrop or museum exhibit.)

I don’t make nearly as much money now as I could if I still worked for Exxon, but I have a whole lot more fun! I’ve taught literally thousands of students in my Physical and Historical Geology classes, and it has been very satisfying to see them develop an entirely new appreciation for the beautiful earth we all inhabit. Most of our Geology majors are recruits from these classes.

In summary, I’d have to say that, like many geologists, I have a very checkered resume, including several major career changes. Change of some type is inevitable in life, but if you are flexible, and keep trying and working hard, there will always be new opportunities!

Sorry for being so long-winded, Owen, but it’s what you might expect when you ask a Geology Prof for an explanation of something!

Roger Steinberg
Associate Professor of Geology
Del Mar College
Corpus Christi, TX 78404
rsteinb@delmar.edu

Life is surrounded by a complex set of beautiful natural patterns both simple and complex. I have been surrounded by them since the day I was born and have constantly been in awe of the wonders of these natural patterns on our fantastic planet. That is the number one reason that I got into Geology at a very young age. I was born on the Llano Estacado (palisaded plains) in the West Texas town of Levelland. The Llano Estacado is one of the largest, flattest places on the surface of the Earth surrounded on most sides by escarpments, some up to 300' in height and under Levelland is one of the largest Oil Fields on Earth. My father, Raymond Taylor, worked for Amerada Geophysical Company and because of this fact I was "raised" in the petroleum industry and was inspired at an early age by many different people associated with Oil and Gas, especially an Amerada Geologist/Geophysicist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tommy Southgate, to become a Petroleum Geologist. Mr. Southgate would come to the towns where we were stationed and living and "QC'd" the field data on the Seismic that Amerada was acquiring. When he would visit and stay through the weekend at our house, on Saturday, we would load up and go explore the fantastic natural terrains in which we were constantly immersed and collect rocks and fossils and whatever. It was always a fantastic experience.

In 58 years I have seen seven different states as home, and my last move to Corpus Christi was the 30th move in my life of being exposed to the geology and natural patterns of all these wonderful places! I love the severe serene beauty of the deserts and their plants and critters, the glorious crispness of staggering mountain ranges, the continuity of texture on lonely barrier bar islands; the ragged quickness of canyons; the enormous diversity of animals and plants and geology of the oceans especially the reefs of the world, and the damp argillaceous clay odor and unique sculptures of the subterranean world. I wanted to be a Geologist, so I could climb big mountains; explore deep cavern systems; prospect for gemstones in pegmatites, do underwater videography on thriving reefs, and explore for Oil and Gas with wells reaching deep into the earth. I have gotten to do all of this and much more. I am thankful! Fortunately for me Geology has been a 2 sided sword and I have not only experienced all the natural beauty but have also been blessed by exciting Geologic oriented jobs that have provided an excellent livelihood with Okeene Public Schools, Oklahoma State University, Sun Company, Wagner Oil Company, and Suemaur Exploration. Thanks to those organizations for all those opportunities, and please know that I have always tried to do the best job that I could to seek out the natural patterns. I am proud to be a Geologist and feel extremely honored that my life was shaped by natural patterns and especially the many people of the Oil and Gas Industry.

No matter how one gets into Geology or why; the desire to be a Geologist who understands how it all fits gloriously together has to come from inside, from your heart. Over 25 years ago in Corpus Christi, Texas with my wonderful wife, Mary Ann, and my daughter, Laura, and my son, Chris, and a great job with Sun Company drilling wells in Starr and Hidalgo counties, Texas, I composed a song entitled “No Other Way” and verses #1, #3, and #4 were about the Oil & Gas life. Verse #4 is about South Texas and it goes like this:

VERSE #4
Working on a rig in South Texas about a hundred and four,
Looking for that over pressured gold on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico,
Well the Saudis cranked it open and the prices fell, but we kept on drilling our wells,
Looking for the Wilcox, the Frio, and the mighty Vicksburg,
Chorus:
Sweat and Hope in our Skin, don't you know that we got no kin,
But we don't know any other way, someday we're gonna have to pay; have to pay,
Subverse:
Skies are getting a little bit brighter now out over the Bay,
Looks like we made this time, Oil & Gas is gonna stay,
Chorus:
Sweat and Oil in our skin, don't you know that we got no kin,
Looks like we made it this time, we're gonna have to stay,
Sweat and Oil, Sweat and Gold, Sweat and Fear in our skin, in our skin,
Sweat and Oil, Sweat and Gold, Sweat and Hope in our skin, in our skin,
But we don't know any other way, Oil and Gas are here to stay, here to stay.

Dennis A. Taylor - Geologist

Well, this past month it finally happened. Owen came a calling. About 2 weeks ago, I received an email from Owen asking for my story of how I got into the Oil & Gas Industry. In my foolishness, I thought I could brush Owen off with a quick note: Why, almost 25 years ago, did I go into this industry? I didn’t have the job in what, I thought, I really wanted to do. But I forgot about Owen's tenacity. So I sent him another note with a very dry recitation of my experience and called it done.

A couple of days later, I told my wife about Owen’s invitation, and how I handled it. She gave me that look that only a wife can give. The same look she gave me when I exploded a hardboiled egg in the microwave earlier that morning. She told me that I had copped out and convinced me to submit a real write-up. The thing is, what I told Owen was the truth. I got into the oil industry because I didn’t have what I thought was my dream job. It seems a 1985 BS in Physics from Colorado School of Mines was not enough to get me a job at a national lab or a leading semi-conductor company (oh! the arrogance of youth). My fallback plan, one to two years as a ski bum, collided with financial realities before it got off the ground. So Amoco it was!

The question that seems more relevant to my story is not how I got into the industry, but why I stayed. Accordingly, below are the top ten reasons I continue to stay and love being in the Oil & Gas Industry.

Reason 10 - 1980's style training camps, where more brain cells were lost to beer than were built on the lessons of reflection and refraction.

Reason 9 - Designing and implementing multi-million dollar technologies with the encouragement and finances of a major.

Reason 8 - Not getting laid off in '87, '88, '89, '91, '93, '94, and '97.

Reason 7 - Riding seismic boats with my future wife.

Reason 6 - Bringing in and still paying out a well even after sticking and losing a $2 MM LWD tool.

Reason 5 - Continually contradicting the talking heads who yearly claim there is no more new oil to be found.

Reason 4 - Laying out seismic lines, only to realize later they go through someone's front porch.

Reason 3 - 1 ohm of resistivity flowing at 5 MMCF per day unstimulated

Reason 2 - The people, the places, and the technology.

Reason 1 - It is a treasure hunt!

Eric Gardner -- Geologist

Like everyone else who has shared their story, how can anyone turn Owen Hopkins down? How did I get into Geophysics? Well, first off, I knew from the time that I was twelve that I wanted to be a scientist. I know, I know that is hopelessly nerdy, but it is a fact. I was a really strong student in math as well. In high school most of my closest friends (including my girlfriend) were focused on science. But what area of science, that was the unanswered question. The neighbor in the house behind ours was an electrical engineer and that sounded pretty cool. He even helped me win the local IEEE scholarship. One day though, I received a letter from the Texas A&M Geophysics department inviting me to come visit. They also listed a large array of scholarships available for Geophysics majors. It turns out they sent the letter to all the high school seniors in Texas who had done well on their SAT tests.

My friend in school, Daryl Silva also received the invitation. Our high school permitted seniors to make two trips to visit a college, so Daryl and I drove to College Station to check it out. We received the full treatment with the various professors showing off their labs and calling me Mr. Bergsma. Then they offered scholarships to both of us. Hey, I was sold. This does not mean I had any real clue what geophysics was or what I might be doing for a living. I had to call the neighbor and turn down the IEEE scholarship.

The academic program in geophysics at A&M was a real grind. I had to study all the time, as did most of my classmates. We would work impossible physics problem sets together for hours upon hours. One of my classmates described working on the problem sets as the cumulative wisdom of individual ignorance (he ended up as a physics professor at the University of Alabama). I hit an academic speed bump during the fall of my senior year at A&M. My girlfriend had broken up with me, and my Mom was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. It did not help that I was taking a murderous class on what is now called AVO from the beloved Dr. Gangi. He disliked us as much as we disliked him. I made a C grade in the class and kissed it on the lips. I did better in the spring and graduated in 1976.

During the summer between my Junior and Senior years, I had the great good fortune to work as a summer intern for Houston Oil & Minerals. They sent me on offshore rigs, seismic crews in south Louisiana, and New Mexico and had me working on little mapping projects. They were a very aggressive company with lots of drilling and seismic acquisition. Upon, graduation, they hired me full time. Working there was a great experience. It was a time of great expansion in the oil business leading to a full blast boom. Of course, it did not last and like most of us, I have had to scratch a bit. Over the long haul things have worked out. Some highlights of my career have been working for Paul Strunk, Michael Johnson, and now a vast array of clients like Mike Lucente, Jim Claughton and Ed Riddle. One thing has surprised me. I thought in college that I was preparing to be a scientist and I was. But no one told me I would have to be a salesman as well.

Mike Bergsma
Geophysicist

There are many members of our local geological society that I would like to hear tell how they found their way into the oil and gas business. As it turns out, Owen Hopkins called me and “asked” me if I would do this month’s “How I Got Into Geology.” I think everyone knows how hard it is to tell Owen “no,” so here I am typing my story. I can’t really say when I made a conscious decision to be a geologist. I know that when I was in my late teens I used to travel to the west coast of Mexico for the great waves there. Most of the places we surfed had some fascinating geological formations, many with rivermouths and headlands covered in cobblestones of varying size, shapes and mineral content. I spent many afternoons scouring the beach collecting igneous rocks that had been fractured and filled with mostly quartz intrusions. I didn’t know any of that at the time, I just thought they looked cool. My mom would complain when I returned home after a couple of months because I usually came back with more rocks and shells than clothes. Nowadays, the tradition carried on, but it’s my wife Mariella that complains about all the rocks I return home with. I probably have a half a ton of rocks at my house if anybody needs a few.

I moved to Hawaii in my 20’s (what I now refer to as my retirement years) and was fascinated with the geology there, mostly with the lava formations that make up most of the reefs we surfed, and the volcanic hotspot that created the island chain. While there, I realized that I was actually going to need some sort of degree if I ever wanted to buy property in the islands, so I decided I would try for a degree in architecture. I soon realized that living on one side of an island and driving to the other side to go to class and working a full-time job wasn’t going to work out so well.

In the late 80’S, married and with a pregnant wife, I decided to move back here to Corpus Christi to go to school towards an architecture degree. In true genius fashion, I had my regular cab 4X4 Toyota truck with no AC, shipped to Los Angeles and drove it and my four month pregnant wife cross country to Corpus Christi. Amazingly, she’s still with me today, some 20 years later.

While studying architecture, my brother in law, who had worked as a Schlulmberger engineer during the early 80’s boom time, convinced me that I should get a degree in Natural Gas Engineering. Texas A & I, now TAMU Kingsville, had a great degree program for that, so I started taking the basics locally at Del Mar. I soon found out that math beyond Algebra and Trig was not my forte, and decided maybe something else would be a better call after pulling a “C” in Integral Calculus.

I figured I could probably solve some of the world’s problems if I had a degree in Environmental Science (this degree required much less math than engineering). It was my “Environmental Geology” course that piqued my interest in the earth’s processes, and I settled on Environmental Geology as my major with Geology and Chemistry as my minors. Of all the courses I had to take towards that degree which emphasizes chemistry, biology and geology, it was the geology courses that held my interest the most.

After graduating, I found a job at NAS Corpus Christi as a water treatment plant operator. We were in charge of purifying the incoming raw water at an advanced metal plating facility (fancy way of saying chrome plating shop). My good friend and classmate, Jim Bentley, had taken a job as a geologist with Jeff Osborn and Ron Miller. Occasionally, we would get together and he’d tell me about the mapping they had done and their success rate on drilling new wells. I would tell him how we moved thousands of gallons of raw city water through a carbon filter train into a reverse osmosis system, then deionized the water for use in the facility. You know, really fascinating stuff.

It didn’t take me long to realize I needed to get back to the geology I learned in school, so I called Jim and told him as much. I think I said, “Get me out of here!” I guess that was really “how I got into geology.”

As luck would have it, Jim soon took a job with Coastal Oil & Gas, and after a quick interview (that included lunch at Snoopy’s), Jeff and Ron hired me. I got a crash course in petroleum geology and was soon mapping South Texas and involved in wellsite consulting (micro paleontology and supervising logging runs). I was making more money than I ever had and was hooked.

It’s only been a little over twelve years now, and I’ve already experienced a few cycles in the industry. I’ve learned that it really can be feast or famine in this business. But when it’s a feast, it sure tastes good!

Allen Lassiter
Geologist

I was never interested in geology as a kid. I grew up on Lake Erie and always liked the water and water sports. I was a competitive swimmer so I gravitated to the “fad of the day” Oceanography. When I spoke with my first college counselor he informed me that Oceanography was a graduate level discipline, and I needed to take a basic science in undergraduate school. He suggested I try geology, which sounded better to me than chemistry or biology.

I went to Denison, a small school in Ohio where the professors actually taught the introductory courses. It happened that I drew one of the most dynamic professors at Denison for Geology 101. He hooked me, and I worked very hard to get the GPA necessary to get into Grad school, so I could then pursue the Oceanography dream.

I eventually discovered that with a geology degree my type of Oceanography would be Marine Geology, and I attended the University of Southern California that had a geology department that had a good reputation in Marine Geology under Dr. Don Gorsline. During my first meeting with him he asked the question that changed my life i.e. “What are you gong to do for a job?” Reality had finally struck.

Fortunately I roomed with a Texan who had already spent two summers interning for major oil companies. He advised that we get our Master’s degrees as fast as possible and get a job in the oil business. As someone born and raised in Ohio, I had never considered the oil business, but by this point I was totally disillusioned with graduate school. Therefore when the recruiters for the majors came to campus, I was ready to give up the illusion of Oceanography and get a job.

Texaco hired me, and in 1971 I went to work in New Orleans working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. I was immediately hooked; interesting work, good money, service company entertainment, and no professors. The 1973 oil embargo came along and geologists became hot commodities, perfect! We have all been through many ups and downs since that time, but I have never regretted meeting that special professor or rooming with that Texan.

Bob Rice
Geologist

Following my discharge from the army, I took a summer job in Corpus Christi with Jones & Laughlin Oil Field Supply. My work sometimes consisted of delivering equipment to well sites. During those deliveries, I think my interest in Geology was first aroused by the fact that the only men wearing clean clothes and sitting in airconditioned trailers were the Company Geologists “sitting the wells”. South Texas summer temperatures convinced me the air-conditioned trailers were the place to be.

After several discussions with my boss, a retired Kansas school teacher, I was convinced that a Geology Degree was a great way to be in the oil business.

After a search, it appeared four (4) colleges offered geology which concentrated on the “Oil Business”. Not necessarily in order of merit they were: L.S.U., Texas A&M, U. of T., and O. U. I chose L.S.U. because my father’s Shreveport address afforded me the opportunity to take advantage of L.S.U.’s $30 per semester tuition available to state residents. (Not a bad deal for a person on $110/month G. I. Bill.)

At L.S. U., I was able to double-up on geology courses, having had all of my basic courses and electives behind me due to three (3) previous years in College. In the three (3) years at L.S.U., I graduated with a B.S. in Strat/Paleo.

After turning down an offer from Pan American Petroleum (AMACO) to be a Micropaleontologist in their Houston Lab, I decided to stay at L.S.U. and get a Master’s Degree. I was awarded a teaching assistantship and graduated in two (2) years with an M.S.

The M. S. brought a new offer from Pan American Petroleum for a whopping $25.00 per month more than their offer two (2) years earlier. However, with the new offer was the opportunity to become a ‘full fledged” Geologist in their Corpus Christi District Office. I accepted the offer.

During my three (3) years at Pan American, I met a number of independent geologists who were able to work when and where they wanted - not bound by structured office hours or limited assigned areas of exploration.

Independency seemed like the thing for me – but I realized that an intermediate step would be necessary to really learn more of what an Independent should expect from this business.

With that in mind, I down-sized from Pan American and accepted a “two or three year position ”(lasting fifteen (15) years) with Jake L. Hamon, an independent oil-operator in Dallas. My primary reason for the extended stay with Hamon was the “override” I earned or production found in the Corpus Christi District. We drilled many wells and enjoyed a great deal of success. (Hard to leave a job like that!) In 1978, Jake Hamon became ill and virtually inactive, so I formed Spradley Energy, Inc. and became a full independent. During my stay with Hamon, another reason for becoming a geologist became apparent to me. I fully and finally realized I was working among a select group of fine scientists whose primary strength was their basic honesty toward geology and what the E-logs dictated.

In our quest for the “Giant Easter Egg”, we all try to construct the most correct map possible and sometimes our prospects “drill out” and sometimes they don’t – but we have tried our best. We have all drilled “Dry Holes”, but we can still revel in the fact U. S. Independents are responsible for 80% of domestic discoveries.

By the way, a side light and one of the highlights of my 50 years of showing “deals” to many great geologists, it was always the opportunity to present a prospect to the person I consider the Geologists’ Geologist, Joe McCullough. After the “showing” I always came out of Joe’s office knowing more about my prospect than I knew before I went in.

If you ever have the opportunity to show your South Texas prospect to Joe, you will be happy with how much it can help you down the road.

And finally, as I move deeper into my autumn years, I continue to realize that “subsurface” is the real fun in the “Geology Game”, especially when it all falls into place and your prospect drills out as mapped.

Keep shuffling those logs and the prospect will usually appear.

Try to always remember that a discovery can make you a wealthy man – not only in money, but also in the knowledge that you have proven to yourself that you are an “oil finder”.

My congratulations to all of you for choosing this honorable profession.

Happy Hunting,
Jon Spradley, Geologist

To be honest – it was boys. Not necessarily in the way that it sounds – but it really was boys.

My dad sent me to college to be a dentist. I didn’t want to be a dentist, so when organic chemistry tested my metal – I decided that I wasn’t cut out to be a dentist. But that same semester, I was taking physics with calculus class and met a boy in that class who invited me home to meet his parents. His father was a manager for Sun Oil Company and encouraged me to try geology. I took his advice and signed up for a geology course the next semester. However, the relationship with that boy did not make it to the end of the semester.

I knew that if I changed my major (which wouldn’t please my dad), I’d be a semester behind (which really wouldn’t please my dad), so I convinced the geology department chair to let me take physical and historical geology the same semester. Wow, geology was interesting! I could do it AND my new lab partner, another boy, was really cute.

I continued taking geology courses, declared it as my major and did well. Except for structural geology, but that cute lab partner came to my rescue, and I got through that class.

University of Southern Mississippi required a minor course of study as well as a major, and I discovered computer science (as it was called back then). Now that was an interesting subject – how cool! And this was with restricted lab hours and card punch machines. PC’s weren’t even on the radar yet. But I was afraid to tell my dad that I wanted to change my major yet again, so I continued on with my geology courses.

During the summers, I was able to work at the Naval Oceanographic Office (at what is now Stennis Space Center) debugging seismic programs used to map the floor of the Indian Ocean. Between watching the tests of the space shuttle engines and cleaning the science lab of a ship in dry dock in Boston harbor – it was a great summer job!

I finished all my requirements for graduation, but that cute lab partner was a year behind me (yes – he really did help me with structural geology – even though he’d not taken it yet.), so I decided, causing much angst for my father, to stay another year and finish the requirements for a computer science major.

When the fall semester came around and recruiters were coming to campus, a USM alum who worked for Conoco came for interviews. He was only interviewing masters’ candidates, but I reasoned I had the equivalent of two bachelors degrees, which had to be just as good and made an appointment for an interview. While he wasn’t interested in me as an explorer, he sent my resume to Conoco’s mapping and processing center in Ponca City, Oklahoma.

I interviewed with Conoco in Ponca City in January 1982. As soon as I graduated in May and married my cute lab partner in July, we moved to Oklahoma, and I began a wonderful career with Conoco. I started in processing and computer mapping. Conoco transferred me to South Texas to work the Lobo trend in the Corpus Christi office in 1984 – where I cut my teeth on development and exploration mapping. I was then transferred to Houston to work in a data analysis position.

I left Conoco shortly after my babies were born, but began consulting with a small independent as the kids started school. I still consult part time, mainly on the computer side of projects. But, you know, my cute lab partner and I will be married 27 years in July.

Dawn Stewart Bissell

Everyone has them, people who briefly intersect your life and then disappear. Most have little lasting impact, but there is always one, maybe two, in everyone’s life that some way or other causes a lasting impression. Maybe even changes your life forever. Perhaps it was the classmate you barely knew that talked you into taking a class that became a lifelong passion. Or possibly it was the neighbor you didn’t know very well, who badgered you into attending some social event where you met your future spouse. For me it was the admission counselor at Southern Connecticut State University. He managed to accomplish both for me and, in one of life’s many ironies, doesn’t even know it.

But first, some background. In high school, somewhere after sports and hangin’ with friends, I had an interest in most of the sciences. Trouble was I hadn’t found my passion, didn’t know what direction to take my life. I was actually envious of those friends who already knew, with great certainty, what they wanted to become. So when I started college at Southern I enrolled, without a lot of conviction, as a Biology major. For three semesters I studied hard, made good grades, and yet remained uninspired. I knew I didn’t want to go into medicine or teaching. Marine biology seemed attractive, exploring the deep like Cousteau, but after another semester of memorizing anatomy and phylogeny it became clear biology just wasn’t my career path. But what was? This was terribly frustrating. I may not have known where to point my “career bus”, but somehow I knew with certainty the best place to find and prepare for it was college. This despite several college buddies who, without any more direction than me, had no such conflict – who felt college was a four-year vacation at their parent’s expense before having to join the “real world”. They couldn’t understand my anxiety at all. So they were especially surprised when I left school after 3 semesters.

I went home and took whatever jobs I could find. Not because I liked them or expected to find a career in them, but hoping to give myself time enough to find a subject that inspired me. A year and a half later I found myself reenrolling at Southern. I still hadn’t found my life’s direction, but I was ready to move forward (and it didn’t hurt that my athletic eligibility was ticking away). This is when I met the admission counselor whose name I probably forgot a week later and yet made an impact that changed my life. Only neither of us knew it at the time.

Southern has this “silly” (or so I thought) policy for readmits without a major (like me) that requires the student to attend a one-on-one counseling session. During my session I told the counselor I wanted to use a couple of semesters to take all my electives up front. I wanted to try subjects I had never been exposed to, like journalism, media, sociology, urban planning, business, maybe even theater! I was simply trying to find my passion. He listened, asked a lot of questions about me, my likes and dislikes, all the while looking at copies of my high school and college transcripts. In the end he signed me up for many of the electives I asked for, but before we finished told me there was one class he really thought I should give a try. It was Principles of Geology, the intro class for geology majors. “Rick, talking with you I can tell you have an affinity for the natural sciences, and I think this course could be a real eye-opener for you. It’s taught by the department chairman, a good friend, who is an excellent instructor and mentor” he said. “Alright, put me down for it as long as you enroll me in these other electives” I replied, not getting too excited about yet another science course.

Well, Dr. Drobnyk, the Earth Sciences department chairman, was indeed an excellent instructor, and I owe him a great deal of gratitude for introducing me (finally!) to my academic and professional passion. I signed up as a geology major as soon as the course ended. Even more remarkable, I met my wife, Sarah, in that class! A biology major, she was taking one of her out-of-department science requirements (we never crossed paths while I was a biology major). We’ve been married now 23 years.

Now armed with the direction I had been seeking, I raced through the program, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1982. Since then there have been many other teachers, professors, and colleagues who have continued to enrich my life’s work. But I often think back to that brief encounter with a wise counselor who saw something in me I didn’t even know was there. If only he knew what he started that day.

Rick Paige
Geologist

It seems my fascination with the physical earth began at a very early age. I was born and lived in Northeastern Ohio until I was eleven years old. Then, as now, Northeastern Ohio is a wonderful mix of hardwood forests, lakes and farms. The land exhibits considerable relief relating to multiple episodes of continental glaciation.

Northeastern Ohio is referred to as the Western Reserve so named during the colonial period for its location immediately west of the Appalachian Mountains. The area was explored and settled primarily by immigrants from New England in search of more fertile farmlands west of the Allegheny Mountains in the early 1800's. The Maxwell family home was located on a hillside about five miles south of Lake Erie. The hill was actually an ancestral headland formed during an earlier high stand of Lake Erie.

The winters in Northeastern Ohio are long and lake effect snows considerable. However, the long winters made the arrival of spring all the more joyous and beautiful. With the spring thaw, the fields to the north and west of our home would spring to life again. Even more amazing than the springtime vegetation that emerged from the freshly thawed fields was the vast array of crystalline pebbles, cobbles and boulders that magically surfaced. These rocks were different and much more interesting than the layered rocks (sandstones and shales) we typically found along the creeks and riverbanks around our home.

My father was an avid walker and amateur naturalist probably owing to his Scottish ancestry. As the oldest of four children, my father usually invited me to join him for hikes in the nearby forest or for walks along the shore of Lake Erie. These frequent treks inevitably led to encounters with unusual land features that prompted questions and explanations. As is usually the case, seeing a natural wonder is exciting but when one receives an explanation as to its origin, the result can be awe inspiring. That was the case for me as my father explained that several thousand years ago Northeastern Ohio had been covered by a mile of ice. He explained that the crystaline rocks that appeared each spring in the farmer's fields around our home were transported by these ice sheets from Canada thousands of years ago. He also explained that Lake Erie was formed by the melting of these massive ice sheets and that several thousand years ago the hill by our home was once a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.

In the winter of 1957, our family moved to the east coast of Florida. 1957 was the start of the United States' effort to place a satellite in low earth orbit. My father accepted an offer of employment to work for the Air Force at Cape Canaveral, Florida. How exciting! Our new home in Melbourne, Florida was about seven miles from the Atlantic Ocean and about 20 miles south of Cape Canaveral. Coastal Florida is very flat and heavily vegetated due to its warm and wet subtropical climate. Over several decades (20's, 30's, 40's and 50's) the state of Florida dug numerous canals to help with flood control and to facilitate drainage of the coastal lowlands. Along the banks of these canals I noted that the soil looked like beach sand, and it contained a great abundance of sea shells. This seemed most peculiar since we were several miles from the ocean and at an elevation of 10-20' above sea level. Was it possible that the area around our home was once covered by the Atlantic Ocean? How could this possibly happen? To a child nothing seems more permanent than the land upon which you live.

Soon after moving to Florida, I joined the Boy Scouts. My Scoutmaster, C.O. Sims, was a wonderful person – a real renaissance man. He was an electrical engineer of German ancestry, but his true passion was teaching young people to appreciate and understand the natural world. Mr. Sims provided my first formal introduction to geology as well as photography. As my early interest in geology matured, he gave me a copy of Dana's Manual of Mineralogy (12th edition dated 1900) and Dunbar's Text on Historical Geology (printed in 1949). By age thirteen, I was collecting and purchasing rocks and minerals and reading anything that I could get my hands on relating to the earth sciences. In junior high school I entered our school's science fair and placed or won in 7th, 8th and 9th grades. By now I was hooked. I knew by the age of fourteen I was going to become a geologist. In the Fall of 1964, I entered Florida State University as a freshman with Geology as my declared major. In the spring of 1971 I completed the requirements for a Master of Science in Geology and Geochemistry and headed west with my wife, Marybeth, to begin a career in petroleum exploration with Standard of California (Chevron). In the early years my expectation was that I would return to Academia; however, the exploration business proved to be far too interesting and exciting to leave.

Bill Maxwell
Geologist

I grew up in the oil patch. My first six years of my life was spent on the Greenwood Lease in eastern Kansas. My father worked for Phillips Petroleum as a pumper. The production on the lease was from the Bartlesville Sandstone.

When World War II started, my father was transferred to Borger, Texas. Borger, Texas is a Phillips Pet town. Phillips had five plants in the area. My father worked at Plains Plant west of Borger. My family lived in a camp called Beauvista, which was five miles west of Borger.

By the age of fourteen, I knew I wanted to get a degree in Geology. I graduated from high school in 1954. My older sister was going to college at the University of Oklahoma. I had applied to the Colorado School of Mines and had been accepted. My father informed me that I would be going to the University of Oklahoma since my sister was attending college there. Plus, he liked O.U.s football team.

At the end of my senior year, I lacked three credit hours to graduate. I attended the Fall semester and took thirteen hours towards my Master’s degree. There were 135 geologists that graduated in my senior class and only five geologists got jobs. Needless to say, I graduated in a down turn in the oil business.

One of my professors, Dr. Harris, took time to advise us about the oil business. He said, “if you want to stay in the oil business get a job related to the oil industry. When times get better, you can get a job with an oil company.”

This is what I did. I got a job working for a seismic company. The company’s name was Seis Tech, and the job was in Alaska. While I was working for Seis Tech I got drafted into the Army. While in the Army, my MOS was Earth Science Specialist. I was assigned to a government agency called CRREL (Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratories). I assisted a geophysicist, Dr. Hans Roethlisberger, doing basic geophysical research in ice and perma frost.

After my tour of duty, I got a job with a mud logging company out of Midland, Texas. This job lasted about a month. It seems my first payroll check bounced, so I saw no future with this company. I have been leery about doing business with Midland companies ever since.

I went back to geophysics and got a job with National Geophysical. I worked for National for about two years and moved about twelve times.

I found out that Sinclair Oil & Gas was looking for a Geophysicist for their Research Crew. I applied for the job and became Assistant Party Chief on the Research Crew. After about a year, I became Party Chief.

Sinclair had developed the Dinoseis. The crew moved around to different parts of the country using the Dinoseis as an energy source. The Dinoseis was a surface energy source which used a mixture of propane and oxygen in a large sealed pan.

I finally moved into Sinclair’s Houston office and did my interpretation behind the Crew plus worked on prospects in other areas.

Sinclair and ARCO merged in 1969. This is the same year Prudhoe Bay was discovered. ARCO asked me to move to Anchorage, Alaska. My job was to be one of four geophysicists mapping the Prudhoe Bay Field and oversee the seismic crews working on the North Slope.

The rest is history. I am now President of my own company, and we are having a great time finding oil and gas production.

It looks like our industry is about to go into one of our down cycles. The only difference is the whole country is participating this time. Jobs for geology and geophysicist are still good, plus we do not have a big surplus of oil and gas. I believe we will have plenty of work, but we will not make as much money.

Tom Long
Geophysicist

I was interested in Geology as a kid. I used to ride my bike to the library to take out books to read about geology and archeology. I can distinctly remember reading the book, “All About The Ice Age.” How fitting to end up down here in the Ice Age capital. Somehow, probably my mother, got me to write letters to all the Bureau of Economic Geology offices for many of the states and asked them to send me samples of some of the important rocks from their states. Many of them did just that, postage was cheap back then.

My real interest started the summer of 8th grade when I took a summer class at the local high school. I was hooked from then on - constantly hunting for rocks in the Philadelphia area, as well as on my Boy Scout camping trips and family vacations. I was the only scout in the Valley Forge Council at the time to have ever completed the geology merit badge. One summer my parents made the mistake of planning a vacation in the Whiteface Mountains of New York where I located an outcrop of shell fossils in shale. Our car may have been one of the first lowriders due to my new fossil collection. We took a vacation to Montreal, Canada for Expo “67 where I caught a giant sunfish in a lake and found a great book of biotite mica that I brought home. I had the rock polisher running all the time, joined a gem and mineral club, and learned how to make cabs. You know, you can make some really cheap gifts that look great and high school girls go nuts over, I don’t do that any more (the girls part).

I started college at St. Joe’s in Philadelphia as a chemistry major with the idea of getting my Master’s in geology. What I found out later was that all those kids were all Pre-med – way too smart for me, so I enrolled at Penn State and finished my degree in 1977. In college I took a 1credit class that taught me how to facet stones and liked the instructor enough to signup to do a little research on the color of opals for him on the SEM and TEM microscope.

My dad was a plumber, and he had me work with him to realize one thing – plumbing is a _ _ _ _ _ _ job. So, I always remember that the worst day as a geologist is better than the best day as a plumber, although you don’t get paid as much.

Alan Costello
Geologist

I was born and raised on the “Iron Range” in northern Minnesota. The richest iron ore deposits in the world were discovered in the 1890’s. A trapper noticed a red rusty stain on the hull of his boat. This site became the largest open pit iron mine in the world. It is called the “Hull Rust Pit”, no kidding. It is 1000’ deep and runs for miles. I grew up one (1) mile from an abandoned spur of the pit.

Along the steep walls of the pit were deep tunnels radiating outward. I ventured into this pit as often as I could. It was great fun. U. S. Steel owned the pit and we constantly had to avoid “mining cops” as we called them.

I was mesmerized by all the multi-colored layers and shiny and unusual rocks. Overlying the iron formation was 20’ to 100’ of glacial till. It was a cornucopia of anything you could imagine, multicolored boulders, clean sands, dirty sands, and red or green clays.

By the age of 17, I stopped going to the pits. I had weekend jobs and met a great gal who was to become my wife. I looked forward to college, where I certainly would become a ......lawyer. I was good at debating and arguing. What else would I become?

I attended St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota and took Geology 101 as my science prerequisite. I became hooked. I couldn’t believe that I could get paid for what I had always loved as a child. I declared my major as geology and never looked back. I still have that wide-eyed wonderment of rocks and things. I am home!

Mike Lucente
Geologist

In life, some things come from vision and planning. Other good things come from hard work. Discovering my passion for geology came from sheer dumb luck!

I should have discovered geology sooner. It was in my blood --- literally. My great-grandfather, John Chisholm, died prospecting for gold out west. My father, grandfather, and three uncles all spent their careers in the mining industry. Dad even majored in geology. I was exposed to mining and geology through such glamorous summer jobs as laying new railroad track into a limestone quarry and manually loading limestone blocks onto trucks. I now suspect that my father helped me get these jobs not to encourage an interest in geology, but to motivate me to get a college education so that I would not have to do such backbreaking work as a career.

What did I decide to major in when I got to college with all of that mining exposure? Why, Spanish, of course. I had just spent a year in Bogotá, Colombia as a high school foreign exchange student, was fluent in Spanish, and absolutely loved the South American people and cultures. Of course, I had no idea what I was going to do with a Spanish major, but it seemed logical at the time.

The course of my life changed dramatically with what I thought was a simple decision. Dartmouth is a liberal arts school, and I needed one more course to fulfill my science distributive requirement. I had put off taking that last science course, and it was now fall term of my junior year. I made the relatively random decision to take the introductory geology class, and the rest, as they say, is history. I could not believe how incredibly interesting the class was! I was totally hooked. Even though I was just a couple of courses away from finishing my Spanish major, I decided I had to change my major to geology. That change made my junior and senior years pretty intense, but my new-found passion for geology made it all worthwhile.

The last part of my story is how I became a petroleum geologist. I immediately went on to Stanford after graduating from Dartmouth. I decided to go into mining like the rest of my family, and Stanford had a very good mining geology program. I discovered, however, that I did not have that same passion for my new geology coursework and decided it was due to a lack of enough real-world working experience to which I could apply the knowledge. I took a leave of absence from Stanford after two terms and was hired by Getty Oil for six months to hike deserts, climb mountains, and look for gold, silver, and copper. It was an extremely exotic experience, but I ultimately realized that I did not have a passion for mining geology. There did not seem to be any reason to return to Stanford to finish my master’s degree, and I found myself with no plans for the future for the first time in my life.

Here is where the second stroke of dumb luck came to the rescue. I had been based in Salt Lake City with Getty. Once my job was over, I spontaneously decided to go back to Stanford one last time to see my friends in the geology department, and I delayed heading back home to Ohio where I would have to ultimately figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My unannounced arrival on campus ended up being on the first day of a two-day geology job fair. That evening there was a reception with the recruiters. All my friends were going to be there, and the college provided free food and booze! I did not think that it could get any better than that until I met two really terrific Sun Oil geologists. The next thing I knew, I was in Dallas with a four-month job exploring for oil and gas for Sun. After mapping for only a couple of weeks, I was amazed that anything could be so interesting, challenging, and fun. I had rediscovered my passion for geology. I immediately went back to Stanford, and in nine months, finished my master’s degree in petroleum geology. I am fortunate to be able to say that the challenge and creativity involved with oil and gas exploration has kept my passion for geology alive throughout my career.

Duncan Chisholm
Geologist

Earth has always fascinated me. I grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma about five blocks from the river. What we called the, “Woods,” was about two blocks from the house on our side of the river, and my brothers and I often went there to play. Most of the bottom of the river seemed to be covered with mud, but spots along the river had rapids with a hard rock bottom. My mother managed to retain part of the family farm on which she had been raised and my grandfather continued to live there. We kept a cow there which had to be milked every day, and we farmed part of it until I was in junior high school. I went to the farm daily until I was about fifteen, and continued to go regularly until I left home. My other grandparents lived outside Seguin, Texas and we visited that farm every summer until I was nine years old. We visited relatives in Colorado shortly before World War II and relatives in Oregon and California after the war.

The, “Woods,” had oil wells, with sucker rods connecting pump jacks to the central pump station, which we had to step over while playing there. Oil wells were on land adjoining the farm, but none on our land. The hill above the farm was called, “Circle Mountain,” because of its crescent shape. I collected arrow heads and fossils from the farm and other areas. An isolated mound was on the west side of town near the airport. Traveling back and forth to Texas we passed oil fields with so many flares burning at night it was almost like day light near some fields. Traveling through the west raised my curiosity about the mountains, valleys, lava flows, volcanic cones, rivers and other natural phenomena that were seen. Before I graduated from high school, I had seen many things about the earth I could not explain, and still can’t.

Sometime early in life, I had decided I wanted to be an engineer. Bartlesville was headquarters for Phillips and Cities Service oil companies, Reda Pump Company and H. C. Price Pipeline Construction Company while I was young. My grandfather worked at the zinc smelters, and I knew I didn’t want to work there. One evening, a geologist who had worked mapping geology in conjunction with construction of the Alcan Highway through Canada and part of Alaska gave a talk to a group of us, and that aroused my interest. His talk led me to believe geology might be able to answer some of my questions about what I had seen on Earth.

Bud Wilkinson had offered me a football scholarship to Oklahoma University, but I didn’t think his offer was serious and they had so many veterans playing football I wasn’t sure about making the team, so I continued to look. Some alumni from Colorado School of Mines talked to me about playing football there, and after checking a little, I decided to go there. I could study geology and engineering at the same time at the Colorado School of Mines.

After graduation from Mines, I served as a Military Engineer Pipeline officer in Korea during that conflict. Even my military service was connected to the oil industry.

All of my questions about our Earth haven’t been answered, but I am still working on it.

Ray Govett
Geologist

I still remember sitting on the floor of my apartment in Austin flipping through the course book. I had just finished my sophomore year at U.T. with a “D” in the second semester of Organic Chemistry. That meant Dental School was out of the question. What would I do now?

I came across “Geology” and thought to myself “Why not?” After all, my mother was a geologic draftsman, working out of our house. As I remember, most of her client/ geologists that came by the house seemed to be doing pretty well. Neal Clayton, Chuck Forney, Jim Knupke – They all drove nice cars, anyway.

After my first geology class with Dr. Folk, I was hooked! I began to see the world around me in a different light. The hours and days I had spent with my parents treasure hunting on Padre Island (even before the National Seashore) took on new meaning. There were depositional processes going on around me all my young life, and I had not realized it! Now I could enjoy my fishing and hunting and diving trips even more by observing the geologic processes in action!

I graduated from U.T. in 1977 and went to work at Sohio Petroleum Co. in Houston. After three years there, I became an independent, and have been since. I’ve generated drilling prospects when I could, consulted when I had to, sat on hundreds of wells, enjoyed the good times, and endured the bad. Looking back, I realize that I love what I do because it is another treasure hunt, just not on Padre Island.

I am writing this from a logging truck in Goliad County. It’s 4 AM, I haven’t slept all night, and the log looks disappointing, but after 30 years, I’m having the time of my life!

Tommy Dubois
Geologist

After being born in Hoovertown, Texas, on April 7, 1926, my family moved to South Dallas, where I lived for my school years. I attended Forest Avenue High School and graduated in 1942 at the age of sixteen. I was always grateful for the fine profes- sional teaching staff in the Dallas schools. One of my teachers, a Latin teacher, knew I would be graduating early, so in the summer I rode the streetcar across town to her home so she could teach me my fourth year of Latin. This was certainly beyond the call of duty for her, but of great benefit to me. Many of my mentors at this time felt I should be a minister or an English teacher and took me for a visit to TCU. My family were members of the Christian Church, and, of course, Fort Worth was near Dallas. I did not enroll there, but I did enroll at North Texas Agricultural College at Arlington (now the University of Texas at Arlington). I had $25 and one suitcase when I enrolled. I was able to complete two years before I left to join the armed services.

After serving in the Navy in the South Pacific during World War II, I returned home and entered the University of Texas at Austin on the GI Bill. I was taking courses necessary for a Bachelor of Science Degree and did not have a designated major. I was enrolled in an English class studying Wordsworth and English poetry. I loved the Romantic poets and was reading Shelley and Keats, as well as Wordsworth. One day in class my professor asked me to read a passage from Wordsworth. While reading, my professor stopped me and asked, “Mr. Hoover, what is the significance of that?” I had never seen this passage before so I did not know that Wordsworth had used the same words in another poem. I earned a “C” in that class. At this point, I realized I needed to examine my grades and the requirements for a degree. I noted that I had made “A’s” in my science classes. I switched to geology and was employed by Humble Oil and Refining Company before my graduation in 1948. After initially being on a seismic crew, I was transferred to Houston. Shortly thereafter, I joined Texas Gulf Producing Company and later had the opportunity to come to Corpus Christi to join Pontiac Refining Company’s Exploration Department.

In 1956, I became an independent geologist and later founded Guaranty Petroleum Corporation as well as a few other companies. In 1963, I ran for the office of U.S. Representative for the 14th Congressional District as a Republican. It was a formidable challenge, and I ultimately lost. However, I felt I had made my point about the need for a two party system. We needed to have a choice.

After over fifty years as a geologist, I feel I made the right career choice. I can still pick up a book of poetry and enjoy reading the Romantic poets, but I think my destiny was to become an earth scientist. What’s more, I wouldn’t trade anything for my experiences and friendships in the oil patch.

Lawrence E. Hoover
Geologist

I was born on a small farm five miles south of Abilene, Kansas. After graduating from high school, I enrolled in geology at Kansas State University which is only fifty miles from Abilene. This made it easier to check on my mother who lived on the farm by herself. My father passed away when I was a fresh- man in high school.

My high school counselor, after reviewing my grades, suggested that I may want to stay on the farm. I guess my grades were somewhat affected by my interest in sports, the fairer sex, and also by the fact that there were chores to be done after school, milking cows, etc. I took my coun- selors suggestion as a challenge, so on to Kansas State I went. My freshman year was difficult since I had to learn what I should have during four years of high school. My grade average rapidly improved after the first year of college. Upon graduation, I went to work for Pan American Petroleum Corporation in south Louisiana where I worked for one year before returning to Kansas State to do graduate work. I was fortunate enough to get a Master’s Degree in ten months with excellent grades.

Upon receiving my Master’s Degree, I returned to Abilene to visit with my high school counselor. I showed him my good grades and Master’s Diploma, thanked him and suggested that he may want to take up farming.

I enrolled in Geology because it was fascinating seeing formation outcrops exposed on the surface and road cuts. A trip or two to Colorado and wondering how those wonderful mountains were formed heightened my interest in Geology. The real clincher, however, was when my older brother and I passed an oil rig on a trip to Wichita, Kansas. He pointed out several cars at the rig location. Among those, mostly older cars, was a new Cadillac. My brother told me that car belonged to a geologist. I decided right then and there that I wanted to be one of those guys. It was only after I graduated from Kansas State that he told me the Cadillac really belonged to the tool pusher.

Paul Strunk - Geologist

I was raised in northern New Jersey and was the fifth-borne son of a very successful machine shop owner . Both my Mom and Dad instilled in me and all four of my brothers at an early age that there’s no such word as “can’t “ in the Moherek vocabulary and that the world was my “oyster” where I could achieve anything I wanted - if I put my mind to it. Of course having an older brother hand me a simple rock collection when I was a kid al- ways fascinated me and first planted the thoughts that rocks were cool . It wasn’t really until my sophomore year in college at Rutgers University back in 1972 that I decided to major in Geology. Soon thereafter my long-term goal at that time was to achieve a PhD in Marine Geology and study marine sediments because I simply loved the ocean and always believed our seven seas that occupy the majority of our precious planet were (and still are) nearly totally unexplored. Also picking geology as a major was an easy choice because I not only liked the science but also quickly achieved high grades at the same time.. Having grown up in northeastern New Jersey within the metropolitan NY area I lived near some interesting outcrops of what I now know are Eastern Appalachian basin & range Tertiary red sandstones on top of a granite basement that form the modern-day mountainous part of northwestern N.J. where I first learned to fish in the inter-mountain lakes. Fishing is much like oil & gas exploration in the sense one has to explore a lake, stream or body of water to find the prize – the fish or in our business - the oil & gas. So two of my favorite pastimes – fishing and science were combined in the field of geology and a natural by-product of such a combination was to enter the industry as an exploration geologist. I did this in 1977 when I formally joined Tenneco Oil in Houston working onshore in Texas RRC District 3 while being mentored by some of the most successful geologists I have ever known. What I learned early on from my mentors is to imagine without boundaries and explore without fear, and I was trained to find 5 MMBBLO equivalent or larger fields . At that time Tenneco, which was a major independent, installed a great educational program for newly hired students whereby my skills were rapidly enhanced by being sent to two petroleum schools per year ( seismic applications, petroleum engineering, electric log evaluation, prospect economics, etc.) while learning back at the office the basic exploration practices of mapping, isopaching , interpreting 2D seismic , and very importantly applying the geologic concepts I learned at both Rutgers and Texas A & M University where I received my M. S. Degree in Geological Oceanography in 1977.

I worked at Tenneco until 1980 when I joined Gulfstream Petroleum, which was an active little independent in north Houston that drilled over 200 wells in the companies’ ten year life. Upon the sale of Gulfstreams’ assets in 1987 after prices crashed and investment capital dried up I like many others hung my own shingle out, Am-Tex Resources and successfully generated and sold Gulf Coast prospects while under various retainers with companies like Hanson Minerals, Bass Enterprises, Yuma Petroleum and individual investors. In 1997 I accepted a senior explorationist position with Tesoro in San Antonio, Texas where I worked until Tesoro was bought out by EEX Corporation and then subsequently acquired by Newfield Exploration. Upon being offered a transfer back to Houston with Newfield I heard that Suemaur had a senior explorationist position open, so I decided to weight anchor here in Corpus Christi, and I’m glad I did. That was not too difficult a decision since I love to fish as well as explore!

My advice to all college students that are majoring in geology and contemplating a job as a petroleum geologist is to start thinking “exploration” in your every class. Seek out the principles of stratigraphy-modern day depositional systems be they sandstone or carbonate and visualize the facies in 3D that you will be exploring in the future. Concentrate on the mineralogies and the permeabilities that make up the reservoir rocks you will be drilling in and very importantly learn to construct accurate maps that tell the geologic story beneath your prospects. Finally pursue computer aided seismic mapping, courses in geophysics and learn attribute techniques that can help you lower the economic risks in your exploration efforts. Do this and you too will become a successful geologist.

Tony Moherek
VP Exploration—Suemaur Exploration
and Production LLC

I was born the last of five siblings, in Houston, Texas in 1932, in the depth of the Great Depression. My father had become a successful building contractor whose early credits had included working on the Panama Canal. Like many others, he lost everything he had gained and accumulated in the Crash of ‘29. On the upswing, he was a construction foreman on the Tower of an institution I later learned to call “t.u.”, completed in 1939. His fortitude and resilience in the face of loss carried us through the Depression, and taught me a life lesson that would serve well anyone interested in the boom and bust business of oil – a lesson which I have since relearned a time or two for myself.

I wish I could say that it was my being among all those Houston Oil Men that led me to choose Geology as my life’s work, but that was not quite the case. My closest association with oil growing up occurred on D-Day, 1944, when a friend and I spent the day walking down a pipeline through a swamp in Old Ocean Field, carrying our fishing rods. The only “oil people” I knew were refinery workers and machinists at Hughes Tool and Reed Roller Bit, though I was familiar with the sight of the many wooden oil derricks with their gas flares lighting up the area around South Houston and Friendswood Fields. Growing up in swampy Houston, I can hardly even claim to have seen a hard rock in its native setting in my childhood.

I learned an appreciation for formal education both from my father, whose own formal education only reached the 6th grade, and on the job at a paint manufacturing company, one of whose employees had an Engineering degree and was the most financially successful man I had yet encountered. In 1950 I was 17 graduating from Houston Milby High School and planning to follow my sisters to Rice Institute to major in Pre-Med or Engineering, when I had this realization that if I went to Rice I’d have to live at home. With that thought, I immediately made arrangements to enter The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). My exposure to various fields of study had been limited, but I enjoyed science and especially biology, and was at ease with math, so I decided to major in Basic Engineering.

Now that we were at A&M, my roommate Leon Gerlich (who was a close boyhood friend) was also an engineering major. We talked continuously about what we really wanted to study and become. His uncle who was a “landman” (whatever that was) suggested that we might consider majoring in Geology.

After studying the catalogs and nosing around I discovered that A&M offered a degree in Geological Engineering. I could change majors and not lose any credits, and as a bonus (to my way of thinking) my course load by necessity would be filled up with Petroleum and other Engineering courses and I would not have to take a lot of liberal arts courses. So that is what I chose.

The first practicing Geologist I was privileged to hear was Michael Halbouty, who addressed the A&M Geology Club that Fall. He was a dynamic Geologist, a successful oil man, and a great motivator, and in later years a personal friend. Mr. Halbouty conveyed an exuberance and satisfaction about his profession that reached and resonated within me. After his speech I knew what I would do with my own life and career.

Photo—Win Sexton and his college roommate Leon Gerlich

Geologist—Win Sexton

Being born and raised in Carrizo Springs, oil runs through my veins. My start into the oil and gas indus- try was at a very young age. My father, T.V. Cabasos, was an operator on a workover rig and would take my brother and me on weekends to roam the outdoors. My first paying job was when I was ten years old, and I helped a contract pumper/guager, Woody Nobles. My pay was $1 a day, and all I could eat.

At the age of six- teen, I started to work rigs on weekends and summers. One particular hot summer I was working on the floor and turned to my father and asked, “Who is that guy that just stays inside his air conditioned truck?” My Dad told me, “He is the geologist.” I re- member that day clearly.

I had always told my Mother, Luvina Cabasos, that I would go to college and become a math teacher. When I was at Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde, Texas, I excelled in Chemistry and Physics and started to lean toward the sciences. After two years I decided to tell my parents that I was dropping my math teacher plans and would be going to Texas A&I in Kingsville to study geology.

That very day I walked into the Core Lab office in Carrizo Springs and asked for a summer job. The Manager was Terry Casey, and he hired my on the spot. All that summer we worked on the Tar Sand of Southwest Texas. I had an “open door policy.” Anytime I was in town and wanted to work I could.

I started full time employment with Core Lab on January 1, 1982 in Carrizo Springs and was there until the lab closed on March 31, 1986. I was transferred to the Corpus Christi lab. By November 1988, I was in charge of the Corpus Christi operation and took on as much responsibilities as I could.

Some of the responsibilities I took on were environmental drilling (the Juan One), environmental sampling, and constructing three portable well site core analysis units. I even got involved with underground gasoline storage tank testing. In 1991 the Federal Tight Gas Law made life a lot easier. Many companies were taking whole core, and I was able to increase our staff to handle upwards of 500 feet of conventional core per month and untold number of percussion sidewall samples. South Texas clients were good to Core Lab.

From 1996 to 2000, I was in charge of Business Development for the Gulf Coast (Texas and Louisiana) and Northern Mexico. In 1999 and 2000, Core Lab bought two of our competitors in Houston, and I was offered the Sales Manager’s job in Houston, which I turned down. I am, and have always been, a service orientated person, and I opted to remain in the Corpus Christi lab.

Juan Cabasos—Lab Supervisor

I grew up in East New Orleans on landfill over a swamp. Our street was scheduled for paving when I was in the third grade, and my father and the rest of the cheap skates on the street decided not to pay what the city fathers allocated as their legitimate street paving costs. Our street was then filled with red sand and gravel instead of oyster shell like every other single unpaved street in the city.

It turns out that this gravel came from the Pleistocene Citronelle Formation from across Lake Ponchatrain, which was a glacial outwash fan sheet shed from sources in Indiana, Ohio & Kentucky. Growing up, I was a finder and collector. I found four leaf clovers (come see the one in my office for scientific good luck on wells). One day, after a torrential rain, the gravel and sand was washed. I looked in the gravel and found all these “bones” and round things with holes in them. Another kid, David Hill, said, “Those aren’t bones. Those are corals and the other things are crinoid stems, they’re fossils.” His Dad was a government meteorologist whose hobby was rocks and minerals. Suddenly, I was a rock hound in a state with no rocks. I checked out every book on rocks and fossils and determined to be a fossil finder, like Roy Chapman Andrews.

When I was 13 my Dad took me on the dream vacation for a fossil hunter in New Orleans — Texas!! We went to every single place the guidebook said there were fossils. Crinoids, echinoids, pelecypods, steinkerns—I collected them all and still have them to this day.

In high school the worst teacher there, was a geologist that couldn’t get a job in the 60’s, so he became a chemistry teacher. He had a wig and everyone made fun of him. That’s when I knew I could not be a geologist, because everyone would call me a Mr. Walker. Instead I majored in math, because it was conceptually easy for me (I still can’t do math— abstraction and concepts are different). Along the way I was taking all the geology courses I could without being a major. Finally, as a sophomore at LSU, sitting in a differential equation class, full of eggheads with slipsticks, I though “What the hell am I doing here with all these dingdongs?” I changed my major to geology and the department gave me a Getty Oil Scholarship. Getty Oil? Not me, I’m going to be a paleontologist and find fossils. At LSU, two professors of sedimentology, Dr. Donald Lowe (now at Stanford) and Dr. Clyde Moore got me interested in sand and limestone (after all that’s where the fossils are). Before and after field camp in Colorado, I followed Dr. Lowe to measure Cambrian sand outcrops. I fell in love with sand and with the great outdoors of Colorado. New plan—I could be a field geologist forever.

Getty Oil offered me a job, I turned it down. After graduation from LSU, I got the dream job—field asst. USGS, Gunnison, Co. The way it works is — every single day that is a good day in the summer you go out in the field unless it’s a federal holiday. So I had only the fourth of July off. Of course, I got to walk through the scrub oak, the swampy lowland valleys with the mosquitoes and biting flies where all the bears were, the full time guys got the good jobs — mountain meadows with wildflowers and hummingbirds. Also, I got exciting rides in whirlybirds with no doors with former Air America pilots. I went on horse back for 5 days on pack trips (talk about saddle sore) and nearly drowned in a kayak on Gunnison River white water. I got the field geology thing out of my system.

At UT, I studied sandstone in earnest and was awarded another Getty Oil scholarship, I began thinking something about fate and Getty Oil. UT made me want to make maps. So when the Getty job came again, I decided the oil business was where I could make maps. Who knew you could also make good money doing it? And I still collect fossils.

Frank Cornish - Geologist

I was born in 1928, the youngest of four. Dad was a mechanical engineer with the Hartford Company and mother was a nurse.

We burned coal in San Antonio in the 1930’s and as soon as I was old enough, I became acquainted with a coal scuttle. At a tender young age, I became aware that these black, smear looking chunks of coal were completely filled with fern imprints. Dad was always getting after me for breaking up the coal. I’d be cleaving chunks of coal into pieces in an effort to see what had been preserved within it. Kids are curious, and I was no different.

How did these fern prints get there? Why did the water well at Roosevelt Park always smell like rotten eggs? Where did all the gas come from that fueled the oil well flares that lit the skies around Corpus Christi, Refugio and Pearsall? Where did all the seashells come from this far from the salt water/ Where did all this fools gold (pyrite) and calcite come from? My school teacher always told us that the Lord took only six days to create the world. Now just how can it take millions of years to form stalactites and stalagmites? Even on grandmother’s farm in Grayson County the hills seemed to have an abundance of shark’s teeth. When did the ocean cover this land? These are questions (among many others) that come to mind of a 10 year old.

During the mid ‘30’s, friends visited and talked about oil being found in and around their dirt farms near Refugio. It did not seem long before they became rich friends due to the oil discovered on their lands.

Mr. John J. O’Brien, schoolmate of my dad, complained “these darn oil wells and trucks are crowding my cattle operations—it’s just not the same! It smells and they ruin the roads.” Mother spoke of oil helping Mary Clair Hurd Bauer and the Reilly's’. I remember the day when Mrs. Reilly came by after oil was discovered on her property, in the longest, biggest black Buick automobile that a 7 year old had ever seen—she gave me a bright shiny silver dollar. Again, another connection made between oil, geology, and money.

Dad’s profession took him many places in South Texas, and he frequently took me along and this afforded my exposure to many areas within 150 miles of San Antonio hill country down to the Texas Gulf Coast. I never knew that the Gulf of Mexico covered all of South Texas at one time. Some years later, the question of how, where, when and why did these geological type things happen, began to make sense. It seemed as one question was answered, another door to new questions was opened. Frontiers! I suppose that the field of Geology, while solving one riddle, only leads to more questions and challenges.

With all of these unanswered questions lodged in my mush filled cranium, by the time it came to enroll in college, having been exposed to only engineers, mechanical and civil all my life it seemed I should be an engineer. Civil had a nice ring to it—I could build roads and bridges and do surveying out in the open. So off to Texas A&M to pursue Civil Engineering. However, after a year or so, I was drawn to the Geology Building at Texas A&M, which was shared with the Petroleum School.. The more I hung around the Geology Building, the more exciting the study of geology became as it began to answer a lot of youthful questions. So after a short while, I made the switch to the exciting world of geology. And that’s a love affair that still persists. It still presents challenging problems and fun things about this wonderful, blue orb we live on and make a living at the same time.

J.V. McCullough - Geologist

I grew up in Corpus Christi and attended Menger Elementary, Wynn Seale Junior High School and Corpus Christi High School (now Miller High School). We lived about five blocks from where Ray High School was being built. It was not completed, so I had to hitch a ride across town and back every day.
In those days most of the prominent citizens were in the oil and gas business. In high school I had a friend whose father was Vice President of Chicago Corporation. The Chicago Corporation had production on the Agua Dulce Field and other fields in South Texas. We got to ride in the company plane when they flew to pick up executives or associates.
My mother had several relatives that were in the oil business. Her uncle was a landman in Houston. One of her cousins was a geologist and another was a petroleum engineer. Her aunt was married to a man that was an executive with Mene Grade Oil Company (a subsidiary of Gulf Oil), and they lived in Venezuela for twenty years. In view of this I was drawn to a career in the oil business. There appeared to be two avenues to achieve a career in the oil business. One was geology and the other was a petroleum engineer..
I received a course catalog from Texas A&M, and I found that I could get both degrees in five years. I did not know which was best, so I decided to take both! After graduation with the two degrees, I decided that I wanted to get a Masters. Half way through the Masters program in Petroleum Engineering, I decided that I really wanted to be a Geologist. I was too far along to change, so I attained my Masters in Petroleum Engineering.
After graduation I went to work for Stanolind Oil and Gas Company as a junior geologist in Lafayette, Louisiana for a year before I went into the Army as a Second Lieutenant in field artillery. After my tour of duty, I decided to return to Corpus Christi. I became associated with Lawrence Ethridge and RK Taylor who were independent operators. They both retired after two years, and I went completely on my own. I originated drilling prospects and turned them for cash and an override. After a few years, I set up Miramar Petroleum to drill and operate wells with a working interest. Although Miramar drills and operates wells in which I own an interest, the bulk of my work is in geology.

John Clanton - Geologist

My introduction to the oil and gas industry came at a very early age, I was born in Hebbronville, Texas where my father was store manager for the National Supply Company. We were your typical “oil field trash” family in that we were always subject to moving at a moments notice, always looking for the next oil boom.
I made many trips to various south Texas oil wells with my father delivering equipment to the drilling rigs, calling on customers, etc. The majority of our trips were on dirt roads since the only paved road was between Hebbronville and Laredo. Most of the roads in the area were ranch roads. The cars were fitted with large balloon tires, which made driving on sand easier—but nothing in those days was easy.
As a young kid, I saw billions of cubic feet of gas being flared to the atmosphere. American needed the oil for the war effort, and there was limited gas gathering systems in the area. At night it seemed as if the world was on fire. From my bed I could see the flares from the O’Hearn Field. Little did I know that somewhere out there was a geologist picking drilling locations—this knowledge was yet to come.
My family relocated to Corpus Christi in the middle 1940’s.
On one of my many trips with my dad, we passed a couple of rigs working between Robstown and Corpus Christi. He said, “you know, it takes a geologist to tell the drillers where to drill. You might want to give that a try in college.” So, in 1953 I enrolled in Del Mar College and took my first geology class.
Everyone needs a few breaks in life, I got my first big break while attending Del Mar College—I happened to walk by the placement office and noticed a posting for an oil and gas draftsman. I had no idea what a draftsman was or what they did. The man to see was Mr. Ray M. Low, the Getty Oil Company Geophysical Manager for South Texas. After a short interview, Mr. Lowe gave me a job for the summer, and that summer job started me down the road to a 52 year career in the oil and gas business.
The following summer I worked for Getty in Lafayette, Louisiana and the summer after that, I worked in Tyler, Texas for Getty. In 1958, I graduated from TCU with a BS in Geology and went to work for Getty fulltime in Houston, Texas.
After working there a year, I was transferred to Midland, Texas where I spent 14 years. Then I was transferred back to Houston as the Chief Geologist of the southern division. I left Getty after 25 years and relocated to Corpus Christi, Texas to work for Edwin L. Cox Oil and Gas as the division manager and stayed there for 10 years. The past 17 years I have spent working as an independent geologist.
It has been a long, dusty road from the kid watching the gas flares in Hebbronville to where I am today. The 52 years I’ve spent in the business has been quite a trip, and I’ve met some really great people and made lots of lasting friendships. As a geologist, one of the great thrills of my career was doing the wellsite geology and development work on the Vacuum Abo Field in Lee County, New Mexico—I had the privilege to log the discovery well that found 100 million barrels of oil!
My advice to young folk today starting a career in geology would be to follow your heart, make your breaks and develop a relationship with a mentor.

Jerry Clark - Geologist

I was always good at math and science. However, when I was in elementary school a teacher put me in a math class one grade level ahead where I floundered. At that point I was labeled as having a “poor” math aptitude and ended up in related math in high school. High school held very little interest for me, but I loved high school biology, where I excelled. I remember my biology teacher would put little comments on my test papers such as “pretty good for a girl.” After my junior year in high school I dropped out. It was the summer of 1969, and yes I do remember it. At age 21 I met my husband while I was working as a secretary for the city of Houston Health Department. I used to try to impress people by telling them that I was just working for a while and intended to go to college. My husband believed it, and literally dragged me to sign up for college courses at Houston Community College. Not only did my husband spark a life long love of learning, but he also fostered a love for the outdoors; particularly backpacking. This is something we still enjoy together today, but the rules have changed as I now have to carry my own rocks.
When I earned enough course credits from Houston Community college we transferred to Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches. During my first semester I declared elementary education as a major. I had to have a science credit, so the first semester I took geology and introduction to elementary education. I made an A in geology and a C in education. I fell in love with the science of geology, and it’s a passion that continues today. Despite the C in the education course I graduated magna cum laude, and went on to complete my MS in geology. Would I do this again? Without question I would. There is nothing quite like sitting in a logging truck and seeing a piece of the earth that no one else has seen before. There is nothing quite like the thrill of standing on a rig floor and watching the gas meter on the FT chamber spin round and round, and it’s all because you had an idea.

Gloria Sprague - Geologist

Coming from a first generation family with no professionals or college graduates on either side except for an aunt and a cousin who were registered nurses, I had no inkling of what college was all about or any thought of study beyond high school. We lived in a grocery store and my sole ambition was to own and operate a modern facility with my dad.
However, some sense deep within my makeup made me very interested in oil. There were no oil fields near Del Rio, Texas where I was born and raised. There was an oil pipeline from West Texas ending at a tank farm near the railroad. We knew about this because in the early 30’s a tornado destroyed many of the tanks. I do remember seeing an oil derrick near the highway on one of our trips to San Antonio and being very excited and curious about it.
In 1948 when I graduated from high school, my dad offered to loan me the money to attend college if I would pay it back after graduation so that my younger siblings would also have the opportunity. I countered with the idea that he build a new modern store across the street where I could become a merchant. So I went to work full time in the family business. After a couple of months he informed me that he had never borrowed money and wasn’t inclined to do so now in order to build a store, and further that the chain stores were coming, and we would be wiped out. He also suggested that with my persistence I should become a lawyer.
A very exciting thing happened during my time as a grocery clerk. Philips Petroleum Co. decided to shoot a regional seismic survey designed to explore for the Ellenburger below the metamorphic ridge running along the west end of the Balcones Fault line. The crew was headquartered in Del Rio, and one of the party chiefs began trading at our store. Needless to say this event re-kindled my curiosity and interest in oil, and I constantly questioned him about the subject when he was buying groceries.
Finally one day he said “son if you want to get into the oil business and have it made be a Geologist.” At that moment I knew that I was gong to be a geologist. I went back to my dad and asked him if he would still loan me money, even though I did not intend to become a lawyer. He was disappointed and pointed out that it would probably take me a lot longer to pay him back and thus delay the opportunities for my siblings to also attend college, but he agreed. I enrolled at St. Edwards University for the fall semester of 1949 with the understanding that I could get a degree in geology. However by mid-term I realized they could not offer such a degree and transferred to Texas A&M in the fall of 1950, and I received my B.S. in geology in May of 1953. I spent the next three years flying fighter jets for the USAF, and in 1956 I went back to A&M and completed my studies and thesis for a Master of Science Degree. Finally in 1958 my goal was reached when I went to work for The Texas Company in Corpus Christi as a junior Geologist.

Daniel A. Pedrotti—Geologist

My parents did not go to college, and I was always apprehensive of going myself, but I did decide to go. I picked the University of Oklahoma because Oklahoma was in the center of the country.
After almost flunking out my freshman year (0.87 grade point second semester), I went to my guidance counselor for advice. He showed me a listing of his students and their grade point averages, and he told me that I was not the caliber of student he advised—he recommended I go to a different counselor. That was disheartening, but the new counselor reviewed by high school grades and said “well, you aren’t a dummy.” He suggested I take a variety of courses and maybe something would get my attention.
So, after barely being able to stay in school, I signed up for 19 hours – History of Art, Accounting, Invertebrate Zoology, English Literature, Geology, and Aviation (since my father was a pilot). I got my first A in college— Geology (B’s in all the others and quadrupled my grade point to 3.65), and I called by mother and told her I was going to be a Geologist!
I watched the Chevron interviewer circle my F in calculus and draw a line down to the A in calculus a few semesters later. That example might be an indication of how I might do if I ever drilled a dry hole.
Lessons learned: get advice from a higher power, learn from your mistakes and Don’t give up.

Owen Hopkins – Geologist

Having graduated a half a year early from Santa Barbara High School in California (1966) I immediately started school at Santa Barbara City College, a local junior college. I thought I was cool going to a school that allowed you to smoke in the student union. Well, after a couple of semesters studying mostly how to party (it was California after all in the late sixties), I found out I did not like school and school did not like me.
I spent the next few years traveling and working at whatever job I could get to make the most money with as little responsibility as possible. I traveled in Europe and lived back east for a year.
With a few years of working at almost anything (car wash, waiter, and small engine mechanic) under my belt, I decided to try school again. Thinking that it probably was my last chance to make it in society I moved back to Santa Barbara, California, and I started back to school at Santa Barbara City College. Ah yes, what to take? Strangely enough I have to credit my mother for suggesting a geology class. She said that the class took a week long field trip, camping out and looking at rocks each semester. Now fate took over, I took interesting and eye opening classes from Mr. Dave Williams, Dr. Bob Gray and Dr. Ralph Higgins geologists who love camping and looking at rocks. I continued my education and love of geology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Texas at Arlington.
In school I met great teachers and fellow students who have become life long friends, and we still like camping and looking at rocks.

Sebastian Wiedmann - Geologist

My parents did not go to college, but all my brothers, sisters and I heard growing up was “you kids are going to college.” How do you pick what you want to do for the rest of your life when you are 18 years old? The one thing that I really enjoyed doing as a kid was camping and hiking in the great outdoors, but how do you make a career out of that? My dad worked for Exxon and rode in a carpool with four engineers. Anytime they were over at the house I would ask them about college and their jobs, and they would say “study hard and become an engineer, it’s a great career!”
So after high school graduation, I went off to the University of Texas to “become a petroleum engineer and have a great career.” Well, that was fine until differential equations math class. By that time I had already taken an introduction to geology class and found it interesting. It made me think back to the days I spent in Boy Scouts, camping and hiking. I thought it would be great to have a job where you were outside all the time, hiking in the mountains and making maps. So I switched my major to Geology. Even though I do not spend all my time in the outdoors, I did end up with a great career and a job I truly enjoy!

Matt Franey
Geologist

I began my career in the oil patch as an engineer with Mobil oil after graduating from college with an electrical engineering degree. After several years, and several employers later, I decided I would go back to college in search of a new job career.
I chose petroleum geology as a profession because I heard that was where the big chips in the oil industry could be found, and the work was plentiful. I was told that it all started with the geologist that came up with an idea where oil and gas might be found. The geological idea gave a land man a job to get the minerals leased, then a lawyer a job to render a drill site title opinion, then a engineer to drill and complete the well, then a CPA to count the money, and on down stream to the rest of the world.
I went back to college a second time in 1982 at the age of twenty-seven, I graduated from college in 1984 with a bachelors degree and began my quest in my new geological profession. My first efforts started in Corpus Christi working for a number of independents. My dream of becoming independent myself didn’t take long because in 1986 I lost my job due to the drop in oil prices. That year I put my first geologic prospect together, and with the help of a free lease, sold the prospect for cash and an overriding royalty. We drilled my first discovery well, and I have been an independent geologist ever since.
After thirty years, I still believe petroleum geology, along with the thrill of the chase for oil and gas, to be a great profession.

Jeff Cobbs
Geologist