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