Rock and Roll Geology

I moved to Oklahoma City thirty-five years ago. Having already survived a tour of duty in Vietnam and almost two years of graduate school in Arkansas, I was unprepared for what awaited me in Oklahoma.

My new job with Cities Service Oil Company closely coincided with the first Arab oil embargo that occurred in 1973. Oil that had sold for three dollars a barrel for decades quickly jumped to twelve. This seems miniscule when considering prices this year that have approached one-hundred-fifty dollars a barrel, but a quadrupling of price in 1973 resulted in what could only be described as an explosion of drilling activity.

As a fledgling geologist with less than a year’s experience, I recommended the leasing of more than a million acres in Kansas. Yes, Cities purchased the leases and soon drilled half a dozen wildcat wells. I lasted a little more than two years with Cities Service before another company tripled my salary and hired me away.

My new job as a development geologist took me to downtown Oklahoma City with a rising energy company called Texas Oil and Gas. TXO had nine or ten geologists on staff (I can’t remember the exact number). My first day on the job, the chief geologist took me and another geologist to lunch at a restaurant called Over the Counter.

A former stockbroker owned OTC, along with another restaurant named Bull and the Bear. When I ordered iced tea, the waitress, a German lady, informed me that TXO geologists had mixed drinks for lunch – at least three. “You look like a Wild Turkey man,” she said. From that day on, whenever I entered OTC, Gerlinda would bring me a Wild Turkey and water – a very strong Wild Turkey and water. She kept them coming until I had drank at least three.

I soon began engaging in what I now call “rock and roll” geology. There was a company joke that each geologist generated a prospect per week, or risked losing their job. The joke wasn’t far from the truth. We had a Friday prospect meeting that usually lasted all day. After creating pencil-drawn structure and isopach maps, taped and pasted cross-sections and a rudimentary economic projection during the week, we would present it to management on Friday where it would likely be accepted and added to the drilling agenda.

After the Friday meeting, every geologist would adjourn to the nearest bar (and there were many to choose from) to drink away their stress. During my two years in the pressure cooker I had ninety-nine wells drilled and probably consumed a barrel or so of Wild Turkey and water. With my liver screaming for help, I left the company and went “independent” in 1978. The seventies oil boom was just beginning and excitement filled the air.

Fiction South