It was an exciting happy hour in Houston, with so many people attending that we spilled out of the reserved room into part of the restaurant. See the Houston event pictures when you log on.

The crowd included a number of individuals attending from out of town. Wes Enders drove in from Austin where he now practices patent law with his firm O'Keefe, Egan, Peterman & Enders. Michael and Genna Phillips live in Los Angeles where Michael works for Shell. Herb Vickers drove in from Lafayette, and John Kaldi, was in town from Adelaide, Australia. John was pleased to meet up with friends including Mark and Jeannie Gresko. Mark joined ION Geophysical seven months ago where he is Director, Geology and Geophysics.

Jim Johnstone, CEO of Contek Solutions, one of our long time event sponsors, was in from Plano, Texas. Other sponsors included Advancial, AWS, Noble Energy and SM Energy. In addition to CEO Tony Best, SM Energy was represented by Christopher Simon. Barry was there from Noble Energy with his wife Kathy.

Two ARCO alums were at both the Houston and Denver happy hours: Mark Sooby, Bank of America and Tony Best, SM Energy.

Tim Seidel was wearing an ARCO tshirt, and other individuals we see annually included Rob Spaeth, Jr. with Marathon Oil Company; Christy Reddick, Petrofac Services; Doug Peck, BHP; Michael, Halcon Resources and Ann McKee; and Keith Lynch, COP.

Jeanette Crumpler enjoyed her eight years at ARCO in Dallas, Texas where she was an Executive Receptionist from 1984 to 1999. Jeanette keeps in touch with Charlotte Lloyd, Linda Pickett and others. She was on the 41st floor and at that time there were 54 executives and administrative assistants (total) on 41, 42 and 43. Mr. Glenn Simpson was the President of ARCO Oil & Gas Company and Harry Jamison was the President of ARCO Exploration Company.

Jeanette Crumpler says: “What a great group of people. Charlotte Lloyd was Mr. Simpson's Admin. Asst. at that time and Linda Pickett was Mr. Jameson's. I had come in as a temporary. I had previously worked at Baylor Hospital as an accounts counsellor and then in surgery and even before all of that had been a legal secretary and other jobs then a stint of staying at home for 11 years and becoming an interpreter for the deaf since I had a profoundly deaf son with other health problems. I worked at home and also at various schools in connection with programs for the deaf and handicapped and also at my other son's schools. Years ago I was the first female sports writer at SMU and was pursuing a Journalism degree. I always loved writing and ended up writing 8 books, 150 articles, features and other things and more than 650 interviews”.

Within a week of coming to ARCO, several of those on the executive floors came to Jeanette telling her they wanted to hire her permanently. It was a great time and the job was delightful. Her mother and deaf son were terminally ill and she retired early to take care of them. Jeanette’s other son had passed away in 1979. She says “My years at ARCO were some of the best ever. I found the executives and the administrative assistants as well as many of the other ARCO people with whom I came into contact daily to be some of the kindest and most caring persons I've known. It was a profound experience seeing how they conducted themselves during what were some of the most stressful times for the industry and for ARCO in particular. Again I enjoyed my years there and the opportunity to see examples of courage, compassion and professionalism displayed daily”

Jeanette’s website www.tomatolady.com tells more of her story and if you Google her there are many references also about her being The Tomato Lady as a public speaker for more than 20 years!

Jeanette has also appeared on television and radio, served on the Cultural Affairs Commission of Dallas and has been on the Board of Directors of The Disciples of Trinity (DOT), and counselor, a 501c3 charity serving more than 2700 terminally children, women and men.

Her current book, "Cumberton's Gold" tells stories of those who are different and the royalties go to DOT and she was also recently featured in www.theseniorvoice.com.

It was on January 10 1901 that the first oil gusher in the United States erupted at Spindletop, just outside Beaumont, Texas. It was considered the beginning of the oil age or petroleum age.

In 1901, all of America's oil came from the East, mostly from Pennsylvania, and the experts were sure that Pennsylvania was the future of the nation's oil. The president of Standard Oil, John Archbold, was amused when someone told him in 1885 that they had discovered oil in Oklahoma — he said, "I'll drink every gallon of oil produced west of the Mississippi!" Ten years later, Texas had started producing respectable amounts of oil, and some oil tycoons sent in people to drill. But the results were small compared to Pennsylvania, and they quickly gave up and left. At this point, Standard Oil controlled more than 80 percent of the oil in the country.

Not everyone was surprised that there was oil in Spindletop, which most people from Beaumont called the Big Hill. Native Americans had been using it medicinally for centuries. Spanish explorers used it to waterproof their boots. And one man who lived near Spindletop was convinced that there was enough oil there to shift the focus from Pennsylvania to Texas, and even to replace coal as the primary energy source. His name was Patillo Higgins, and most people thought he was crazy. He was a determined, wiry man who had lost one arm in a gunfight. He finally convinced some local entrepreneurs to invest by promising them millions, but when he tried to drill, he came up totally dry. After that, townspeople sarcastically called him "the millionaire" and stopped taking him seriously. So Higgins ran an ad in a trade journal in New York City, promising the same thing. He only got one response, but that was all he needed. The Croatian-born oil explorer Anthony Lucas signed on, and they started drilling in late 1900. Finally, on this day in 1901, they hit a depth of about 1,200 feet, and natural gas started shooting out of the ground, followed by crude oil.

The oil gusher reached a height of 200 feet straight up in the air, and produced about 4.2 million gallons of oil every day for nine days. Over the course of those nine days, about 50,000 people observed the gusher. Within the year, the town of Beaumont went from 8,000 people to 60,000. That first Spindletop well produced as much oil as 37,000 Eastern wells combined, and by the end of 1910 there were more than 100 wells on Spindletop. Before 1901, oil and petroleum had been mostly for lamps — suddenly, it was the cheapest fuel, just three cents a barrel.

In all the political maneuvering that happened, Patillo Higgins got squeezed out by more powerful players, and Anthony Lucas usually gets most of the credit for discovering the Texas oil wells. Higgins ended up moving away, but until he was 90 years old he would regularly head out into the middle of nowhere with a pick and shovel and try to find more oil.

Bryan Burrough wrote a book called The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (2009), and he wrote about the big oil families: "In time their salad days dissolved into a sordid litany of debauchery, family feuds, scandals, and murder, until collapsing in a tangle of rancorous bankruptcies. Some survived, others didn't. A few count their millions today. As the movies say about almost every story set in Texas, theirs is a big, sprawling American epic, marked by exhilarating highs and crashing lows, and it all began, sort of, with a queer character named Patillo Higgins and that odd hump of dirt they called the Big Hill. History would know it as Spindletop."

Source: The Writer's Almanac

Subject Matter Expert, Houston 

Noah Consulting seeks a subject matter expert to work in its Houston office.  The successful candidate must have industry-specific experience and the ability to relate the technical and business aspects of data. The SME will bridge the chasm between the business and the information management professionals by comfortably and effectively communicating with all levels of the business and technical communities. Candidates will possess a unique combination of leadership, communication skills, technical knowledge, and industry expertise. The SME role requires strong interpersonal, analytical, problem-solving, conceptual, and verbal and written communications skills in addition to high-level teamwork.

The ideal candidate will possess experience in a specific energy sector and a deep understanding of the business. Also critical is a thorough knowledge of all types of technical data, including structured data, unstructured data, physical data, and physical records. Applicants should understand various types of data models, taxonomies, and hierarchies. This is a client-facing role. The ability to work with appropriate clients to create a business case for IM and drive value for the client is expected.

Skills & Responsibilities:

• Be a key liaison for the project team between the business and IM/IT
• Be a primary author for some subsets of the deliverables
• Develop strategic information management plans
• Work with the project team to ensure the project brings value to the business
• Provide content and relevancy to any and all aspects of IM projects
• Act as a mentor and source of information related to business terms, technical terms, and data relationships for the whole team
• Act as a sounding board and trusted ally to the project lead • Review any and all documents for content and tone

Key Requirements:

• Intimate knowledge and experience with asset life-cycle, sector/domain specific data types, and business operations
• Deep knowledge and understanding of technical data, preferably across more than one subject domain
• Knowledge and understanding of technical structured data, unstructured data, and physical data and records
• Knowledge of various types of data models, taxonomies, and hierarchies
• Experience with MDM, ECM, information quality management, information governance, and stewardship projects
• Knowledge of industry standards, such as PPDM and Energistics
• Understand energy (sector-specific) business practices
• Experience with information middle-ware, ETL tools and technologies, and data and transformation formats
• Knowledge of various business applications and business systems
• Knowledge of data sources, such as regulatory and public sources, data vendors, etc.
• Understand data producers and data consumers
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and conceptual skills

Project Communication:

• Demonstrate leadership of multidiscipline, high-performance work teams/groups and the ability to understand, and clearly relate to other members of the organization, client company, and team members
• Lead dynamically and energize multidiscipline work teams to learn and apply new skills/techniques to respond to business needs
• Strong verbal and written communications skills
• Strong teamwork and interpersonal skills; ability to communicate and thrive in a cross-functional environment
• Maintain close working relationships with top management of related business units, corporate executives, and personnel on specific projects
• Regular contact with professional associations to keep informed of existing and evolving industry standards and technologies is encouraged

Education and Experience:

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, business or related field is required
• A graduate level degree in related field is desirable
• Must have minimum of 10 years of experience in related field or positions

Email Noah Consulting for more details and visit the website here.

ARCO alumni profiles include Mark Armentrout who was recently quoted in the Houston and San Antonio, Texas newspapers about deregulation, Tammy Carter who is working full time for Noah Consulting and lives in Colorado Springs (pictured left) and Greg Ernster, who has joined a Denver consulting group.  

Log on to read about fellow ARCO alumni. Read about Noah Consulting who are hiring a Subject Matter Expert.