Industry consultants have been navigating a dry spell. How three Permian Basin companies are toughing it out. by Julie Anderson Having worked for 10 years as a field mechanic for drilling rigs and pulling units, Joel Madrid knows the value of customer service. A particular trust develops when you know a company will answer […]
Call Kinley
When all other hope was gone, “Call Kinley” was the call that went out. Myron Kinley, the man who taught Red Adair how to fight fires, was an oil well firefighter of considerable repute himself. by Bobby Weaver On May 12, 1978, at Chickasha, Okla., a soft-spoken huskily built man of medium […]
Coping with Crisis
By Paul Wiseman There are many degrees of outsourcing, from using a service to vet and hire employees for the end user, to sending all work for a department such as Human Resources to another company. Some of those are doing better than others in this economy. Companies who handle the outsourcing of HR […]
Year-Round Respect
by Julie Anderson Twice each year, our country makes a special point to pause, remember, and thank our soldiers, those who died in service to their country on Memorial Day, and those still among us, on Veterans Day. In recent decades, in the midst of profoundly unsettling events, the honor and respect for veterans and […]
A Tale of Two Cities
Odessa and Midland deal with volatility together and apart. Chase Beakley It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. You knew that was coming. After rattling off a list of poetic polarities, Dickens concluded that famous opening by saying, “In short, the period was so far like the present period, […]
A Permian Man Through and Through
PBOG remembers Audie Conder, a long-time well servicer, Railroad Commission employee, and loving family man. Al Pickett, special contributor He has been described as a go-to guy and a problem solver. That is how a generation of operators and contractors who dealt with the Texas Railroad Commission’s District 7B office in Abilene felt as […]
Help Along the Way
Julie Anderson During this seemingly long season of uncertainty, those in most every facet of the oil industry have been forced to analyze practices to determine whether or not what worked during prosperity will still work during scarcity. Changes have been made on all levels, from scaled-down activity to shrinking inventory to reduction of […]
The Engineer and the Conductor
Ryan Sitton is new guy at the Texas Railroad Commission, but with his technical background and measured approach, he was made for this post. by Al Pickett, Special Contributor Ryan Sitton, the newest member of the Texas Railroad Commission, has now been on the job a little more than a year since being elected […]
Don’t Train In Vain
Steve Sauceda’s grassroots training coordination services have enabled his Hobbs, N.M., outfit to compete with the big boys. by J. Chase Beakley Steve Sauceda’s voice has a warmth and tempo found only in men who recognize both the importance of their work and their own aptitude for it. As he describes his work as workforce […]
The Glo-ing Terms
The Texas General Land Officer’s new commissioner, George P. Bush, is taking his office in some fresh new directions and finding some positives in a challengingly slow energy economy. by Al Pickett The Border Energy Forum has been held for 22 years, but this year’s event—and future forums, too—took on even more importance because of […]