One of my current favorite songs starts: “How do I know my youth is all spent? My get-up-and-go has got up and went. Yet in spite of it all, I rise with a grin. And think of the places my get-up has been!”
I came to Washington in late August 1978 having started writing about energy some 4 years earlier as a general assignment reporter for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. It looked like a great specialty following the Arab Oil Embargo. I made no moves until a co-worker who already was dabbling in it got a job elsewhere. Then I proposed a multi-part series of articles about energy boom towns that were springing up across the state.
The stories, which mostly involved coal-fired power plants, won a national award and helped me land a 6-month professional journalism fellowship at Stanford University in early 1977, one of four that largely were underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute in Washington.
API itself stayed out of the picture, but senior staff members at Chevron Corp. and other West Coast majors helped arrange some great field trips, including a week-long visit to Alaska’s North Slope and the soon-to-be-opened Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
My interest quickly moved to oil and gas, and I started looking for another job soon after I returned. I had become interested in government interactions with the industry at the state level and wanted to pursue the subject on a larger stage. That brought me to Washington and into the oil and gas trade press.
While here, I’ve worked for three exceptional editors: DeVan L. Shumway at The Oil Daily, Leslie Haines at Oil and Gas Investor, and Bob Tippee at Oil & Gas Journal. The first and last positions let me deepen my coverage of government and politics. Leslie understandably wanted me to take a different focus, and I soon learned that raising capital from a wide range of sources mattered too.
I also discovered there are more national oil and gas associations than API here with exceptional staffs and leaders. Possibly foremost among them was Lloyd N. Unsell, the long-time Independent Petroleum Association of America president who quietly used his connections to help Jan Scruggs secure funding and support for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
Most important, I’ve met men and, increasingly, women who have come here from the oil patch to state their cases personally to regulators and members of Congress. Finally, there are career federal employees who provide policy continuity as political appointees come and go. All their work goes on. Mine is done.
