Sunday, April 13, 1997

Veterans now anchored in oil industry growth

By DIANA KUNDE

The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - In 1991, petroleum geologist Robert Sloan started to see the handwriting on the wall at the Houston-based oil company where he worked.

He studied at night to prepare for a shift into environmental work. And then he jumped, taking a lower-paying job in that field just months before his former employer began slashing its workforce.

Now he's back at his first love as a senior geologist in New Orleans for a major oil company - happier and, he hopes, a little wiser for the experience. "I think you've got to watch and take care of yourself, make your own security," Sloan said.

Others also are seeing the tide turn after more than 10 years of a petroleum industry slump in which 500,000 jobs were lost. A survey by search firm MLA Resources for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, for instance, shows pay up 3 percent overall in 1996 from the year before. For geologists with six to 14 years of experience, wages have increased 7 percent to 10 percent.

Mike Ayling, president of MLA Resources, said the figures are low because the survey was taken over a year's time. Salaries started zooming in August, he said. "I expect 10 percent increases this year," Ayling said.

If all this is heady stuff, it's also sobering to geologists who have seen the bad times.

"I've learned that boom and bust are both four-letter words," Dallas geologist Bill Crowder said.

There are at least two career lessons petroleum geologists could have learned from the 1986 crash in oil prices and the resulting fallout, said Lyle Baie, executive director of the geologists' association.

"One should always be doing preventive maintenance ... and the second is to constantly ask yourself 'What am I going to do if?' " Baie said.

Sarah Stanley and her husband had barely begun their petroleum geology careers when they lost their jobs in 1983, "within 20 minutes of each other," she recalled.

Stanley changed jobs frequently over the next 12 years. Sometimes the jobs changed under her.

"I've been through three corporate buyouts," she said.

Stanley always found work, which she attributes largely to keeping herself ahead of the game, especially in computers and their applications to geology.

"I might not have control over what executive decisions were made, but one thing I did have control over was how I trained myself," she said.

In the days when personal computers were mostly reserved for offshore geologists, Stanley once bartered her time to do free data entry so she could learn software applications.

Since 1995, she's headed an innovative program at North Harris College outside Houston, training midcareer professionals in software tools at the Geoscience Technology Training Center. It's an idea she and others hope to see replicated elsewhere.

"Every time you lose a job, you ask yourself: 'Do I really want to keep on doing this, and if so, how do I go about finding another job?' " she said. Keeping current on technology helps, Stanley said.

To Bill Crowder of Dallas, the lesson learned from his 1992 layoff was that he wants to work for himself.

"I've only been laid off once. I was 40 years old. It will never happen again. I have no interest in being an employee again," he said. Still, it took a foray into teaching geoscience to eighth-graders to convince him.

He rushed to certify himself for junior high earth science right after receiving the bad news.

Alternating student teaching with part-time geology work, he was able to keep himself and his family going for a year. Then he got an offer to sell his rights to some wells he'd discovered during his former employment. The $20,000 from that sale - plus Crowder's growing realization that he loved petroleum geology much more than teaching - provided the momentum to go out on his own.

Now, Crowder said, he grosses as much as he did as a staff geologist, although he doesn't net as much. But he expects that to change as he piles up more overrides - percentages of income from producing wells he finds. Meanwhile, he's doing what he loves. "You aren't in the oil business. The oil business is in you," he said.

Sloan's salvation may have been his ability to keep his eye on the industry and his company's fortunes, plus the willingness to take a risk on leaving before he was pushed.

"A lot of my friends, I think, were blindsided," he said.

Back in a senior geologist's position, he remains "concerned" about the future but less so than before. His advice?

"I guess it would just be to keep your eyes open."