Musings

Some of you have probably looked at the photo page, and have perhaps noticed the strange photo of me in a hard hat in the middle of the stinking desert. That is my secret identity as an owner, and the manager of Western Minerals and Oil LLC. My father and thirteen other guys founded this company back in the late 1960’s. After my father’s death in 1977 one of the other partners took over the management. Unfortunately he didn’t manage the company. He just pumped the gas out of the ground and mailed out checks to the members. The one one lucky thing was that I was designated as his successor. Jack was in his eighties, failing both mentally and physically, and I stepped in three years ago to take over the company.

Of then I have been learning the oil and gas business, discovering that Texas oil men are flaming assholes. Of course we all know that, we have an example of one squatting in the White House, that geologists and petroleum engineers are really cool people.

Western is a natural gas company. A couple of our wells push out a little oil, but most of the income derives from natural gas and the liquids that arise from particularly “wet” gas which is what we have. That photo was taken on the site of one of our wells when we were fraking into a different formation — the Picture Cliff — in order to access more of the hydrocarbons. The well had been completed as a Mesa Verde well, but a study of bubble maps indicated that there might be a large reserve of gas in a higher formation so we went in to get it. It was an amazing day. In order to open the formation a slurry of water and sand was sent under extreme pressure into the formation, and it fraks the gas bearing sands for many feet in all directions, and allows the gas to flow into the tubing and casing of the well. It was a little daunting to see one foot in diameter steel pipes dancing on top of the ground as if they were made of cheap plastic or cardboard, and knowing that if one of them broke the force of the slurry would literally cut a person in half. Of course I was the only woman on the site, and in fact I know of only one other woman owner/manager in the Four Corners area.

The wells are located on BLM land deep in the high desert. If some of you are familiar with Chaco Canyon it’s near that area so there are many deep canyons, juniper and pinon trees, and lots and lots of rock drawings, and even a few Native American ruins clinging to the canyon walls. It’s stark and extremely beautiful. So that’s the part of the my life that is the lawyer and the business woman. Sometimes I feel like I have two people living inside my skin, but so far I’m managing to keep them integrated.

Melinda

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 8:29 am and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.