Digging your way out of the dumps

Have you ever been lonely? I don’t mean just a little blue, or what my grandmother would call “down in the dumps.” I mean really lonely. So lonely that you just have to make yourself do anything. Nothing seems to matter, and everything, including food, seems unimportant.

At age 26, in great health, and newly married to a wonderful woman, I went through a period of extreme loneliness.

I had gone to work for Exxon right out of college as a production geologist assigned to the Kingsville, Texas, office. Exxon had recently purchased Humble Oil and Refining Company, and the crown jewel of Humble was King Ranch. I was put in charge of infield development of Borregos, a 100-million-barrel oil field. Humble had only partially developed the field, and my job was to pick new drilling locations.

I had been working at the Ranch for two years when district geologist Doug Garret called me into his office. I had just turned in six new locations, and I figured he had some questions about them. In those two years I had over 100 wells drilled, and all were producers. The huge field had over 40 producing sands, and I couldn’t miss in making a well.

I added a considerable amount of new oil and gas by giving the drilling engineers a total depth 500 to 1,000 feet deeper than my projected depth. I realized early on that virtually every sand on this huge structure would produce.

Drilling deeper costs the company very little, and the new oil and gas I found got me a nice raise.

I walked into Doug’s office and asked, “Which one of those locations do you want to review?”

Doug was shaking his head as he pointed to his office chair. “Oh, the locations are fine. This is about something else. When you filled out your employment papers you checked the box ‘Interested in an Overseas Assignment.’

“I did?” I was just so happy to get a job that I flew through the paperwork.

“Well, are you still interested? You don’t have to consider it. Your work is fine.”

I was curious, and asked, “Where’s the job?”

“Benghazi, Libya: You would be a well-site geologist.”

Libya? North Africa. I was shaking my head, and got up to leave. “Well, with your hardship allowance, you’ll more than double your salary,” said Doug. Yes, the “double your salary” stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Uh, well, let me talk to Vertis.

I’ll let you know something by the weekend,” I said.

For the next few days Vertis and I dug up every scrap of info we could about Libya. It was all bad. However, we were living in a 10by 35-foot trailer and were saddled with a whopping college debt. Late one night when we were going over our college debt, I commented, “Vertis, we’ll be years getting these college loans paid off and out of this trailer. Let’s go to Libya.”

It seemed it was our only way out. As we prepared to leave, we found out I would be going over early to get everything settled such as housing, bank account, a car, and other items. Six weeks later our furniture would arrive, then Vertis would join me.

When I arrived in Benghazi, I was immediately sent into the desert to work. It was two weeks out and one week back in town. At first the culture shock hit me and I was glad to get on the little plane, which would fly me to the drilling rig some 150 miles into the desert.

While I was in town I had heard several stories about Exxon employees who quit because they couldn’t take the culture shock. The one I remember was an employee who quit after his first ride from the airport into town.

A couple of weeks passed and I was back in Benghazi staring at the walls of my hotel room. Then in another few days it was back into the desert. I was beginning to get lonely, and started thinking about quitting. But without another job lined up, I hesitated. That’s when I decided to try and get a job back in the U.S. before I quit. I have never been anywhere close to despondent as I was then.

I’m going to quit, I thought. I can’t take it. I sat down and wrote Charlie Murphy, the head of Murphy Oil in El Dorado, who I knew from his help in getting me a summer job that was critical to my being able to finish college. I asked him for a job, outlining my experience with Exxon, and air-mailed it before I flew back into the desert.

I figured I would have a job offer when I returned in two weeks. When I was in the desert, I was the only American within 150 miles and my lonely depression hit bottom.

Finally, I flew back into town and rushed to the company office, expecting a job offer from Charlie Murphy. But there was only a letter from Vertis. I was dejected, but I opened Vertis’ letter, expecting just “I miss you so much ….”

But “Tomorrow!” I yelled. “She’ll be arriving in Benghazi tomorrow!” I raced back to the house the company had found for us to rent and frantically tried to get all our furniture from the large shipping container set up. That letter broke the spell of loneliness, and the next day, when Vertis stepped off a plane, I was all smiles.

I worked for two years mostly in the desert, we paid off a lot of debt, and because there was nothing to spend our money on, we came home with a good chunk of money in the bank.

Fifteen years later, as a successful independent oilman, we moved back to El Dorado, and I had a talk with now “Charles” Murphy, and I remarked, “Charles, I’m glad you didn’t offer me a job when I wrote you from Libya.” “Well, our exploration manager wanted to, but I said no. I thought you needed to stick with the job,” he answered.

“You were right,” I replied.