Oil column: Oxy keeps its secret
| Saturday, Aug 29 2009 01:10 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Sep 03 2009 05:40 PM
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Felix Adamo / The Californian Women met old friends and made new ones at the Alliance of Women in Energy meeting held at the Petroleum Club.
Felix Adamo / The Californian Carla Musser of Chevron, left, and Christina Dixon of AERA where just of the women attending the Alliance of Women in Energy meeting at the Petroleum Club
John Cox
Not to frown on gambling, but Oxy’s big news this summer really doesn’t make the best subject for a betting pool.
Someone made the suggestion locally right after Occidental Petroleum Corp. went public July 22 with its 150-250 million barrel gas and oil find in western Kern.
The problem with starting a pool over the well’s secret location is how long you might have to wait before calling a winner.
See, California seems to have somewhat open-ended rules on “tight holes.” That’s the legit term for keeping mum about the details of a new well, and it’s a tradition as time-honored as using binoculars to try and count how many 30-foot lengths of casing a competitor installs in a tight hole.
As laid out in the California Code of Regulations and the state Public Resources Code, an oil producer’s records are kept confidential for a period that “shall not exceed two years” after the company finishes its exploratory drilling. The producer also must document its “extenuating circumstances” (nothing more specific than that) for consideration by a supervisor within the state Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources.
But if you read on, the Public Resources Code indicates the confidentiality period can be extended to four years for onshore exploratory wells (seven for offshore wells). The code goes on to say that a DOGGR director can grant an extension of unspecified duration after a 30-day public notice and comment period.
That almost makes it sound like we may never know where Oxy’s discovery lies.
Woman power
On the pro-gambling side, we’d be willing to bet the guys who made cracks about the new Alliance of Women in Energy wouldn’t have dared repeat their jokes at the group’s inaugural mixer last month at the Petroleum Club of Bakersfield.
We’re not saying we felt intimidated as we stood inside the club, drinkless, surrounded by scores of powerful women professionals calling for greater representation of their gender in Kern’s petroleum, bio-energy, wind, utilities and other energy fields.
But for whatever reason, we made sure to know where the other three men in the room were at all times. (Surely it’s not like that for women in the industry...?)
Senior professionals in the room that evening said the time to form such a group had come.
“It’s the wave of the future — it really is,” said Carla Musser, a co-founder of AWE and spokeswoman for Chevron, which gave the alliance a $7,500 grant to have local energy industry women mentor poor local high school girls who are interested in math and science careers.
(Oxy has also pitched in: It has more than one employee on the group’s list of founders, and it hosted the lavish affair at the club.)
A good deal of the women who showed up at the event looked to be in their 20s and 30s — an encouraging sign for the local industry’s future, said Susan Hersberger, another AWE co-founder, and spokeswoman at Aera Energy LLC.
Much of the work of putting together the group and working on the grant was done by Kern Economic Development Corp., and its energy industry business developer, Robin Fleming.
Fleming is the lucky woman who put out e-mails announcing the group’s formation. She got back more than one tongue-in-cheek electronic reply asking, in effect, “Is there something like this for men?”
“I laughed,” she said. “I didn’t respond.”
The group intends to meet every other month for lunch. There is a membership fee. Contact Fleming for details at: 862-5157.
