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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigBull who wrote (67265)	5/28/2000 9:07:00 PM
From: BigBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Ot For PM fans - China and silver: chinadaily.com.cn

To: BigBull who wrote (67265)	5/29/2000 3:37:00 AM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

BigBull, By the way, 25% annually is a rough "rule of thumb" for a gas well's decline- need to keep drilling, drilling, drilling here. In today's Midland Reporter-Telegram there is a full page article entitled: "Oil Producers Increasingly Desperate for Workers to Fill Jobs". The entire article can be summed up in just one of its paragraphs: "Although the oil industry is still recovering from the 2-year bust, the rest of the economy soared. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, has fallen to a 30-year low making it harder for oil producers to fill shaky positions." Heck- I experienced that situation myself. I used to work for Mobil Oil Corporation. In the Exxon-Mobil merger process I got offered a position early 2000 in the Miami, Florida Downstream ExxonMobil Office overseeing some issues for the Latin American and Caribbean regions. I went to Miami, checked it out, and decided it was not for me. I called what would have been my new Exxon boss above me and told him "no thanks"- and he exploded- He cursed me up and down for about two minutes and then called me "chickenshit" for not taking the job. His reaction kind of shocked me. Now he did calm down and called me back the next day and reoffered the job to me .... The reason behind his outburst is that the industry is short-seriously short of qualified people in lots of positions and areas to the point that they hate to lose even one veteran no matter who he/she is and area he/she covers. But honestly the industry brought it upon themselves an dput themelves in a bind because they listened to the wrong set of consultants. ExxonMobil right now for example is 25 drilling engineers short in its Worldwide Drilling Group post merger- And many of the engineers they do have, have eighteen months experience-or less- They are just pups.... And they are out there overseeing big rigs, in rough locations, making decisions with potentially sensitive impacts.... The oil indsutry now looks like Bobby Lee's front line at the Battle of Chancellorsville where he left Jubilee Early with only enough troops to place one soldier every eight yards in the trenches while the bulk of the army then joined Stonewall in his famous-and fatal- march/flank attack on the Union right (which came close to enveloping the entire Union Army a la Hannibal's Battle Plan at the Battle of Cannae 53 B.C.) - damn few soldiers manning the front lines..... Bobby Lee told Jubilee to light extra campfires and "make extra noise" to appear to be a bigger army contingent than they were. Well deception works well in politics and military..But deception cannot negative the laws of chemistry and physics