FROM 'THERE' TO 'HERE'

YIKES - THOSE NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS...

Three years with Canadian Hunter sped by in what seemed like a blink. I had left newspaper and magazine publishing to return to the technical side of the oil and gas industry with Canadian Hunter.

Regardless I still found myself [recruited] into the orbit of a monthly company publican. Then over the course of the following18 months, I was asked to diffuse two policy issues that had caused unrest with a number of the company’s internal departments. Since Audrey [The Forum editor] new of my doctor’s feature for the Whitecourt Star, she hoped I could come up with a PR approach for a touchy communications issue. Because the company president and CEO had given Audrey the assignment - I did too…

It’s not always easy to use humor to dilute resentment – but for some reason that’s the direction my instincts usually take me first. [I took a similar risk with my 1st book & 2015 update, tackling divorce and remarriage with some humor.] That aside, I was intrigued by the challenge offered by Audrey’s dilemma.

Voice mail and computerized phone systems are standard now, but 35-40 years ago nobody wanted to change from leaving a message left with a human switchboard operator to a ‘machine’. [Now it’s AI & whatever ‘that’ is…]

Never far from journalist mode, a few lunch hour interviews later - I learned just how quietly, quickly and soundly the new computerized phone system had taken off in the eastern part of the continent. And it had done so - a full year before the western half of Canada and much of the U. S. even knew it existed.

A couple more lunch hours later, I had logged a typical day in Hunter’s communications office. Their day actually began at 6AM [two hours before the office opened] and didn’t end until 9PM [four hours after normal office hours]. This new system would free up the time limitations of humans monitoring the older phone system. In fact, it was a twenty-four-seven-day, 365 system that quickly became a boon to everyone especially all field staff working remotely away from the downtown office.

Mixing a little technology, with a minor crisis or two from the old system, with a few humorous stories – spiced with a cartoon here and there – two weeks later the feature made the cover of the next edition of *the hunter forum”. Highlighting the number of hourly calls in a day, in communications - managed to subdue critics, doubters and petty grumbling. [President & CEO, John Masters praised Audrey and Audrey treated me to lunch.]

Four months later a major field discovery named Brassy was completed with a great deal of credit layered onto the shoulders of a young female geologist. Professional envy raised its begrudging head and this time both Audrey and I were called into John Master’s office. Once more I was pressed into journalist mode with another touchy PR assignment. Back at my desk, I began with what I usually begin with – copious amounts of research.

For this I was set free from my usual computer mapping and lithology logging responsibilities to gather what I needed for the next Forum feature. I quickly discovered that like most high-profile events in life there is often a star—someone who catches the camera lens first. However, like theatre in order for us to ‘see’ the star there are dozens of unseen technical players behind the scenes…

………..

…the hunter forum Volume 85—On Tuesday, August 25th at 8:30 AM Mountain Standard Time the drilling rig BRELCO #1 took a kick. The drill bit had just cut into the target formation of lower Charlie Lake when subsurface pressures greater than anticipated shot about 230 million years of subsurface, highly fermented jungle vegetation [aka fossil fuel] skyward through the wellbore.

The blowout was not good news, but the cause of the blowout was – BRASSY d-71-C/93-P-10 was a success! Canadian Hunter had an oil discovery – a big one. Though the story behind the remote British Columbia location doesn’t begin with Hunter’s blowout, but eight years earlier inside the exploration department at Dome…

………..

As I laid out the history of the mega oil find, I methodically named everyone who had a hand in any part of the project to clearly demonstrate just how much of a team effort the discovery had been. “All this hype about me discovering Brassey is baloney,” stated the young geologist, herself. Then another geologist Jim Chaput, summed up the project best. “You’d have an easier time writing this, Sherrie, if you just published the names of the twelve people who haven’t worked on Brassey.” And, just like that, soon enough egos were calmed, feathers were smoothed and Audrey bought me lunch, again.

Then the Universe sent me another 180…Perhaps I was too settled and too content. I was writing and publishing for Oil Week’s - Drillsite and contributing regularly to *the hunter forum” so much so, that Audrey openly discussed her retirement and passing the company publication torch to me as her replacement editor.

Life Lesson… If you’re paying attention, you can always tell when ‘Destiny’ has stepped in to shake things up, but try to see it for what it is - another learning cycle - and try to embrace it…

Or you may not recognize ‘Destiny’. Three years after settling into my challenging and ever-changing duties at Canadian Hunter – the direction of my life was spun off to other points, once more. Soon into the New Year 1990, there was a blind-date, that I didn’t even think of as a date…