Local Company Celebrates Centennial
Category: Oil & Gas...
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 01:23 PM [GMT-6]

If you subscribe to the Midland Reporter Telegram's treeware edition, you might have noticed a large ad in today's publication announcing the 100th anniversary of St. Mary Land & Exploration Company. This milestone will be celebrated at a reception this afternoon at the Petroleum Club, and yours truly has wrangled an invitation, because of my well-known reputation as a media mogul and Influencer of Public Opinion.

Well, that and the fact that I'm married to a St. Mary employee. OK, probably mostly that second thing.

But, I'm not the only local blogger whose better half is a St. Mary employee. I don't think Jeff will mind my pointing out that his wife recently joined the company and is, in fact, one of their key employees. Unlike me, however, Jeff has a real job and I don't know that he'll be able to attend the ceremony. Jeff, I'll have a piece of cake in your honor.

St. Mary's presence in Midland is new, but growing. The office has been open for only about a year. Many Midlanders will be familiar with some of its management, however, as they served stints here with ARCO in the 90s and earlier. Tony Best is the President and CEO; Javan Ottoson is Executive VP and COO; Newt Newton is the VP and Regional Manager in the Midland office. And, of course, both my wife and Jeff's were ARCO employees, so it's sort of a mini-reunion from that perspective.

Given today's business climate, one wonders how many new relatively new companies (think Google, Microsoft, Apple, Verizon, etc.) will survive to celebrate a centennial. It's a big deal, and I wish the employees of St. Mary all the best. (Not that I have a vested interest or anything.)