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Arlen Ehm resigns from Fowler over pay
Petroleum News
Veteran petroleum geologist Arlen Ehm, declaring he wasn’t paid in full for his services, has resigned from Nevada-based Fowler Oil and Gas Corp., the company that has been working on the Kircher unit coalbed methane development in Southcentral Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Ehm announced Feb. 1 that he had resigned as president and chief operations officer of Fowler Oil and Gas, which is, depending on whom you ask, a subsidiary or sister company of New York-based Native American Energy Group Inc.
Chairman and chief executive Robert “Bob” Fowler did not return calls to the Anchorage Daily News seeking comment on Ehm’s resignation.
Ehm described his decision Feb. 6 in a terse, two-sentence statement: “I am a firm believer that compensation for services should be made in a full and in a timely manner. Fowler Oil and Gas did neither.”
NAEG needs capital The 30-year geological consultant would not disclose how much Fowler owed him.
On the same day that Ehm resigned Native American Energy Group Inc. posted an update to shareholders on its Web site that said its fleet of workover rigs, acquired in 2007, was idle because NAEG was unable to find “sufficient capital to operate the properties it has acquired.”
The Feb. 1 update said NAEG was “in discussions with private investors to raise sufficient capital to acquire all publicly held shares of the company at a price between .008 and .01 per share.”
Until it is able to raise the capital and “return a portion” of its shareholders investment, NAEG says it will be unable to operate. However, there is nothing in NAEG’s shareholder update that says its capital shortage will impact Fowler Oil and Gas’ operations in Alaska, and in its 154-page, development permit application for the Kircher unit to the Mat-Su borough Fowler Oil and Gas said it had “a multi-million dollar credit facility” that covered the “costs for the engineering, drilling and completion of the Kircher unit.”
The credit facility, it said, was “jointly provided by an energy-based New York financial firm and our sister company, Native American Energy Group.”
Robert Fowler is listed as part of NAEG’s executive team, identified as one of six “officers and directors” on the company’s Web site (www.nativeamericanenergy.com). His title is director of Alaskan Native projects.
In its borough permit application, Fowler Oil and Gas lists geologist and petroleum engineer Tony Johnson as director of operations for Alaska. Beneath his name is petroleum engineer Charles Johnson. Both men are listed by NAEG as the only two members of its corporate oil and gas management team.
Long-time Alaska geologist Ehm’s Alaska reputation began 40 years ago as one of the geologists who worked on the first well on the first offshore platform for Shell Oil Co. in Cook Inlet in 1965.
Since then, Ehm served as an expert witness and co-authored geologic studies of Cook Inlet, the North Slope and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A partial list of clients on his eight-page resume lists 84 oil and gas companies, Native corporations and government agencies.
Fowler Oil and Gas is headquartered in Las Vegas but has an Alaska subsidiary of the same name that operates out of an Alaska field office above the Wells Fargo bank in Palmer. The company in October secured permission from the borough to drill the first coalbed methane well under a law enacted in 2004. The law came in response to public outcry over attempts by Evergreen Resources of Colorado to drill wells in residential neighborhoods in the Mat-Su.
Bob Fowler describes what would be his company’s first Kircher well, on privately owned farmlands near the intersection of Trunk and Bogard roads, as a different kind of methane operation: on property owned by willing parties who stand to gain royalties (because they own subsurface mineral rights), with a kind of horizontal drilling that is quiet and protects water resources.
He still needs approval from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to move forward with development. The agency told the Anchorage Daily News that Ehm’s resignation would not impact its decision.
Editor’s note: Zaz Hollander, Anchorage Daily News, broke this story. About half of this article was taken from her article in the Feb. 7 issue of ADN.
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