How I landed up in state government: a self introduction by PNA’s new columnist, Ken Boyd

Ken Boyd

PNA Columnist

It was in 1989 that the phone stopped ringing.

I left my job as Marathon Oil’s District Geophysicist in 1985 when Marathon moved its Alaska exploration office to Wyoming. I stayed in Alaska and became exploration manager for a small British company just getting started in Alaska.

In the summer of 1985 we acquired seismic data on the North Slope and offshore of the Aleutian Islands in anticipation of two upcoming state lease sales. Optimism in the oil patch was at a high level in 1985 and we had a lot of data sale commitments from industry.

We processed the data in the fall and winter and the data were ready to be marketed in early spring of 1986.

We had built the company from 20 people to more than 100. We had offices in four states and several overseas locations. Confident, my wife and I took a cruise to Mexico (as an aside, although I have spent many months at sea on seismic boats I will never, ever go on a “pleasure” cruise again.)

When we returned the price of oil began to fall.

And it fell and then fell some more.

I began calling clients at companies that had shown interest in our seismic data. These were not faceless voices on the phone. Many of these clients were friends and associates from my days with Gulf and Marathon.

At first I was told that purchases of new data were on hold, but soon a different pattern emerged, a truly terrible pattern that would remain for several years. The people on the other end of the phone were gone.

People were fired, not downsized

I continued to call, but the result was always the same - there was no longer money in the budget to buy any new data. And the industry layoffs went on and on.

Then the state postponed its lease sales in the areas we had acquired the data.

In the end, we sold only one copy of those data. As a result, on one terrible day I met with other senior managers and we let more than 80 people go.

There were cheery sayings at the time, such as “It’ll be heaven in ‘87” and “Things will be great in ‘88”. Wishful thinking for sure. Things did not improve and the company went bankrupt in 1988, along with many others.

So I joined the ranks of many other geologists, geophysicists and engineers at the time. I became a consultant.

The notion that consultants work short hours for high salaries was only partly true in 1988. The hours were short, but there was no pay since there was virtually no work to be found.

I managed to find some work doing geological and geophysical interpretations of ANWR for several companies. This was going fairly well until the Exxon Valdez ran into Bligh Reef in 1989.

As I said at the beginning, the phone just stopped ringing. I got one small job doing some geophysical work in lower Cook Inlet which, although much appreciated, was all there was.

My wife and I both wanted to stay in Alaska. She has been here longer than me and had (and still has) a very successful typesetting and graphics business. Her business struggled like every other business in Alaska during those days, but she kept the doors open through hard work and determination.

I worked for her for a short time, but we quickly agreed that that was not going to be the answer. A few friends of mine worked for the state and they began telling me how the process to get a state job worked.

I had absolutely no idea what state government was all about and I never once thought about working for the state. I knew who the Governor was and had probably seen state government officials in the news as a result of the Exxon Valdez grounding.

I was told that to get a state job you had to get on something called a “register” (although this process has changed, the state’s use of odd words to describe common practices has not).

Qualifying for a state job

Then I filled out the required form for each job (a resume could not be substituted) and submitted them to be scored.

There was an obvious trick to filling out these forms. Every time a question was posed about your experience in a particular area you simply repeated that area with a string of adjectives and superlatives that proved you not only had done a lot of this but were probably the best person on earth to do it.

Needless to say, I scored very high on all my applications. At one time I was ranked fourth on the petroleum economist register. That still scares me, and should scare economists everywhere.

Qualifying for a job is obviously just the beginning; there needs to be a job available.

In 1989, Jim Eason, director of the state’s Division of Oil & Gas, had shut down the state’s oil and gas leasing program due to lack of funding. After funding was restored by the legislature Jim was looking to fill several positions that had been vacant. As luck would have it one of these jobs was for a Petroleum Geologist (unlike the economist job, I really was qualified for this one).

Mark Myers beat him out of job

The person who got that job was Mark Myers, and he certainly deserved it more than me. Mark worked for the division for about eight years before returning to ARCO (now Phillips). Mark left Phillips this January to replace me as the director.

Jim told me that he might have another job “sometime later.” I figured this was a polite brush off and didn’t give it more thought.

A few months later Jim called and asked if I wanted to be the deputy director for the division. I didn’t know anything about it, but said sure, why not.

It is only now, in hindsight, that I realize the risk Jim took in putting me in that position. Sure, I had quite a lot of industry experience but I knew nothing about government (which I proceeded to prove almost immediately). I had never done a state budget and now I was in charge of his division’s budget. I had never testified before the legislature (in fact I had never been to Juneau), and that’s a big part of the job.

My first day at DO&G was July 2, 1990. My last day at the division was January 5, 2001. Never in my wildest imagination or worst nightmare did I ever envision being in government for over ten years. A lot happened in those ten years and I hope, now and again, to tell you about some of those things.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jan. 5 was Ken Boyd’s last day as director of the state’s Division of Oil & Gas. In February, he will begin writing a column for Petroleum News • Alaska, his years in state government lending valuable perspective to his reflections on oil and gas development and issues. This is his account of how he came to work at the division.