I didn’t see the small print: Alexandra Pruner, partner and chief financial officer for Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities was moderator for a panel of energy executives at the Women’s Global Leadership Conference recently held in Houston. For fun, Pruner queried the panelists as to how they came to be in the oil business.

“My dad was CFO for Mitchell Energy, which was the first company in the Barnett shale in a big way,” said Janet Clark, executive vice president and chief financial officer for Marathon Oil Corp. “So it was a natural segue for me to enter the oil and gas business.”

“I’m in the energy business because of a scholarship,” said Johanna Hohle, performance unit leader for BP Plc. “In Venezuela, I was offered a scholarship from Petróleos de Venezuela SA. I didn’t see the small print about being required to accept a job, if offered, or having to pay the money back, until it was too late.” She added, “But I am glad I am here.”

“While an undergrad, I needed three science credits to finish my degree in languages,” said Alex Herger, exploration manager for Gulf of Mexico, new ventures, for Shell Oil Co. “So I signed up for a geology course because it didn’t require a lab. I liked the course so much, I took another course, and so on, and here I am.”

“It was my dad who got me into the energy business,” said Charlene Ripley, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for Linn Energy LLC. “Now I wouldn’t want to be working in anything else.” JS

It was the worst IPO in America: “When Tom Ward and I started the company in 1989, we didn’t have any money for acquisitions,” Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and chief executive of Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. told Houston Producers’ Forum members in Houston recently.

“And we couldn’t afford to drill dry holes, so we were looking for plays where we could get our money back. Back then we didn’t call them resource plays, they were just plays that traditionally hadn’t made sense, like fractured carbonate plays in Oklahoma, or the Austin Chalk.

“It’s true that, had you been an original investor in Chesapeake from the start, you would now have made 30 to 35 times your money. But you would be dead—from all the heart attacks you would have suffered along the way. It has not been a steady, smooth ride. Many other companies have done it with much more elegance than we have.

“In 1999, we had to deal with the aftermath of a stock that had gone public at $1.33 and had gone as low as $.044 in our first year, making us the worst IPO in America. Later, the stock went up from $0.44 to $34. But when you run a public company, and the stock goes down 99%, there’s a time in your life when you don’t have a lot of people to talk to.” JS

The only thing I will truly remember: “Whenever I speak at meetings and say that safety is the most important thing to me, many people think I have to say that. As a Shell manager, what else can I say?” Peter Sharpe, Shell Exploration & Production’s vice president of well technology, told media recently at the company’s west Houston campus.

“The truth is, when I look back on my career, the only thing that I will truly remember, apart from the friends I’ve made, is the accidents that I have been responsible for. The people that I have been supposed to be taking care of that have been seriously hurt,” Sharpe said.

“Today, so far in my career, there has only been one fatality in my part of the business. But I know that’s what I am going to remember. I won’t remember what awards or bonuses I’ve received, or what promotions, or all of the projects I’ve worked on. But I will remember that. And I think you will find that most people in Shell feel the same way—that safety is a deeply held value,” he said.

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