Archie Dunham
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
As a child in Oklahoma, Archie Dunham wandered along dry stream beds, picking up fossils and wondering where they came from.
“I fell in love with geology,” he told Hart Energy. “That interest inspired me to want to try and attend the University of Oklahoma, even though none of our expanded Dunham family had ever even attended a college, for sure not a university. But that was my objective.”
His goals would become more ambitious and result in his leading the largest oil and gas company in the world.
Dunham received a Naval scholarship to attend OU and, two days after graduation, married Linda Burns, his childhood sweetheart. Soon after, he left to serve four years in the U.S. Marine Corps before returning to the University of Oklahoma to earn his MBA.
Advanced degree in hand, Dunham joined Conoco as an associate engineer and would spend the next 33 years in various roles at Conoco and its subsidiaries. He was promoted to president of the Douglas Oil Co. subsidiary, vice president of Conoco for logistics and downstream planning, executive vice president of North American petroleum products, and executive vice president of E&P. In 1996, he was named president and CEO of Conoco and became the company’s chair in 1999.
Dunham is known for two major achievements while running Conoco. The first was orchestrating the company’s $4.4 billion IPO and separation from DuPont Co. in 1998, the largest in U.S. history at the time.
“In my corporate career, that certainly was my greatest achievement,” he said.
DuPont’s acquisition of Conoco in 1981 was welcomed, but over time, Dunham’s predecessor Dino Nicandros became focused on undoing the bond. When Dunham became CEO of Conoco in 1996, he made it his No. 1 priority to follow through with his predecessor’s plan.
Dunham formed a small committee to make the argument that both Conoco and DuPont would be better off if Conoco were spun off. On Mother’s Day, 1998, Dunham made his pitch to the DuPont board.
“The most important presentation of my life,” he said. “Linda was in the hotel waiting for me. So, I made the presentation, the board voted unanimously to separate Conoco from DuPont. And I remember running downstairs … Linda and I got down on our knees and we thanked God for his leadership and his guidance in making that happen.”
The second major achievement was overseeing the $15 billion merger of equals between Conoco and Phillips Petroleum in 2002. Dunham became chairman of ConocoPhillips, as the combined company was known.
Dunham retired in 2004 to focus on philanthropic work, but returned to the corporate boardroom in 2012 when he joined Chesapeake Energy as the independent non-executive chair. He was named as chairman emeritus at Chesapeake Energy in 2015 before retiring from the company in 2019.
Dunham provided significant support to the University of Oklahoma, Houston Christian University and the Houston community, as a manifestation of his faith and ideals.
“At the time, Conoco was probably the largest corporation headquartered in Houston, and ConocoPhillips certainly was,” Dunham said. “With that comes an obligation, on the part of the leadership, if you’re willing to do it—and I was—to be involved.”
Archie and Linda Dunham were married 63 years before she passed in April.
“She was a strong woman of faith,” Dunham said. “Her judgement was excellent. I relied on her wisdom and her judgement in many of the decisions I made, before advancing in the corporate world and while I was in the corporate world.”
—Jennifer Martinez, Associate Development Editor; Frank Nietro, Contributing Editor