Changing Image Not Impossible Mission

Changing our image is not an impossible task. Difficult? Yes, especially when you consider the influences and attitudes that brought us to today:

• "The Oil Business is cannibalism — the big men eat the little men. You find anyone successful in the oil business, and he's got a guy somewhere who wants to knife him. I think every oil person is a J.R. Ewing." — A Houston citizen.

• The image of the Texas oilman as a crude, blustery, high roller was magnified in the 1950s book and movie "Giant," in which James Dean played oilman Jett Rink.

• Once upon a time the television series "Dallas" depicted J.R. Ewing as public enemy number one. The popular series depicted a bunch of egotistical high rollers out to cheat people.

• "Dallas" was followed by "Dynasty," which continued to project a very negative, false, distorted image of the industry.

• First there was the Exxon Valdez. Now there is the "old, rickety" oil tanker Prestige, which cracked and leaked about seven million gallons of oil along the coast of Spain. Spillage is a major public image problem. The public doesn't understand that these disasters have nothing to do with geoscientists and exploration.

• "An MBA sitting in front of a computer trading natural gas and electricity has replaced the grizzled roughneck in recent years as the icon of the energy industry. There is a basic distrust of pricing fundamentals, causing a flight of investment capital from the oil industry." — The Houston Chronicle.

• "Offshore drilling is an inherently dirty business. Even the newest technology would still significantly pollute and forever despoil the only remaining pristine waters left in the Gulf of Mexico." — Editorial in a recent Florida newspaper.

• "Job opportunities are poor; career options are limited; oil companies continuously lay off personnel; earth science students are nerds, unaware of what happens in society, do not care about their appearance and are idealistic." — A public survey by Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

• "The current gasoline price run-up has reinforced the image of the energy industry as a villain. This looks uncomfortably close to price gouging." — The Houston Chronicle.

Well, I'm getting tired of this, and you probably are too, so I'll stop with my favorite: "You rock people are really weird." — Taxi driver comment to me, upon learning of my passion.

Let's face it. The oil industry has a very poor public image, and geoscientists have NO public image — except that they collect rocks and fossils. Reality is very different from perception.