Interviewer(s): A. Gardner. Houma, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Russell Poiencot through my presentation to the Morgan City/Houma group of the Shell Retirees' Group. He is the president of the group and was the host of the meeting. Afterwards, I made arrangements to meet him in Houma for an interview. He provides descriptions of his work, the regulatory environment in which he worked, the kind of laborers Shell employed, and so on. Like many of his generation, he perceived a change in company/labor relations near the end of his career, and he describes this well near the end of the interview. I returned to Russell's house the next day for an additional interview based on the photographs he loaned to the project.

Russell was born in 1928 and raised in Houma, spent some of his summers as a young man working for Texaco, and eventually found employment with GSI, a geographical surveying company with an office in Houma. To get this work, he utilized his training in the military. GSI was steady work, but the pay didn't compare to working for one of the majors, and he finally found his way to Shell Oil Company, where he finished his career. Most of his time was spent in surveying and seismic work, with a focus on surveying. He eventually became responsible for Shell's surveying activity in much of the Eastern US.