Interviewer: Laura Ek

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I was referred to Julia Battle by Dennis Sullivan. Julia Battle knows Dennis Sullivan through his children who she taught in elementary school in the 1990s. I called Julia, and we set up an interview at the local Barnes and Noble in town. When I met her she was finishing up some coffee with friends, and we found a relatively quiet place to sit down and talk.

Julia Battle was born in 1954 and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She graduated high school in 1971.She attended LSU as a student in education before switching her major to petroleum engineering. Her father was the head of the petroleum-engineering department at LSU, and her older brother majored in petroleum-engineering as well. One of 9 and the only woman in her graduating class, she completed her petroleum-engineering degree in 1975. She got a job with Union Oil & Gas, initially working offshore and then coming onshore. She met her husband at Union (also an employee there) and they got married. She and her husband decided to open an independent consulting business in 1981 in Lafayette, right before the bust of the mid 1980s. They had a son, whom she home schooled. A large part of his schooling came from learning about the family business. Her husband passed away in 2005. In 2006, she went back to school at ULL to pursue her Master’s in geology, which she received in 2008. She got a job with Coastal Environments Inc. doing geology work and monitoring the coastline since the BP oil spill in April of 2010. She now lives on a 10-acre farm in Sunset, LA (where they moved to in 2000), with several horses, dogs, and two donkeys.

The first female petroleum-engineer hired by Union, she recounts her stories of life offshore, the differences between the offshore and office work environments, and the lawsuit the Petroleum Club in Lafayette faced and why she chose not to participate in it. She talks about the 1970s and 1980s in Lafayette, including who stayed in town, who left, what the business environment in the industry was like during these times, and educational courses and training provided by Union and other companies to advance their employees. She touches upon some of the ups and downs the industry has faced since, discusses her current work and why she would like to get back into the oil and gas industry, and her perspectives on the industry as a whole (including why she thinks it is a very misunderstood industry).