Interviewer: Laura Ek

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Mr. William Hagan at a SPWLA (Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts) meeting at the Petroleum Club a week before. He approached me and gave me his card, and we set up an interview at his office at Stratagraph.

William Hagan was born in Lafayette, and lived here until moving to Baton Rouge at age nine. He went to high school there, graduating in 1993. He moved to Shreveport for college and finished with a B.A. in political science and a minor in business in 1998. He went to work in the field doing survey work in 1998 for Stratagraph (the mud logging company begun by his father in 1961), and continued through 2000. In 2000, he came into the office and worked as a dispatcher for mud loggers, operations assistant, and interviewer. He has been the vice president of business development since ~2002.

In the interview, he discusses the history of the Stratagraph mud logging company, what got him to work in the business, growing up with a father that owned a company, and the nature of the work they do in mud logging (including changes to communication in the business, which he sees as one of the most fundamental changes in the industry since he started). He also discusses where they get their workforce from and their involvement in education.