Interviewer: Laura Ek

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I was referred to Bob Peatross by Joseph Beck at Halliburton. Joseph Beck referred me to him as someone with perspective on the smaller mom and pop operations in the Gulf of Mexico around the oil industry. I called him, and a week later we set up an appointment to meet at his office.

Bob Peatross has worked for Halliburton for the past 38 years. He graduated from high school in Fallbrook California, and then from Texas A&M with his geological engineering degree. A year after graduating, in 1967, he joined the Marine Corps. He served in Vietnam until 1967. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a geological engineering degree in 1972. In 1972, he got a job with Wellex (later bought by Halliburton in 1989, the company was established in 1947) operating a logging truck. He moved to Houma (where his wife is from) in 1973. He joined the sales at Halliburton in 1974 as a way to get out of the rain, and says he preferred it. He moved to New Orleans in 1975 to do servicing for Shell oil. In 1985 he moved to Shreveport to work in sales there. He moved back to Lafayette in 1993, and currently resides there with his wife and three sons.

In the interview, he discusses his work, how it has changed over time (due to changes in technology; the biggest change he says, being communications). He also mentions seismic and LWD. He talks a little about the Lafayette community and what he does in his spare time, and at the end of the interview touches upon some of the ways his company has responded to their employees with the moratorium from the summer previous. Another thing he talks about is the “Wildcatter mindset” of the 1970s, and how that had changed when he came back to Lafayette in 1993. He also talks about his own job, and the nature of the industry.