Fairfax, VA

My job in Calgary was really the last time I held a conventional line management job in Mobil, i.e. chief executive of a large, integrated profitable production company. Mocan, was one of ten companies in the E&P Division. In the late 1980s Mobil, the Standard Oil Company of New York, had decided to leave its longtime home in New York City because of the rampant crime in the city. By 1990 the head office was established in Fairfax, Virginia just outside Washington, DC on a purpose-built campus. The move occasioned many humorous vignettes, mainly because the New York support staff who chose to relocate had never had a need to own a car in NY but now had to learn to drive. My own secretary, a middle-aged single woman learner, put her car into Forward rather than Reverse one day while parked and drove through the plate glass front window of a coffee shop!

I was summoned to Fairfax headquarters in October 1990 without being told why. Mobil, like most large US corporations, was run by an Executive Committee, shortened to ExCom. The members were essentially the direct reports to the CEO. So, in addition to the CEO, there was the head of E&P, the head of M&R, the CFO, the head of HR, and a slightly unconventional position: VP Middle East and Marine Transportation (VP MEMT). This was really a legacy position carried over from the days when Mobil was aggressively courting the Saudis to increase the company’s access to Saudi crude. However, uniquely and exceptionally, the job had regional responsibility throughout the Middle East countries for both upstream and downstream businesses, and, of course this didn’t sit well with the bosses of those major businesses. I believe this structure came about to enhance personal relationships between Mobil and the country Rulers in the region.

To my amazement, I found that my summons to HQ was to ask me to take on this role as the VP of MEMT. The person who filled the job had been diagnosed with cancer and immediately quit. I would have all the responsibilities and the trappings but would not, thankfully, join the ExCom. To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. Everything was then a little rushed and was also a little focused. The Iraqis had invaded Kuwait two months previously, in August 1990, which caused great concern for Saudi Arabia. The family had to move down from Calgary, there were schools to select and a house to find. At the same time the business unit had to be created and put on a firm footing in Fairfax. Frankly, in terms of the bottom line it wasn’t much of a business but it did provide the Corporation with firsthand knowledge of happenings in the world’s most important oil province.

But at least I knew some of the people I was inheriting and I was happy to have Vince Connelly as my Number Two. Vince had been in charge of Mobil’s Middle East business from an office in London. (In fact, when that office was closed, I ended up with a fine Persian carpet from there.) Of equal interest, Vince had been General Manager of ADPC in Abu Dhabi when Rob Cornish had been DGM. Vince was also the person who delivered Cara, our Wheaten Terrier, to us. Vince was a hard worker and I think had some heart issues. He took early retirement and went sailing.

And then while he and another Mobil colleague were sailing in the Caribbean Vince suffered a heart attack while at sea and passed away. Really very sad.

One of the many perks of my job was that I had my own dedicated Mobil aircraft. After the invasion of Kuwait I went to Saudi, met the Mobil families working in Aramco in the east of the Kingdom (next to Kuwait!) and arranged to relocate them to the Saudi west coast. They were very appreciative and after the war gave me a nice set of coasters.

On my next visit to Saudi in January 1991 I was asleep in the Mobil guest house in Jeddah, on the west coast, when at about 2 a.m. one of the pilots woke me and said we should leave.

Jeddah that early morning, to see the sky filled with US war planes; the Mobil pilots had been tipped off that Desert Storm was beginning. After the war, I had the unique opportunity to visit the enormous holding area for American military equipment gathered on the Saudi east coast just north of Dhahran, which was facilitated by one of my group who was a retired US Marine. As far as the eye could see there were helicopters, tanks, Humvees etc. Incredible.

A forgotten incident which ultimately caused Qatar to emerge from obscurity and become fabulously wealthy occurred when Vince and I visited the oil minister in Doha as part of one of our “glad-handing” tours of the region. Shell had discovered an enormous offshore gas field which straddled Qatari and Iranian waters. Shell did not believe the field could be commercialized, which frustrated the Qataris whose sole source of income, a small oilfield, was nearly depleted. The minister asked me if we knew anyone who might have the skills to develop the gas.

Having worked in Mobil’s giant gas field in Indonesia I confidently answered “Yes, Mobil can”. And although there were many twists and turns along the way, Mobil ultimately did develop what turned into a massive LNG export business which certainly solved Qatar’s financial problems.

In my job as VP MEMT, the “MT” part meant I was responsible for Marine Transportation. Mobil had a number of ships, including VLCCs, which were used to transport crude from the Persian Gulf to refineries in Europe and the USA.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in March 1989 shipping companies were of course paranoid lest their name became associated with an oil spill. Our first job was to rename our ships so that they were no longer called Mobil This or Mobil That. The second part of the response was to build new tankers that would be double-hulled. I had absolutely no clue about the shipping business, but I had a unique German, Gerhard, who was boss of the business and who reported to me. Once we developed the proposals for the new tankers, which I think cost around $100 million each, we had to take the proposal to the ExCom for review, questioning and hopefully approval. The very hard-headed Gerhard felt that he had to educate these senior execs in detail about the minutiae of the tanker business. I felt my job in front of the Committee was to keep him quiet and prevent him from annoying the Committee by kicking his shins under the giant table. Boy, was he hard-headed. Anyway, we got our approval to proceed to construction. And at the end of my time in this job he gave me a fine memento in the shape of the ship’s bell from the Mobil Pegasus (the winged horse being Mobil’s icon).

There’s no doubt that this job pushed me out of my comfort zone. Admittedly I had the Persian Gulf background thanks to my time in Abu Dhabi. But what I lacked in the job, because I really had no boss, was a more senior figure I could turn to for advice and guidance. Until now there had always been a boss I could seek help from. Now I truly had to be self-starting. There was also a strange feeling of occupying an undeserved, rarefied corporate stratum which made me uneasy. I didn’t really try to puzzle out why I was doing this job. I just struggled to get on and do it as best I could. With the benefit of hindsight, it was apparent that I was being groomed for even more rarified positions.

I did manage to cope well enough and the experience of essentially being on my own surely helped me later on. Just as I discovered in my first job with Mobil in Libya, this was a company that constantly pushed one to take on new challenges.

And so, just as I was feeling comfortable in this job, I was asked to take on another, very different one.

But my time in the Middle East and Marine Transportation job was ultimately satisfying and I made some very good friends and carried away memories to last a lifetime!