The Hague

I ’m resuming this saga in November 2024 after a long layoff.

Partially this resulted from taking time to compile the O’Connor Ancestry work which was very time-consuming. I learned a lot not just about the family but also about the history of Ireland spanning the time from the Gaelic chieftains and their clans to the effects of Christianity, the English plantations of the 16th and 17th centuries, and through to the Land Wars of the late 19th century. Then life got in the way of returning to writing this story. However, if I don’t press on I’ll be in danger of forgetting the contours of what I need to write about. So this may turn out to be somewhat disjointed, (Spoiler alert: events of 40 years ago are becoming somewhat vague.) Mobil’s business in The Hague was very small. There were three or four gas platforms in the North Sea that we operated and a 50% share of a large gas field in the north of Holland which was operated by Shell. The office was in the heart of the city above the central train station. There were maybe 40 employees there with another 60 or so operating the platforms.

I arrived by myself in January 1986 leaving Liz and the kids (9, 8 & 4) to follow. I stayed in a large hotel in the seaside resort of Scheveningen, some 5 km from the office. Mobil had a habit of throwing people in at the deep end and my trauma here began when I drove the company-supplied Mercedes to the office on Day 1. Before the advent of GPS and with absolutely no familiarity with the place, I still remember how terrified I was.

All went well and I arrived and met my new staff. The other routines to be followed in a new location involved registering with the police, getting the kids in school (ASH, or the American School in the Hague) and moving into a house.

I inherited a house from the previous GM and what a place it was. It was enormous with a huge back garden and a swimming pool! It had originally been owned by the Chairman of Unilever and one of its features was the faded wallpaper oblongs which were the residue from his removal of his Monets!

We soon settled into the domestic routine. We had three or four friends from Abu Dhabi, including Rob Cornish and family, who had joined Shell and who just happened to be working in The Hague at that time.

Another benefit was the ability to travel to Ireland more frequently than if we were further away.

Despite being a small affiliate, MPNI (Mobil Producing Netherlands Inc) attracted far too much attention from Mobil higher ups. We had barely settled in when the head of E&P came with his wife. These visits were a major production and a pain.

This was particularly so in this case because Alex, the Head of Mobil E&P, was a brute and was notorious for his abuse of his subordinates. In fact, it is said that after winning a New York Times poll for being the meanest boss in New York three years in a row he was bumped down to second worst, and wrote to the paper to complain about his demotion! We had to arrange visits to the Dutch Prime Minister and host dinner parties for interesting people. Liz also had to take Mrs Alex on a shopping trip to Delft, having hardly had time to acquaint herself with the country. Anyway, all passed off without recriminations.

The other bugbear about that particular time (February 1986) was that the crude price had crashed to $10 a barrel.

Pandemonium. It seemed like there were frantic meetings in New York every two weeks which required all the worldwide GMs to attend. So I would fly there, attend the meeting the next day, fly back to Holland that evening and go to the office the morning after I returned. Ugh.

One of the strange things that happened to me in The Hague was when I discovered that a predecessor GM had ordered the construction of a gas platform with the expectation that it would be placed at an expected discovery, but when the wildcat well was drilled, it was dry! Yikes. This had been done without New York approval, so the next thing was that my very nervous boss from NY came over and tried to come up with a solution to the problem without letting Alex find out. Somehow this was done.

Another adventure occurred when I had to entertain two execs from the Dutch company who bought our gas. Their request was to be taken to Hamburg and treated to some ladies of the night. I did take them to Hamburg, we did visit some shady places, but I managed to avoid any interaction with the aforementioned ladies.

One of the highlights of living in The Netherlands was the proximity to the Alps. We traveled to St. Anton in Austria by train and started the kids on their skiing careers. Fun. I think we may have managed two ski trips, before it was time to move again.

I think we stayed for about 18 months in the Netherlands.

Although brief, our time there created many memories for all of us. The kids enjoyed their school and their nanny. Miriam and her pals stopped by on their cycling tour and we got to learn about mayo with frites, raw herrings and locally distilled genever (gin). We also enjoyed Indonesian cuisine. And of course it was great to see familiar faces from Abu Dhabi again. So, it was really too soon, for all of us when I was told that I was headed back to the New York head office.

In retrospect I must have been quite naive about the ways of large corporations. Although I was never particularly ambitious, I always wanted to do each job to the best of my ability. But to leave a general manager’s job after only 18 months should have alerted me to the reality of what was happening. Looking back, it’s clear I was being groomed for greater responsibility, but that never dawned on me at the time. The whole process was very much a whirlwind.