My Life as a Landman: A Memoir

By Gene F. Lang

This is the story of an oil and gas landman. It is one that begins with a childhood in the Philippine Islands that improbably segues into teaching high school in South Dakota and then leads to becoming a 70s traveling musician, long hair and all. When it became time to pursue a more sustainable endeavor, Gene began an apprenticeship as a landman, starting out one frigid winter in North Dakota. As he gradually learned the ropes, he turned his early experiences into a successful career in the oil business. The highs and lows, economic successes and failures, and the pure boom-bust cycles of the oil business are all chronicled here. Through it all, Genes creativity and ability to laugh at lifes absurditiesand there are plenty of those in the bookhave sustained him. This is a classic American success story, one not to be missed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524688783

Gene F. Lang

After forty years in the oil business, Gene Lang is widely recognized as an expert in his field. He is a Certified Professional Landman, but it could also be said that he holds the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in the complex operations of title discovery, lease negotiation, rights-of-way, and oil and gas exploration. He resides with his wife Barbara in Parker, Colorado.

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© 2017 Gene F. Lang. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/17/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8877-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8878-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906691

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 The Early Years: The Events That Led to My Becoming an Oil and Gas Landman

Chapter 2 The Beginning

Chapter 3 Received the Call

Chapter 4 The First Day as a Landman

Chapter 5 JB, the Crew Chief

Chapter 6 The Courthouse and Title

Chapter 7 My First Oil and Gas Lease

Chapter 8 The First Three Months

Chapter 9 Why Not Minot?

Chapter 10 The Bowling Balls

Chapter 11 Back to South Dakota

Chapter 12 Bouncing Around North Dakota

Chapter 13 Uranium in Minnesota

Chapter 14 Taming the Notary

Chapter 15 A New Job with a New Company

Chapter 16 The Move to Denver

Chapter 17 Uranium Leasing in Colorado

Chapter 18 Back to North Dakota

Chapter 19 An In-house Landman

Chapter 20 Arbuckle Ten

Chapter 21 A New Beginning

Chapter 22 Lang, Dunn & Holt, Ltd.

Chapter 23 Expansion

Chapter 24 Baby Boy

Chapter 25 The Crash of 1986

Chapter 26 Business Turns Around Again

Chapter 27 A New Opportunity

Chapter 28 The Tiger

Chapter 29 Tragedy Hits Former Lang, Dunn & Holt Partner

Chapter 30 The End of an Era

Chapter 31 New Beginnings – Gene F. Lang & Co.

Chapter 32 Rights-of-Way

Chapter 33 Niorbrara Shallow Gas Play

Chapter 34 North Dakota Rockin’ the Bakken

Chapter 35 Clearwater Prospect The Bakken, Round Two

Chapter 36 Bakken Light to the North West Kenmare & North Bowbells Prospects

Chapter 37 Bakken Leases The Bits and Grits

Chapter 38 Back in the Brokerage Business Again

Chapter 39 Oil Business Slow Again

Chapter 40 Unconventional Shale Plays A Boom Once Again and GFL’s New Approach

Chapter 41 Osprey Prospect

Chapter 42 Jackson Prospect

Chapter 43 The Lease Plays That Did Not Work

Chapter 44 Drilling Deals and Production Purchases

Chapter 45 Memories of Former Clients and Friends

Acknowledgements

DEDICATION

To Barbara, my wife, the love of my life and my

business partner for all these years.

To my children, Patrick and Heidi for their love,

support and excitement.

To my brother Larry for making that phone call

in 1977 that changed my life.

To my deceased mother and father

who left this earth too early. I hope I made you proud.

PREFACE

The year is 2000. I am sitting in one of the three-day Certified Professional Landman (CPL) review courses in Denver so I can earn the 15 credit hours needed to maintain my CPL status for another five years. The topic is boring and redundant, as I am quite familiar with it in my daily business. I start daydreaming about my years in the oil business and begin putting my thoughts to paper. I bet the instructor that day thought, Damn this guy is really into this presentation. Look at all the notes the dude is taking! Fifteen years and many handwritten yellow pads later, this is my story.

Growing up in rural South Dakota, the word oil simply referred to the stuff you put in your car. And my $75.00 ‘59 Ford sure did use it! Gas was pretty much the same, something that was also put in your car to keep it going. The combination of the two words oil and gas was not thought of in the context of something you got out of the ground. The way they were extracted was totally Greek to most of us.

Also Greek was the word landman. What the hell is a landman? Through the years I have been asked, What do you do for a living? My reply, I’m a landman. A what? A landman. Then I go on to explain. In these next chapters, I will share with you my experiences as a landman.

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years: The Events That Led to My Becoming an Oil and Gas Landman

I was born in the Philippines in 1950. My father was a gold miner and logger who started his business prior to World War II, and my mother was an elementary school teacher in South Dakota. My brother Larry and I were her only pupils while we were located in the Philippines. We were the only children in the family, and as young kids growing up in the bush, we had no idea that both of us would end up working in the energy field and become landmen.

To digress a bit, when I mention living in the bush in the Philippine Islands, that is no exaggeration. We lived on the island of Mindanao, and the closest town was Surigao, Surigao. (Yes, that’s the name of the town.) To get there, we had to travel twenty miles from our home on rough gravel roads and then cross a river. In order to cross the river, Dad had to take our ‘48 Chevy’s fan belt off because, if he didn’t, the high water would stall the car. After making the crossing, he would replace the belt and head on home or into town, whichever way we were going at the time. Needless to say, going to town was an adventure.

Our home was small and built up on top of large railroad ties. The reason for this was to keep the snakes and other varmints from getting in the house. Of course, my brother and I did not know any differently and just thought this was how people lived. Our Filipino friends lived in houses that were also built above ground, but they weren’t quite as nice as ours – theirs were made from bamboo and had thatch roofs.

My father Le Roy and my mother Evelyn had grown up in South Dakota. My mother was from Gregory, and my father grew up in Dallas, South Dakota. Not Big D, but Real Little D, population about 110 when some of the farmers and ranchers gathered together at the local bar for a beer or two.

My dad was kind of a rounder, as they used to say. He liked to do all sorts of things. He ran a dance hall in Dallas in the early 1930s and even hired Lawrence Welk and Tommy Dorsey’s band to play there. Dad helped out on his dad’s farm, along with his brothers and sisters. He also broke horses for extra money. I never have seen my dad on a horse, but apparently he could really ride and was pretty good at taming those horses. Sometime in the late 1930s, Dad went to Idaho to run heavy equipment. He went to work with his brothers, Leslie and Melvin. While he was there, he was offered a job with the Marsman Mining Company, which was doing placer mining in Zamboagna Providence on the island of Mindanao.

My mother was teaching elementary school in South Dakota while my dad was overseas. In 1938 she left to be with him, and they were married in the Philippines on October 28, 1938. My parents lived there for about twenty years. Unfortunately, they were there during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and when the Japanese invaded the Philippines.

If you can call it luck, they happened to be in Manila when the Japanese invaded. If they had been in Mindanao, they probably would have been killed. Instead, they were captured and held prisoner. They spent three and half years in the Santa Tomas internment camp before they were liberated by General Douglas McArthur, who made good on his promise to the Filipino people when he famously proclaimed, I shall return. My parents’ three and half years in the Japanese camp are another story in itself. But after the war, they settled back outside Surigao, Surigao again, where they started a family. My brother Larry was born in 1948, and I came along in 1950.

In 1959, my mother, brother and I relocated to the Midwest, in the southeast part of South Dakota. We landed in Sioux Falls, where we were met by my aunt and uncle. It was December; my brother and I were in short sleeve shirts, and it was damn cold. I had never seen snow and been so cold in my life! Many of our relatives on both my mother’s and my father’s side of the family were educators – teachers, coaches, superintendents, etc. With the pressure of all these teachers, I decided I should become one, as well. So I went to college and, afterward, signed a contract to teach English at a small high school in Fort Pierre, South Dakota.

After two years of teaching, I decided to go to graduate school to become a high school guidance counselor. However, after a semester of that, I decided becoming a road musician was more for me, so I left school to pursue a music career. Two years of the road musician gig, though, helped me to decide it was time to get married and go back into teaching. So, in another reversal, I married my girlfriend of eight years, the plan being for me to teach and her to be a social worker.

But wait. This is actually the beginning of the landman career.

My brother had recently finished his stint in the Army, and he had a high school friend, Mike Martin, who had an uncle who was a landman in Denver. This uncle was able to get Mike a landman job – and get my brother Larry a job, as well. At the time I married, my brother was working for an oil and gas brokerage firm in Denver. He called me and said that I should try to get a landman job, too, before signing another contract to teach.

I was interested, but really did not know what this landman business was all about. Larry explained that a landman researches county records to find out who owns mineral interests, buys oil and gas leases, and acquires other curative documents required by oil and gas companies prior to drilling. This all sounded confusing and was not really sinking in until he said, "You could make three or four times the money you would receive as a teacher.’’ That comment stuck, and I decided I was ready to become a landman. I discussed all this with Barb, my wife, and she agreed that I should definitely give this thing a try.

CHAPTER 2

The Beginning

About to launch my new career, I had some issues I needed to resolve. First and foremost, was the fact that I had already signed a contract to teach at a high school in South Dakota. It was the beginning of August, and school was to start in early September. I met with the superintendent and told him about the opportunity of becoming a landman, that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity,