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Like so many other oilpatch VIPs, Kevin Meyers followed a serpentine career path which ultimately led him from his undergraduate days to a deluxe office chair in Calgary's high-rent district. "I won't tell you the journey was a planned one," he confirms with a laugh.
A math and chemistry major, the president of ConocoPhillips Canada initially set out to mould young minds. But an eye-opening stint as a student teacher at the elementary level convinced him to think again. He lacked the patience to tutor the kiddies. He also arrived at the lifelong conviction that "we don't pay our teachers nearly enough."
So the Pennsylvania-born Meyers went back to class himself, pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a campus which specializes in turning out high achievers.
One summer he went to work for the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and discovered fascinating new horizons in what he now terms the "O" business: the opportunity to seek, find, recover, develop and refine oil.
"ARCO wined and dined me during grad school. Besides, their research centre was in Dallas and I'd never been west of the Mississippi," recalls Meyers, who first punched in for his current job last December. "That was about the time Dallas was a big hit on television," he adds playfully. "The romance was too much to resist. Thanks to a summer job and Dallas on TV, I got into the game."
After those early days of processing seismic data and scrutinizing subsurfaces in ARCO's EStP Technology Centre, Meyers broadened his horizons, moving into reservoir engineering and field development following a 1987 transfer to Alaska. Eventually, he assumed control of ARCO's...