Gary Casswell, Pride International: In this business, it's all about the people you work with'

摘要

WHILE MOST 14-year-old boys in the '60s spent their summers riding bikes or reading comic books, Gary Casswell spent his summer vacations on drilling rigs learning how to make hole. Thanks to his father's job as a rig mechanic, Mr Casswell got an early start on everything from cleaning casing to mixing mud. "I loved it, couldn't get enough of it," recalled Mr Casswell, now vice president of Eastern Hemisphere operations for Pride International. By age 21, he had gone into Santa Fe Drilling's assistant driller training program in Saudi Arabia. Within a couple of years, he had been promoted from assistant driller to driller and was "drilling exploration wells in Rub' al Khali, which had nothing but giant sand dunes back in those days. It was a difficult place to work in, but it was all exploration drilling and a very exciting time," he said.