Published in The Treasure State Journal, 2012:The voice sounds friendly, casual, and maybe even laidback as Robert Nance reflects on his 50-plus years in the petroleum industry. With a Texas twang still in his speech despite decades spent far from his old home state, he expresses no regrets about the choices he made over the years.
“You know, I don’t know that I would have done anything any different,” he says. “Life’s been awfully good to me. I’ve been blessed and it seems to have worked out. I think it’s been a terrific experience and a terrific career.”
The affable founder of Nance Petroleum and Nance Resources is speaking from the Billings home he and his wife, Penni, built circa 1980. A strong Montana wind whirrs outside, and canine buddy Duke is nearby.
Nance, who turned 76 in July, started his oil odyssey in 1959 when he graduated from Southern Methodist University with a degree in geology.
He claims that “I really didn’t know that I had any long-term aspirations because, at the time, the job market for entry-level people in the business was pretty grim. I guess my aspiration was just to get a job and earn a living.”
Nance was raised an only child by his mother and grandmother in Dallas. He was enrolled at the University of Texas for a couple of years before going to SMU, and interned at DeGolyer & MacNaughton, the nation's largest and most prestigious petroleum consulting firm, while attending SMU.
After graduation, he continued his work at D&M for about a year and then worked for another consulting firm, Oliver and West. Nance counts its founding partners, Fred Oliver and Frank West, as key mentors in that formative period of his career.
Nance moved to Denver in 1963 and opened an office for Oliver and West. His primary duties were Federal Power Commission work, as well as evaluating drilling opportunities for clients. He returned to Dallas in 1964.
It was through his work with Oliver and West that Nance gained his first insights into the opportunities in Montana petroleum. One client “who I worked with particularly closely” had acquired properties in Montana, he says.
In 1966, after being "exposed somewhat to the northern Rockies,” he continues, “I kinda drew the straw to come up to Billings to manage a drilling program which was a farm-out from a major company.”
He moved back to Dallas after the drilling was done, but “really missed” Montana. “I liked what I saw and liked the people, and thought there was some real opportunity here. So Penni and I decided to move back to Billings.”
In 1969, 10 years after from SMU, he set up shop in Billings with a consulting firm called Robert L. Nance and Associates, the predecessor to Nance Petroleum Corporation.
“The business that I knew was consulting,” he relates. “And actually, if you want to be a consultant, you pretty well have to do your own thing unless you want to be with a larger firm. There was no reason why I couldn’t do just as well on my own as I could with somebody else.”
Armed with a list of old contacts from his work with Oliver and West, he had a base for his consulting business. It helped, he adds, that there weren’t many similar firms in the area at the time. Also, Frank West (of Oliver and West) became president of Hanover Petroleum Corporation – which Nance says made Hanover “kind of a ready-made client for us.”
Over time, Nance’s business evolved from evaluating properties’ oil prospects to drilling wells of its own. “We started building a staff and eventually became a small oil company on our own,” he says.
There were some lean times for Nance’s company, but some big corporations’ withdrawal from Montana and northern Rockies sites presented opportunities for the independent business to expand. In particular, he notes, “Chevron had some properties that they were selling. Not knowing exactly how it was going to happen, I committed to buy those producing properties.”
To help the growth process move along, Nance brought in a new partner: Denver-headquartered St. Mary Land and Exploration Company, a corporation with a history that dates back to 1900 when a Minnesota mining mogul and partners acquired 17,700 acres in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
The Nance-St. Mary partnership was forged in 1991. Nance describes St. Mary as “terrific partners.” The feeling was, apparently, mutual. St. Mary, an NYSE-listed corporation which now operates as SM Energy, purchased Nance Petroleum in 1999 as a wholly owned subsidiary. Nance captained the subsidiary’s operations as its President and CEO, managed the Rocky Mountains region for St. Mary, was a St. Mary Vice-President, and sat on St. Mary’s board of directors for a few years.
Nance’s involvement in the Montana Petroleum Association has included serving on its board. He has been more involved, however, at the national level with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a cooperating association with the MPA. He served in many leadership positions with the IPAA, including the Executive, the Land & Royalty committee (which he chaired), and the Crude Oil and Natural Gas committees.
While still associated with the IPAA, Nance served as chairman of the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council, a partnership between industry and the Department of Energy. He was also a member of the National Petroleum Council in 1992-94.
The IPAA presented him with its Chief Roughneck Award in 2002. The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States gave him its Wildcatter Lifetime Achievement Award a few years earlier. He was inducted into the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Hall of Fame in 2004.
Nance says the biggest change he has seen in the industry is in technology, for both exploration and production. “The advancement in technology in the last five years or so has just absolutely blown me away, and it changes daily.
“Technology has allowed producers in the U.S. and Canada to, I think, reinvent their companies and probably extend the life of their companies I-don’t-know-how-many-fold. Some of the companies would not be in business today if it weren’t for the innovations of horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracking and improved seismic techniques and that sort of thing. Even in the time since I’ve left, it’s just been overwhelming.”
Nance retired from his executive positions in St. Mary and Nance Petroleum in 2008. St. Mary President Tony Best formally thanked him in a news release for all the work he did for the corporation and the industry.
“His leadership and dedication at Nance Petroleum have been instrumental in building St. Mary into the company that it is today,” Best declared. “He is a towering figure in the Rockies oil and gas community, and we wish him all the best in the future.”
Nowadays, Nance is an advisor to Nance Resources Inc., a Billings-based oil exploration and production company he co-founded in 2008. His daughter, Amy Nance Cebull, is Vice-President; son-in-law Brian Cebull (Past President of the Montana Petroleum Association) is President.
His involvement in the petroleum industry has waned considerably in recent years as he focuses on such leisure pursuits as gardening, skiing, fishing, and enjoying retirement with Penni. “We don’t do a lot of travelling,” he adds. “My wife and I are pretty much homebodies, and we always have been. And … um … I don’t know. I don’t know what I do with my days, but I sure enjoy doing it!”
Besides the aforementioned daughter and son-in-law, and that couple’s daughter Dana and son Clay, he and Penni have a son, Scott, in California. Bob also has another daughter, Cathy, from a previous marriage, who lives in New York.
“My biggest blessing is my family,” he remarks. “We have a great family. We have a lot of things in common. And in particular Amy and Brian, they’re right here with us. They live across the fence from us. And our grandchildren just have been a blessing that everybody should be able to experience.
“My health and my family’s health have been good, and we’ve had a fair amount of success. We’re not worried that we will be bag people. All aspects of our life have been a very blessed time.”
He doesn’t hesitate to agree that the oil business has been very good to him. “It’s a lot of fun, has been a lot of fun. Met some terrific people through the years, particularly through the IPAA. I’ve been blessed with many awards, some of the highest awards an independent can get.
“The oil business has treated me terrifically. It’s been some real ups and downs. I can’t say it hasn’t been, because when prices fell in ’86 we had to lay off quite a few people. Trying to build that back later was a challenge, but we did it. There have been some real heartaches, but there has been more elation than sadness.”
Asked to describe the experience in a few words, he replies: “It’s been a great ride.”
