To know Earl Swift was to respect him. Though he had an unassuming manner, his intellect and wit were apparent to everyone who knew him. His compassion and generosity were also obvious, making him a man not easily forgotten.

Here at Swift Energy, we can recall even more to admire about Earl Swift. We remember him as a strong leader who was consistently fair yet demanded the best we had to give. Always proud of the collective talents he had assembled, he encouraged us to use those talents not only for the good of the company and its shareholders, but also for each other, our families, and the communities in which the company operates. He considered the way we interacted with one another and others outside the company to be of high importance. He repeatedly reminded us that he had founded the company on family values he had been taught, and he expected those values to be adhered to, no matter how big a player we became in the oil and gas industry.

Earl learned those family values early, not only in the home but also while working for the small drilling company owned and operated by his uncles and father Virgil Swift. The Swift brothers put their sons to work in the Oklahoma oil fields as teenagers; thus Earl and his own brothers Virgil Neil and Kenneth Merle (his twin who predeceased him) gained practical field experience and the desire to learn more about the industry.

In 1951, Earl enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, graduating in 1955 with a petroleum engineering degree and an expertise in waiting tables to earn tuition. After a short stint in the U.S. Army, he began his career as a reservoir engineer at Humble Oil Company (a predecessor of ExxonMobil). Seven years later he joined the Michigan-Wisconsin Pipeline Company, whose primary business was natural gas pipeline transmission. With natural gas completely regulated by the federal government at the time, he had frequent interactions with the Federal Power Commission, pushing him into acquiring legal skills. He enrolled in night school classes at South Texas College of Law in Houston and received a law degree in 1968. In 1979, he left Michigan-Wisconsin, where he had become vice president of exploration and production.

His departure was prompted by his unquenchable desire to begin his own oil and gas company. It was a leap of faith. "When an entrepreneur starts a business from scratch with little financial resources," he later wrote, "he finds himself wearing all the hats. I was the engineer, the lawyer, the real estate negotiator, and the geologist." He succeeded despite his multiple responsibilities, and on October 11, 1979, he founded Swift Energy Company.

So that he would not compete with his former employer, Earl chose to begin the company’s operations with a conservative drilling program in West Virginia, where, under new regulations, gas from certain reservoirs in the Devonian shale could be sold at negotiated prices. With funds provided by a private drilling fund partnership of friends and colleagues, he launched a drilling program of 10 successful wells that affirmed his reservoir engineering skills and assured a future for Swift Energy Company.

After more than a year of drilling successes in West Virginia, Earl convinced his brother Virgil and his son Terry Earl to join Swift Energy in 1981. To do so, Virgil retired from Gulf Oil Corporation after 28 years in various managerial positions in drilling and production and Terry left his position as a reservoir engineer with H.J. Gruy and Associates, Inc. Virgil became chief operating officer and vice chairman of the board, and Earl retained his positions as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. Working as a management team, the three Swifts successfully expanded the company’s drilling program to several other states.

Soon, however, dramatic changes began to occur in the oil and gas industry because of an oversupply of natural gas and plunging oil and gas prices. Earl was the first to recognize that the survival of the company depended on a strategic shift in direction, and in 1983 he refocused the company’s activities from drilling activities to the acquisition and operation of oil and gas properties that were already producing. To fund the acquisitions, Swift Energy created and managed public income fund partnerships in which the company itself held interests. In its dual role as both operator and investor, the company enhanced production by improving the properties, sometimes with development drilling.

This strategy served the company well through the next decade, but Earl’s plan was to return to the search for oil and gas whenever the industry outlook improved. In anticipation of this, he encouraged the company to build technical teams whose skills could immediately be put to use in selecting and developing partnership properties and in identifying future exploration prospects. He was also keenly aware of the implications of the information age and urged the company to adapt to advanced technologies.