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October 11, 1999
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With our Company’s 20th anniversary coinciding with the end of the 20th century, I cannot help but reflect on how events that occurred early in the century led to the founding of Swift Energy Company. Some, of course, are the well-known major events defining the development of the oil and natural gas industry itself. While the first oil wells were drilled in the United States in the mid-1800s, it was not until the turn of the century that the importance of the industry began to be realized, the signal event being the simultaneous development of a petroleum-powered transportation industry. Dependent upon each other, these two industries continue to have a combined impact on the world’s populations that has to be counted among the most important in human history. A number of events that had a tremendous impact on the development of the oil and gas industry early in the 20th century occurred in Swift Energy’s home state of Texas. In the year 1901, the Spindletop well drilled near Beaumont, Texas, was the first major oil well outside the northeastern United States. It opened up a vast reservoir of oil and initiated the expansion of the oil-refining business. Nearly 30 years later, the discovery of a massive East Texas field assured Texas’ worldwide dominance of the industry for decades. But the early events that led directly to the founding of Swift Energy Company on October 11, 1979, all happened in the neighboring state of Oklahoma as three generations of the Swift family became an integral part of the oil and gas industry. The events began in 1905 with the discovery of the famous Glenn Pool reservoir near the city of Tulsa. At that time, my grandfather, George Sherman Swift, was a sharecropper in the area, but he immediately recognized how he and his oldest son Bert could make more money by using their teams of horses to help the oil men “rig up” for drilling. As other Oklahoma reservoirs were found during the next 20 or so years, George and all of his six sons, including my father Virgil Swift, abandoned the corn fields entirely and themselves became part of the oil field contingent. Thus it was that my siblings and I grew up in the oil and gas fields of Oklahoma, living at times on leases lighted all night by gas torches. Our father, who had been a seasoned driller by the age of 18 and eventually formed a small drilling company with his brothers, deemed it important to teach his teen-age sons the business. We never even considered another vocation. Dad remained vitally interested in our careers as my brother Virgil Neil and I worked for large oil and gas companies after receiving the engineering degrees he insisted would be necessary for our success. And he was most supportive when I decided to launch Swift Energy in 1979. Fifteen months later, in February 1981, my brother joined me at Swift Energy, soon to be followed by my son, Terry Earl Swift. That same year Swift Energy became a public company. Over the years, as the Company has been buffeted with cyclical oil and gas prices, we are oft reminded of the much tougher times endured by the family’s earlier generations and of the lessons learned from them. In particular, my brother and I have frequently invoked the teachings of our father and have considered him the patriarch of Swift Energy. In past years, we have published stories in a Company newsletter about our father and his partner in all matters, our mother Edith Jackson Swift. Because we received very favorable responses to these articles, it seems appropriate that on this 20th year of the Company, we should share them with those of you who visit our web site. Perhaps by reading them, you will come to understand why we have striven, insofar as possible, to follow the Swift family philosophy and traditions in the management of Swift Energy Company. The stories can be found by clicking on the links listed below this letter. We also refer you to a year-by-year history of Swift Energy Company and to a brief history of the oil and gas industry that we have recently published. We hope you enjoy reading each of them.
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Go to . . .The Swifts of Swift Energy, 1988 |
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This page was last updated on Saturday, February 08, 2003, at 07:49:36 PM. Copyright © 1994-2008 by Swift Energy Company. |
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