The Legend of Rowan [Hardcover]

Jeffrey L. Rodengen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1998

THE LEGEND OF ROWAN by Jeffrey L. Rodengen

Beginning with a small land-based steam rig powered by two 45-horsepower boilers, Arch and Charlie Rowan founded a company that has since become one of the premier drilling, rig construction and aviation companies in the oil industry. Today, Rowan owns and operates the mobile offshore drilling units known as the gorillas-class rigs, the largest in the world standing at more than 560 feet.

Throughout its 75 years, Rowan has struggled against stormy climates - both natures and the cyclical economics tendency of the oil and gas industry. From the heat of Louisianas marshes to the frigid cold of Alaskas North Slope, Rowanites overcame the elements to extract oil and gas from an uncooperative ground. They continue to challenge the oceans violence and its wind-driven waves to supply the worlds energy needs.

Along the way, Rowan has become a world-class aviation and construction company. The company acquired ERA, which brought Alaskan pioneer Carl Brady into the fold, and LeTourneau, builder of the Gorilla drilling rigs as well as its famous earth-moving equipment. Each acquisition has helped Rowan in its quest for hydrocarbons.

As the life blood of civilization, oil is a commodity affected by world politics, and Rowans fortunes have a followed the roller coaster of international relations. Under Chairman and CEO Bob Palmer, the company gambled heavily during uncertain times when oil prices plummeted amid worldwide recession. Rowan shook off the despair that gripped its industry to emerge with record revenues, and world-class equipment and personnel. The challenge is constant, however. Future company leaders, brought up in Rowans family-like culture, must face the reality of the technical, financial and political hurdles their predecessors have conquered.

In this comprehensive work, industrial historian and author Jeffrey L. Rodengen tells the fascinating story of The Legend of Rowan.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

JEFFREY L. RODENGEN AUTHOR, COLUMNIST, HISTORIAN

Jeff was born in Minneapolis, MN, and grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, accounting for an early interest in boating. After a brief tenure as the Assistant Director of the Naval and Underseas Museum in Newport, RI, Jeff migrated to Southern California, beginning a remarkable 15-year career as a writer, producer and director in Hollywood. Attending six colleges and universities along the way, Jeff earned degrees in psychology and post-graduate degrees in engineering. Having written, produced or directed nearly 30 films, network television specials (six for Arnold Schwarzenegger), Las Vegas revues and Broadway productions, Jeff moved to Florida in the early 1980s to write about the evolution of American technology and industry.

He became the editor of Southern Star magazine, then Florida's largest circulation magazine. To reach an even broader audience, Jeff began to syndicate his business, technology and industrial history columns, ultimately reaching nearly two million readers a month. His specialties include advanced technology, American industrial history, contemporary business strategies, corporate biography, corporate ethics and principles of business leadership.

Author of hundreds of technical and general interest articles, he is the author of 23 books on American technology and industry. Among his best-selling works are: The Legend of Chris Craft, Evinrude-Johnson and The Legend of OMC; Iron Fist: The Lives of Carl Kiekhaefer, which reached 14th on national best-seller lists in the highly competitive business book category, and Serving The Silent Service: The Legend of Electric Boat, which chronicles the evolution of the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, from their earliest electric launches to today's nuclear submarine fleet. During one busy week, he signed over 8,500 volumes of his best-seller in three cities in four days.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: Write Stuff Syndicate (October 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945903456
• ISBN-13: 978-0945903451
• Product Dimensions: 14 x 9.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #951,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Gorillas on the Shelf, Bush Pilots, and Family Values, November 7, 2000

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This review is from: The Legend of Rowan (Hardcover)

This book is the authorized history of the Rowan Companies over its first 75 years. Started by two entrepreneurial brothers (Arch and Charlie Rowan) in the Texas oil fields, the firm quickly specialized in providing difficult contract drilling. The firm was an early pioneer in such specialties as underwater drilling, deep drilling, and cold weather drilling. Its strategic knowledge strengths were husbanded by developing and maintaining outstanding rig crews and specialized rigs, even when industry conditions made this expensive to keep the resources on the shelf. In the past two decades the company has added rig building and resupply capabilities through acquisitions to enhance its strengths in deep water drilling. The book is enlivened by a large number of dramatic and interesting photographs of drilling. You also get a good sense of the families of the founders and their successors from the text and photographs. There is a tremendous continuity in the company's leadership that makes this book as much about the leaders and their families as about the company.

Rowan is a classic entrepreneurial company, seeking out opportunity to the ends of the earth and beng prepared to manage the risks involved. Contract drillers were among the first smaller American companies to go truly global, as the search for hydrocarbons expanded soon after World War II. Contract drillers have special challenges, because they have to ship their rigs to the new drilling sites, whether those be in the North Sea, the Arabian peninsula, Indonesia, or the offshore in the north slope of Alaska. The company was successful with all of these challenges and has enjoyed an enviable safety record.

Today, in a high petroleum price market, Rowan prospers due to its specialization in deep water drilling with its jack-up Gorilla-class rigs, which can search out hydrocarbons in several hundred feet of water during severe storms. But that wasn't always the case. During low-price periods in the 1980s and 1990s, Rowan sustained large losses from low rental rates and idle rigs kept fully staffed. This was in keeping with the company's mission to be ready to provide outstanding service of the most difficult sorts whenever customers demanded it. No one can predict oil prices, so it's always a "wait and see" game. During the 1990s, air operations became critical to the company's survival. Yet with low prices for oil, Rowan took a strategic step forward by acquiring its preferred offshore rig maker, so that innovation in new rigs could continue. A new version of the largest jack-up offshore rigs soon emerged that are now plumbing further onto the continental shelves. Rowan has played this volatile price market well, going from a single rig to over a billion dollar a year company in 75 years. Internet entrepreneurs can learn important lessons from this example about the need to specialize, treat its customers and employees well, and to wait out hard times.

The main weakness of this book is that is does not do enough to place Rowan in context relative to other contract drillers. This could have been done through interviews with customers, or by profiling the accomplishments of competitors. Almost nothing was included from either perspective. I graded the book down one star for this glaring omission.

In addition to the interesting business history in the book, you will enjoy the stories about how business is conducted. I was especially interested in the air operations in Alaska (which were acquired from their founders) and the difficulties of drilling there. Technical details of how Gorilla-class rigs "walk" out of the shipyard were also of interest.

After you have finished enjoying the book, I suggest that you think about something that needs to be done in your family that is now difficult and undesirable. How can it be made easier and more pleasant? By taking this problem-solving approach, you can improve your family's life. If you involve everyone in the family in the quest, you can have fun together solving the problem as well as adding to everyone's skills in the process.

Enjoy a good challenge!