Terrell, William

This is an oral history interview with William Terrell conducted as part of the Houston History Project. William Terrell was born in 1943, in Kilgore, Texas, and is a third generation oilfield worker. His father worked as a motorman for Gulf Oil and moved the family around southern Louisiana when Mr. Terrell was an adolescent. After graduating high school in Kilgore; he went on to several colleges studying geology and was attending graduate school at Texas Christian University (TCU) when he joined a seismic crew for National Geophysical. Soon after in 1966 he hired on with Gulf in New Orleans as a geologist; he spend most of the next 15 years working in western Africa (Angola, Gabon, Zaire, Nigeria). Back in the States, he worked out of Houston and soon got into domestic exploration work; however, five years later, when Chevron bought out Gulf (1985) he was sent to a new job in London. In 1990 he requested a transfer and moved to Lafayette where he worked until he retired in 1998; he continues to work now and then for friends on a consultancy basis. During the interview he discusses the distinction between geophysicists and geologists, describes Gulf's work in Angola in the late 1960s and the other African countries, discusses moving with his family overseas, and talks about independent geologists