Handbook of Oil Industry Terms & Phrases

Updated after two decades, the new 6th Edition of the Handbook of Oil Industry Terms & Phrases combines a father/son author team whose experience in the petroleum industry spans more than 75 years. R. Dobie Langenkamp offers a fresh set of terms and phrases introduced to the industry over the past 20 years, and still includes many historical references from the early days of the industry. The new edition adds more than 500 new terms and reflects the growth of oil exploration overseas, the emergence of national oil companies, and increased complexity of deal making.

About the Author: Robert D. "Bob" Langenkamp was born in the Cushing, Oklahoma, field in 1913, where his father worked as a pipeline engineer. Cushing was then the largest field in the world. His first job was as a roughneck on a drilling rig in West Texas. In the next 25 years he worked as a field mechanic, powder monkey, line walker, oil telegrapher, pipeliner, and guager. As such he experienced firsthand the numerous new technological developments that modernized the industry. Following his field experience, Langenkamp moved to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where he worked in the Gulf Oil Company headquarters as editor of the Orange Disc," the company's magazine and sometimes lectured on oil and gas matters. Upon retirement after 41 years in the oil industry, Langenkamp continued to track the progress of the industry, and in 1974 compiled the Handbook of Industry Terms and Phrases" and The Illustrated Petroleum Reference Dictionary." The former more than doubled in length and eventually went through five editions and the latter through four before Langenkamp's death in 2003 at 90 years of age. R. Dobie Langenkamp, Robert's son, was born in 1936 and also raised in the oil patch of Oklahoma. Both of his grandfathers were Oklahoma pioneers in the 1920s in oil development. The younger Langenkamp worked as an oilfield roustabout, a pump station operator, and a refinery laborer while he was attending school. After Stanford and Harvard Law School he practiced oil and gas law in Oklahoma and twice was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oil and Gas for the Department of Energy, where one of his responsibilities was to supervise the Naval Petroleum Reserve. After service in the government he founded and ran his own small independent oil and gas exploration company for 15 years. Later he was appointed Professor of Energy and Director of the National Energy Law and Policy Institute at Tulsa University Law School. Dobie Langenkamp has also served as energy consultant for the State Department and Department of Energy in Kazakhstan, the Republic of Georgia, Sao Tome, and Iraq. He has lectured on international oil and gas law in Ghana, Angola, Uganda, Egypt, and Argentina. He currently lives in Tulsa and writes, lectures, and consults on energy issues.