Tale of two oilmen—How Dwayne Taylor and Will Farmer turned the nation’s focus to energy independenc

One of Ed Lauer’s first dates with Heather Taylor was at a statewide New Mexico event involving thousands of people, led by her father, Lucky Services founder and owner Dwayne Taylor. At that point, Lauer knew this a very special family. So much so that Ed married Heather and, after spending a few years chasing a culinary career dream, became CFO of Lucky Services. Here’s the story: In 1997, when oil prices bottomed at about $9 per barrel, Ed and Heather met in a statistics class at Texas Tech. Ed relates that he, being from Tennessee, knew next to nothing about the oil business at that time. He was about to get an intense education. “I remember her going home to Hobbs (NM) to make posters for the rally. She said, ‘I have to go home, my dad’s doing this big deal,’” Ed says. The “big deal” was a rally hosted by Concerned Citizens for Energy, a support and lobbying group for small energy companies, founded by Dwayne Taylor and Will Farmer.

The movement had started earlier with a rally in Dwayne’s hometown of Hobbs, with about 1,600-1,700 participants. The “big deal” Heather was making signs for was meeting number two, this time in Santa Fe. “The next thing I know,” Ed continues, “we’re going to Santa Fe…. We get there, and there’s a couple of thousand people outside the roundhouse! (where the legislature meets)” Dwayne notes that it involved a joint session of the New Mexico State Legislature and a large number of supporters both inside and outside the capitol building Understandably, Ed recalls, “It was an eye opening experience. It was the first time I really realized what it really meant to Dwayne and to the entire area—the whole community rallied around this event.” The movement culminated with a visit to the Roosevelt Room at the White House, where Dwayne and the others met with Energy Secretary and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and other dignitaries to present their case. Simultaneously, Dwayne was spending 14 hours a day or more running Lucky Services. “It was either that (lead Concerned Citizens) or go out of business,” he says. The group corrected many of the lies being told by oil’s opponents, showing government officials how valuable it is to the tax base and much more. When the Concerned Citizens group came up before the New Mexico legislature, he recalls the legislators were amazed and “stood at attention” figuratively, at what the group had to say. After that, “It seemed like everything just turned around,” he said. In tough times, persistence like Dwayne’s is the key to much success. And burritos. Persistence and burritos. Read the tale of Chad Taylor and the Burrito Challenge in the next issue of Oil and Gas The Industry.