Woodward’s Tri-State Oil and Gas Convention to Kick Off Thursday

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The 5th annual Tri-State Oil and Gas Convention is close at hand in Woodward and even chairman Junior Long is surprised it is a sell-out, considering what’s happened to the oil and gas industry over the past year.

“It does a little bit,” he admitted in an interview with OK Energy Today. “But the activity in the Mississippi in south Woodward County and west Dewey County and the STACK is on the increase.”

That’s why the Thursday, Aug. 11 show is a sell-out for exhibitors. All 45 slots are sold out as well as the Friday fund-raising golf tournament.

“But really, the man that we honor here is the reason a lot of people come back. They come back to pay tribute to Bobby Joe Cudd and his family.”

Cudd was the legendary oilman who died eleven years ago at the age of 75. He started fighting oil well fires in 1957 and in 1977 formed Pressure Control Inc., traveling the world fighting fires. A year after his retirement in 1999, he formed Bobby Joe Cudd Co. Fishing and Rental Tools and two years after that, formed Bobcat Pressure Control, Inc.

As for the creation of the show, that happened in 2010 but Long says he and others who came up with the plan had to wait until 2012 to have a facility to hold it.

“Just didn’t have any other facilities to house a show this size so we held the inaugural show in 2012.”

Long was on his way back from a Marginal Well Show in Oklahoma City when he came up with the idea.

“I realized there were no crude shows between Oklahoma City and Denver that dealt with exploration, production and drilling,” he explained. “Woodward is a service and production and drilling hub for northwest Oklahoma and really the tri-state area. I thought Woodward would be a good fit for this event.”

The show draws from the Texas Panhandle, central and northwest Oklahoma and southwest Kansas.

The show begins Thursday morning at 10 a.m. with an energy headline panel featuring Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy, Sen. A.J. Griffin of Guthrie and Rep. Mike Sanders of Kingfisher.

Former Dallas Cowboys star Cliff Harris will speak at mid-morning. He’s now President of Energy Transfer Group LLC in Dallas. The afternoon session, starting at 1:30 p.m. will feature Scott Goodwin Jr., Vice President of Operations for FourPoint Energy LLC, the Colorado company that earlier this year completed a $385 million purchase of Chesapeake Energy’s remaining Western Anadarko Basin oil and gas assets. The purchase included nearly 3,500 producing wells in the Granite Wash, Missourian Wash, Upper and Lower Cleveland and Tonkawa formations on 473,000 net acres in 15 counties in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.

Listen to Tri-State Energy show chairman Junior Long in interview with Jerry Bohnen.