"1978 I started as a Geologist/Geophysicist with a Tulsa based company called Cities Service. They trained me, sent me to Denver but didn't pay well, so I moved on. Those who stayed for job security were mostly laid off when Oxy took over. They closed the Denver office. I bounced around the industry but did fine."

Interesting. We may have crossed paths.

1980 I started as a geophysicist with SOHIO in Denver after graduating from college. Then in the mid 1980's oil price crashed. Company closed the office in Denver and moved everybody to Texas. I abandoned ship and went to the "dark side", obtaining a graduate degree in Petroleum Engineering at a Texas University.

At SOHIO in Denver I worked with a very competent ex Cities Services geophysicist with the initials S.K.. He was a black belt in Karate and I used to work out with him after work. Toughest work outs I ever did. He went on to hold high positions at both EOG and Apache. You may know of him. We talked some about the Cities/OXY merger at the time it happened.

Following grad school 1987 hired on as an engineer with Amoco Production Company. Worked in a number of locations around the US, then transferred to international - Trinidad - Egypt - Indonesia. Wonderful experience for myself and family.

I distinctly remember being in Egypt in spring of 1998 when we shipped out a tanker of Suez crude and the price that was paid for that crude was less than $10/bbl. Things were looking pretty grim at that time. Later that same summer Sir John Browne CEO of BP took advantage of the low oil prices and purchased Amoco for $48 Billion, in what then was called "a merger of equals". For a while after the merger, the company was officially called BP Amoco. We former Amoco employee spoke under our breath that the logo said "BP Amoco" but the Amoco part was always silent. BP eventually dropped the Amoco name completely.
nytimes.com - British petroleum is buying amoco in 48.2 billion deal

John Browne pounced once again in 1999, almost bottom ticking the oil price, when BP announced they were purchasing Arco Petroleum for $27 Billion.
latimes.com - La xpm apr mn story

In 2001 I was transferred from Cairo to Jakarta to work on Arco's newly acquired oil and gas assets in Indonesia. Great fun as we had a great group of BP and former Arco and Amoco staff all working and playing together there. BP did a very good job of integrating the different corporate cultures.

Anyway, that's part of my story and perhaps explains my fascination with BRK's OXY deal and ongoing share purchases.