Think back to what you were doing in October 1999. Maybe you were with a different company (or maybe the same company before it merged with another company and changed its name). Maybe you were in college eyeing a future in oil and gas. Maybe you were tired of your career in oil and gas and eyeing retirement.

Here at Hart, we were celebrating the launch of a new publication, E&P.

As things have changed in your careers, they’ve also changed in our magazine. That first issue was 212 pages. We had 13 editors based in Houston and the UK.

We ran an interview with Sir John Browne of BP and an article about Muammar Qadhafi of Libya. We were experimenting with our layout, meaning that my inaugural exploration column (about the non-exclusive seismic market “biting the hands that fed it”) ran on page 135.

E&P was launched as a response to changing market conditions. Hart had been successful as a niche player, offering small titles that appealed to a select group. But as our advertisers began to merge, we found we had five or six different sales people calling on the same beleaguered ad buyer. So we melded three titles — Hart’s Oil and Gas World, our domestic independent publication; Petroleum Engineer International, our technical title; and Euroil, our European publication — to
form E&P.

Much has changed over the past 10 years. Hart was then owned by Phillips Publishing; since then we’ve gone through ownership by Chemical Week, followed by a managed buyout. Of the original magazine staffers, only two remain — my publisher, Russell Laas, and me. Our magazines are a bit smaller than they were in 1999 and 2000.

But this is not a “rats from a sinking ship” story. The people who’ve been here and then left have, by and large, left for even better opportunities and with no hard feelings. The smaller magazines are partly a result of fewer ad sales, but also are due to more focused and pertinent editorial. And in addition to continually offering a worthwhile monthly read, we’ve expanded our offerings to include special supplements, conferences, Web casts, and original stories uploaded daily on our Web site.

Again the publishing industry is facing change, and this time it’s the Internet that’s to thank, or to blame. Younger people want their news packaged differently from older people, and those of us who have been nudged into middle age over the past 10 years are struggling to keep up with all of the new avenues for disseminating information.

But we will keep up. These past 10 years have, for me, been the most professionally rewarding years of my entire career. I’ve made a lot of great friends, and I feel like I’ve helped establish a magazine that’s a force to be reckoned with in the energy industry. I have great pride of ownership for this franchise. And I hope that 10 years from now, they’re still letting me crank out a column from time to time. I always have a lot to say.

I’ll try not to rant too much.