James C. “JC” Anderson, BSPE ‘54
James Carl Anderson personifies the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a spirit that has carried him from the plains of his native Nebraska to the pinnacles of success in the international oil and natural gas industry.
Anderson’s remarkable career—initially as an Amoco Petroleum Corporation engineer executive in the United States and Canada, and ultimately as Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of two energy exploration and development firms in his adopted home of Alberta, Canada—was founded on his petroleum engineering education at UT PGE.
Following graduation with his BSPE degree in 1954, he worked briefly as a roustabout for Amoco in West Texas, then spent two years in military service with U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence. He returned to Amoco in 1956, launching his business career. Over the next dozen years, he worked as a petroleum engineer in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado and Canada, rising in 1966 to the post of chief engineer for Canada at Amoco.
In 1968 he founded Anderson Exploration, Ltd., an oil and gas exploration and production company based in Calgary, Alberta. For more than 30 years, he served as the firm’s Chairman and CEO. In 1970 Anderson (sole owner at the time) was responsible for the discovery of the huge Dunvegan Gas Field in northern Alberta, which has produced over one trillion cubic feet of gas and is expected to produce for years to come.
With Dunvegan, a cornerstone property, Anderson Exploration grew steadily through both development and acquisitions to become Canada’s fifth largest natural gas producer, with operations ranging from the Beaufort Sea to Manitoba. It went public in Canada in 1988, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001. That same year, it sold for $4.6 billion to U.S. based Devon Energy.
Ever the entrepreneur and an indefatigable engineer, Anderson established a new entity, Anderson Energy, a year later. He presently serves as Chairman of this latest venture. He was named Prairies Canada Master Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996, and received the 2000 Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists’ Stanley Slipper Award for outstanding petroleum exploration. Today, Anderson enjoys spending time with his family on his ranch south of Calgary. He keeps strong his ties to UT PGE through supporting scholarships for outstanding transfer students from Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Polytechnic to complete a petroleum engineering degree at UT PGE.
