President Dick Jay called the meeting to order promptly at 12:31, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

 

 

Greeters: Tim Cortez and Cheryl Howard were our greeters today and Tim introduced the members who brought guests:

 

Gary Pehrson had us stand and led us in singing “Cowboy Joe” for UW winning their game.

 

Deb Theriault shared a document that was found while the team was going through the Rotary documents at Casper College, it was written in 1959 and started with the beginning of Rotary.

 

Long tie Rotarian Brenda Peters passed away and we held a moment of silence in her memory.

Lisa Scroggins let us know that one of her nieces is missing in Texas so asked for thoughts and prayers for her and the family.

 

Kevin Murphy nominated Grayson Buckingham who is in the WY National Guard and will be headed to the Mid-East in a few weeks to serve there for 8 months. He also nooinated our Exchange Student Francisco for being the NCHS Homecoming King, first one from a foreign country.

Deb Theriault nominated Lisa Scroggins for making the table card reminders to silence your cell phones while at Rotary.

Susan Griffith nominated Dan O’Dell for his work with the mental health issues in our community and with Club Iris.

Velma Corson nominated Jim Porter for his help in moving stuff to a storage unit for Insight Resources.

Dan O’Dell nominated Susan Thomas and Kodi Merschat for sponsoring the Club Iris upcoming event on November 30^th.

Anne Ladd nominated the Elbogen Foundation for endowing $625,000 endowment to reward the top educators every year.

Jim Porter nominated the guys that set up for our Rotary meeting every week.

 

Michael Howe, sponsored by Susan Thomas was inducted into the club today, welcome.

 

Bill Schilling announced that Thursday night at 6:00 at Casper College and other colleges around the State there will be a series of discussions on post-secondary attainment to help increase our numbers in the State. He also announced that at last spring district conference a former Rotary Peace Scholar spoke to us and due to this a resolution was passed to help increase the number of women in our clubs. This resolution has now passed the body of several Rotary Districts and has now been sent to Rotary International.

Lisa Scroggins announced that on the tables are notices about a recruitment contest that our club is holding and two prizes will be rewarded for recruiting new members, one they will get a PH society membership and a cool gift basket. When a guest applies and is accepted for membership you get your name in a hat and if they are 40 years old or younger or a female you get your name in for a second chance at the drawing. The contest ends May 1^st and is retroactive back to September.

Richard Schwahn announced that if anyone could give CiCi a ride to Cheyenne tomorrow it would be a huge help.

Jim Porter announced that he is in need of a few more volunteers to help at Casper College Library at 2:00 this afternoon to help with the archives.

Genevieve Lynch announced that this weekend will be the Toys For Tots at the East Side WalMart and invited us all to come donate toys.

 

Our student ended up going home sick from school so we had CiCi Christensen tell us a little more about her time with the exchange program as she is headed back home to Denmark this week.

 

President Elect John Griffith introduced Jimmy Goolsby who is here to give us an update on what has been happening in the petroleum industry in Wyoming. When he was here six years ago he predicted an upswing in petroleum production which happened until the price dropped and then it increased again then today the price dropped again to $51/ barrel. Most of the production is coming from the Powder River Basin in Converse County. He showed some great graphs of how the price has fluctuated over the years. Anciently the ocean was over Wyoming and all of the organic material deposited during that time is now what we are drilling as petroleum. We have lots of deposits of oil and gas around the State and some areas are better for accessing with the new technology due to the size of the Oil molecules in each formation. The newer technology allows them to affect the rocks in a manner that draws more of the oil out increasing the production from each well. The new fracturing procedures open up more zones per well which allows more fracturing which releases more of the oil molecules. They have doubled the number of zones. It is fascinating how they have dropped down in size to produce the higher volumes of oil with the lateral drilling and fracturing of the wells. He showed us the development of the process through the years to what the technology is today, fascinating improvements as the years progress. With this new technology we should be able to achieve energy independence as a country but only if the price per barrel increase to the point that production can continue to be profitable. With the new technology a lot less surface area is disturbed for production. A rig on one pad is able to drill more than one well thus not having to disturb more surface area. We are now producing more than we are importing and we are exporting some now but this will not continue with the price that we have today. The key to the Industry producing and being profitable is to have higher prices per barrel in order to keep Wyoming working otherwise we will become more dependent on importing foreign oil. 

 

President Dick Jay concluded the meeting at 1:31 letting us know that next week we will be at the Events Center and our speaker will be our very own exchange student Francisco Deleauca speaking about his home country of Argentina.

 

“Be the Inspiration”