When he was 35, H.J. Gruy started his consulting firm, H.J. Gruy and Associates, in Dallas. It was 1950. Now, some 60 years later as chairman emeritus, he comes into the company’s Houston headquarters four mornings a week to check in, even though he retired from active engagement in the business about a decade ago. “I don’t do anything,” he says with a ready laugh. The fifth morning, he joins a current events discussion group where he lives.

But during the bulk of his career, Gruy was a busy man, traveling the world for clients to perform reserve estimates and write scientific papers.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University in 1937. He then joined Standard Oil Co. (Amoco) and later, Shell Oil Co. From 1945 to 1950, he worked for consulting firm DeGolyer and MacNaughton as a petroleum engineer and geologist, before going out on his own in 1950.

Gruy and Associates provides petroleum engineering, geological and geophysical expertise with an emphasis on reserve determination, economic forecasting and energy-investment analysis. The staff includes petroleum and chemical engineers, geologists, geophysicists and mathematicians. The firm has provided services on coalbed-methane opportunities, carbon sequestration and gas storage, and enhanced oil recovery.

Clients range from small E&Ps to majors, states, midstream firms, banks and other financial entities.

Gruy’s resume includes many industry honors. He was awarded the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal by the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 1983, one of SPE’s highest honors. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Among many other achievements, he was president of SPE and the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers. He also was recognized for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Engineering by the Texas Society of Professional Engineers. In 1988, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which he considers his highest honor.

Because he is a man with many stories to tell, Texas A&M filmed Gruy reminiscing recently, as part of its oral history archive of distinguished graduates. Gruy has repaid his alma mater as well, donating scholarship monies along the way. In December 2007, the Rae T. and H.J. Gruy Fountain was dedicated on campus. Eleven members of the Gruy family have attended A&M, including some cousins and most recently, his grandson, who graduated in 2005.

Investor: How did you get to A&M?

Gruy: I was a cowboy on my Uncle Joe’s ranch in South Texas. He had 60,000 acres in Duvall and Jim Hogg counties. We had about 3,000 cows and they had to be rounded up every 28 days, so I was on horseback all the time. But one day my uncle asked me, “When are you going to leave and go to college?” I told him I wanted to, but I didn’t have two dimes to rub together. So he said he’d pay if I’d go to A&M. I worked in the oilfields as a roustabout in the summers out in West Texas, so I chose petroleum engineering.

I first went to work for Standard Oil of Texas (Amoco) in South Texas and Louisiana.

Investor: You worked a lot on the East Texas Field?

Gruy: Yes, for Shell. Back then gas wasn’t very important, there was no market for it. But after the Big Inch Pipeline was built, it became important. So I wrote a paper on how to estimate gas reserves, and I got a lot of letters from engineers thanking me.

Investor: What advice do you give employees or young people coming into the business?

Gruy: I just tell ‘em to keep it straight and be honest. And, the government always likes to pick on the industry. You can’t do anything about it but be prepared. I have never taught at A&M, but I have lectured there, about the history of mineral ownership.

Investor: What kind of technical changes do you think are most remarkable?

Gruy: You live with big changes every day and they don’t seem so big when they are happening. These shales are very interesting. But some time ago I sold my properties in the Fort Worth Basin and didn’t retain the minerals. Back then you couldn’t get enough gas—you didn’t have the hydrofracing we have now.

I think natural gas is a great resource. I wrote a technical paper on how you estimate gas reserves and at that time it was used as a textbook at some colleges. I’ve done reserve estimates everywhere from China and Russia to Alaska. Before they nationalized the oil industry I went to Venezuela and Colombia a lot.

Investor: What was your biggest adventure?

Gruy: Probably Argentina. I went there to estimate oil and gas reserves for a New York financial firm.

Investor: Where was the most exotic place?

Gruy: Alaska. The Eskimos in that village had just caught a whale, their first in several years, so they had a 24-hour celebration, the nalukatuk (blanket toss). They wanted all the foreign men to do it, but I wouldn’t. A USGS man did, and he fell and broke his leg. We were there because the USGS had drilled a stratigraphic test and found natural gas, and they wanted to build a pipeline to Point Barrow, to replace fuel oil with gas. But the government wanted us to certify that there were enough significant gas reserves to warrant the pipeline.