Last month, Kenneth I. Danneberg was inducted into the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Hall of Fame, along with 39 other distinguished oilmen from the region, at a Denver gala hosted by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

The 1948 University of Kansas graduate has worked in the oil industry for more than 50 years in the U.S. and internationally. Mostly retired now, he still manages his private investments: U.S. production and two waterflood projects in Alberta, Canada, where he is a partner with Hunt Oil Co.

While in school, the Missouri native roughnecked for two summers for Phillips Petroleum Co., catching the oil bug early.

Later, he did post-graduate work at the U.S. Naval Academy in intelligence. He served in World War II in the Navy and in Korea as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, ending his service in 1953. He still finds international relations and intelligence a fascinating field.

In 1956, Danneberg was a founding partner with Henry (Hank) Zoller in various Zoller and Danneberg partnerships and operating companies; later he co-founded Zoller and Danneberg Exploration Ltd., which offered public drilling partnerships in the 1970s. They focused on the Julesburg, Paradox and Anadarko basins, and also owned Oil Creek Drilling Co., which operated eight rigs and had offices in Houston and Oklahoma City.

After Zoller sold his interests, Danneberg formed Premier Resources Ltd. in 1971, a public Denver E&P of which he was president and chairman for nearly 20 years. He sold it to German investors in 1988, but retained interests in about 100 properties in Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Alabama and Alberta.

After “retiring” in 1990, Danneberg consulted for an international shipping group and international banks, and assisted in the creation of companies in the Middle East. He was retained to do an oil and gas feasibility analysis of Turkey, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, leading to the formation of DanOil LLC, which operated a coalbed-methane project in the region.

In Denver, he has been active in Republican causes, and is an honorary division chief in the Denver Police Department, thanks to 20 years on the executive committee of The 100 Club. He also served on the board of The International Bank, based in Denver.

Investor How did you first get into the oil and gas business?

Danneberg I went to KU Law School for a year, but quit when I was offered a job buying royalties in North Dakota for a Tulsa company. This was when the Williston Basin was kicking off, in 1954. In 1955, I joined a small drilling company and in 1956, we formed Zoller and Danneberg partnerships.

Investor Would you join the oil industry if you could do it over?

Danneberg I don’t know, to be honest with you. When we were young, it was six and seven days a week. We just started hustling. I talk to these young people today and they have so much more technical background than we did at their age. It’s fantastic what they can do.

Investor What was the best advice you ever received?

Danneberg The greatest thing I’ve learned is that this business is always going to be cyclical. This is the third major downturn I’ve seen in 55 years. Everybody has to start thinking it’s going to settle down soon, but I don’t think natural gas will recover any time soon. I don’t know how we’ll ever get back to $10 gas until we figure out how to market it all. For oil I see a more solid market.

I’m on the board of a small Denver company called Blue Creek Energy Inc. that has coalbed properties in Wyoming, with financing out of New York. But the gas price is just killing them. They are netting less than $2. There are going to be a lot of horror stories out there and if you are sitting on a lot of cash, you’ll be able to buy at the bottom of the market.

Investor How did you get involved in Turkey?

Danneberg That was a project of Fred Hamilton, A.J. Miller and myself. We formed DanOil and took a big coalbed-methane license. But a lot of things went sour on us. We had done engineering and geological work, but the international situation wasn’t good. We were there around the time of the first Gulf War, in 1991, and someone set off a bomb near our office building in Ankara. We shut the company down in 2000.

We had drilled a couple of wells that had problems. There was not enough good equipment there and I had to bring a rig over from Houston. We didn’t have the right people. It turned out Turkey ended up being a place to drop a wad of money.

We did identify a lot of natural gas potential though, and that sort of set up Toreador Resources to go there later on. (Editor’s note: In recent months, Toreador has pulled out of Turkey after finding gas reserves on the Black Sea shelf. See Oil and Gas Investor, February 2008.)

Investor Do you still have contacts in the Middle East?

Danneberg I stay in touch with some former Turkish employees and government representatives. Uncle Sam tried to get me to go over to Kirkuk in 2008 to help set up the way they do farmouts in northern Iraq, but I said no. After all, I had just celebrated my 81st birthday. That’s going to be an interesting play, though. There are some fantastic opportunities, but you’ve got to be prepared for anything.