As we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the time is ripe to reflect on the important role energy has played in undergirding the U.S.’s growth into the free and prosperous nation we enjoy today. From coal to oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy, reliable energy has enabled our population to expand across our vast territory, build some of the most advanced industrial and technological sectors in the world, and defeat evil ideologies in wartime.
Of course, these achievements don’t occur in a vacuum. Without the innovative and courageous mindsets of entrepreneurs, assisted by a political system largely amenable to growing wealth, our resources would remain in the ground as they have for millions of years.
To honor those who have taken tremendous steps toward improving our energy systems, IER will host a short series of articles featuring “energy pioneers” — bringing attention to figures who deserve more recognition for how they have reshaped the energy landscape and improved our lives with innovations we use every day. The first of these pioneers is Ray Clinton Fish, known as “Mr. Pipeliner” and the founder of the Ray C. Fish Foundation.
Information for this article primarily derives from IER Founder and CEO Robert L. Bradley Jr.’s book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, which profiles Fish in Chapter 11.
Born in Rhode Island in 1902, Fish moved to Utah at age 21 to work in a coal mine, later leaving to work at the Signal Hill oil field in California. During this time, Fish studied engineering for three semesters at the University of Southern California before taking a job at the General Petroleum Corporation, an oil drilling and refining company that at one point controlled 23,000 acres of California oil fields and ran four refineries. Working at General Petroleum’s Los Angeles refinery, Fish earned enough to invest in three small refineries in 1926; however, he fell victim to gasoline price wars in the region and lost his entire investment.
Fish shifted his focus from investing to engineering. He supervised the construction of gas-liquids plants and oil refineries for J.A. Campbell in Los Angeles before he was loaned out to assist with the construction of the Stearns-Roger Manufacturing Company’s natural gas processing plant in Alto, Louisiana. The company was an industry leader in the design and manufacture of industrial projects. Bringing the project back on schedule, Fish was promoted to operating manager of Stearns-Roger’s entire oil and gas division. In this role, “Mr. Pipeliner was right where he needed to be,” as northern Louisiana was a center for the growing natural gas industry. The most significant project he worked on involved designing a large-diameter line to bring gas from the Texas Gulf to New York City in the late 1930s.
Amid World War II, Fish took a leave of absence from Stearns-Roger to join Tennessee Gas as vice president and director, where he oversaw the completion of a 1,265-mile pipeline completed in less than a year to supply 200 MMcf/d of natural gas from Texas to Appalachia, a center of wartime manufacturing. This project was a watershed moment for the industry. According to Bradley, “The Tennessee Gas Transmission project not only broke a decade-long dry spell in the long-line gas-transmission industry, but also was the start of the postwar boom in interstate pipelines.”
Fish’s success as a manager of large natural gas projects and a low bonus check upon his return to Stearns-Roger encouraged Fish to start his own company in 1946, the Fish Engineering Corporation. Starting with four of Fish’s former Stearns-Roger colleagues each heading one of its divisions — which were pipelines, oil refineries, gas liquids facilities, and chemical/petrochemical plants — it earned a contract to design, engineer, build, and test the 1,840 mile Transcontinental Gas Pipeline (the longest in the world), which delivered 340 MMcf/d from the Gulf Coast to the Mid-Atlantic seaboard and up to New York City beginning in early 1951.
In the same year, Fish Engineering completed the Texas-Illinois Natural Gas Pipeline, a 1,300-mile, $160 million project. In 1956, it completed the 1,500-mile, $225 million Pacific Northwest Pipeline to transport natural gas from New Mexico’s San Juan basin, a project later purchased by El Paso Natural Gas for $152 million and the assumption of debt, doubling Fish Engineering investors’ stock.
Advertising that “nothing was too difficult or too far,” Fish Engineering sought overseas contracts and opportunities to innovate. Completed in 1960, the company built twin 1,100-mile gas pipelines and a 900-mile petroleum products line from the Bolivia-Argentina border to population and industrial centers near Buenos Aires. At home and abroad, according to Bradley, “New processes were engineered, and patents were developed that were the marks of a company not only following the tried and true but also innovating to win contracts and earn performance bonuses.
As president of the Fish Engineering Corporation, Fish built a large and profitable company. Employment reached a high of 1,250 and, in 1956, it earned $290 million in revenue (a multibillion-dollar sum today), thanks to a Honolulu oil refinery, carbon black plant in Oklahoma, dehydration plant in Louisiana, desulfurization plant in West Texas, and barge-mounted compressor station near New Orleans, alongside its pipelines. He also built a strong business culture, avoiding the principal-agent problem by having principals and managers share in the company’s profits through promoter stock on a project-by-project basis, while promoting tenets of salesmanship among his employees. As Bradley explains, ten years after the company was founded, it “was doing just what Ray Fish wanted it to do—make its top people wealthy for a job well done.”
Fish envisioned building even more, including a project to bring natural gas from French West Africa to Spain, France, and Britain. Unfortunately, in 1962, his life was cut short due to heart failure, just four months shy of his 61st birthday. Fish Engineering continued under a new team before it was sold to a German company in 1995.
In his illustrious career, Ray Fish used his business acumen and engineering prowess to prove that private enterprise can provide the energy infrastructure we need. With a keen eye toward finding profit opportunities, Fish empowered his employees at all levels and incentivized them to improve at the margins. This philosophy enabled Fish Engineering to develop projects ranging from pipelines to refineries, benefiting consumers through lower energy costs and higher-quality products. Fish played no small role in the growth of natural gas in electricity generation, which rose from 45 billion kilowatt hours (13%) in 1950 to 169 billion kilowatt hours (21%) in 1961, displacing coal gas in cities.
Today, natural gas contributes to 1,802 billion kilowatt hours (43%) of electricity generation, proving the extent to which Fish’s achievements in building pipelines trailblazed a future of more power with lower emissions. For bringing energy products to millions of Americans while proving that we don’t need the government to build energy infrastructure, Ray C. Fish deserves the title of energy pioneer.
