Cary Moomjian: A decorated career spanning a half-century, driven by service, draws to an end

By Stephen Whitfield, Senior Editor

Over his 50 years in the oil and gas industry, Cary Moomjian’s career has taken him to some interesting places. As chief in-house counsel for two major drilling contractors, he has overseen billion-dollar mergers. Early in his career, he helped formulate a standard drilling contract for Venezuela following nationalization of the oil industry in the 1970s. He also oversaw the contracts for a $3.5 billion newbuild shipyard rig construction program for Ensco in the mid-2000s. 

He has been active with IADC throughout his career. He has served as Chairman of the IADC Contracts Committee for over a decade and was Chairman of the IADC/SPE Drilling Conference in 2002. His work with the association was so significant that he was named IADC Contractor of the Year in 1996, nearly three decades prior to his planned retirement from the industry later this year. 

As he says, “It was kind of odd to receive that award mid-career, and not at the twilight of my career. I’m still in the business over a quarter century later! Still, the IADC Contractor of the Year award was one of the highlights of my career. It was such a privilege and an honor to be recognized by my peers.” 

Now, as he comes toward the end of a celebrated career, he is ready to devote more time to other aspects of life: “I’ve got a third grandson due, and I’ll be 78 in June. It’s time to enjoy life outside of the industry.” 

Mr Moomjian’s early years did not suggest that of a man who would devote decades of his life to oil and gas. He grew up in Hollywood, Calif., in the 1950s and ‘60s, at the height of Tinseltown’s Golden Age. In fact, his family lived in the same house in Hollywood for over 40 years, and he attended Hollywood High School. His uncle, Hank Moonjean, worked on the production side of the film industry on a number of classic films, including “Jailhouse Rock,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Smokey and the Bandit.” 

Despite that connection to the film industry, Mr Moomjian had no desire to join it. Instead, he aspired to be a lawyer. Following high school graduation in 1965, he entered Occidental College, studying political science, then went straight to law school after that, ultimately earning his JD from Duke University in 1972. After passing the bar exam, he went to work for McCutchen, Black, Verleger and Shea (now Baker and Hostetler), a Southern California law firm.

It was at this point that Mr Moomjian’s career path began to shift. After graduation from law school, he had become involved with the Maritime Law Association, a social group of attorneys that follow, study and prepare publications and presentations addressing admiralty and maritime law across the United States. That fostered an overall interest in maritime law.

Around the same time, he was assigned a case at his law firm to represent Santa Fe International Corp (later GlobalSantaFe, acquired by Transocean in 2007). The drilling and construction contractor was involved in a dispute with insurance underwriters over an offshore incident involving one of its anchor-handling vessels. This led to Mr Moomjian doing significant work representing Santa Fe’s offshore construction and drilling divisions.

One day, while heading back from Santa Fe’s office in Orange, California to his firm’s office in Los Angeles, he noticed something that would draw his attention to the offshore drilling company.

“The partner with my law firm pointed to a gentleman who was polishing a Bentley. It was the driver for Santa Fe’s General Counsel,” Mr Moomjian recalled. “I said to myself, wow, this man literally lives in Beverly Hills and commutes to Orange County in a chauffeur-driven limousine – maybe one day I can become general counsel for that company.” Decades later, that prophecy actually came to fruition.

In 1976, Mr Moomjian joined Santa Fe as Corporate Marine Counsel. The oil and gas industry was in a growth phase then and, as one of the larger drillers in the world at the time, Santa Fe was looking to expand into new territories. That’s how Mr Moomjian ended up in Venezuela for a good part of the late 1970s. The experience, he said, was an interesting one. 

“The newly nationalized Venezuelan oil companies decided they wanted all of their contracts to be unified and standardized, and they also wanted them to be in the Spanish language,” he said. “We were one of the largest contractors there, so Santa Fe was designated to lead the standard drilling contract negotiations on behalf of the drillers. It was an arduous process. We had to painstakingly go word by word.” 

Mr Moomjian later served as VP-Manager of Contract Administration and Business Development at Santa Fe Drilling Company from 1983-1993. Then, from 1993-2001,  VP-General Counsel. Following the merger of Santa Fe and Global Marine in 2001, he joined Ensco (now Valaris), where he served as VP-General Counsel from 2002 to 2011. Since 2014, he has served on the Board of Directors at Ensign Energy Services – although he is scheduled to retire from the Board in May 2025. 

Much of Mr Moomjian’s career, whether it was at Santa Fe or Ensco, was spent drafting contracts. In fact, for an entire decade spanning the 1990s and early 2000s, he chaired the IADC Contracts Committee. The nature of contracts has evolved dramatically during the past few decades, both onshore and offshore, he said. While a lot of the verbiage remains the same today compared to the 1970s, the risks encompassed in these contracts have not. 

“I think the contracts serve their purpose well. The realities of the situation are that the marketplace impacts contract terms. In an ideal world – and we certainly don’t live in one – the terms themselves would remain relatively standardized. Market forces would influence the commercial aspects, primarily the dayrates and the other terms concerning the variances that may occur from time to time, but new issues become prevalent. Force majeure, for example, was a huge issue when the US Gulf Coast drilling moratorium was implemented after the Macondo incident (in 2010). Contracts do evolve,” he said. 

Mr Moomjian’s service at IADC has gone on almost as long as his career in the industry. He joined the association’s Contracts Committee in the mid-1970s, shortly after starting his job at Santa Fe International. He found himself drawn to what he described as a member-driven organization, stimulated by conversations with other committee members around topics like how to adapt contracts to a changing industry landscape. 

He also credits the support of Santa Fe International to attend Contracts Committee meetings and IADC Conferences, at a time when videoconferencing was not as readily or easily available as today.

“I was very fortunate. Santa Fe gave me the liberty to spend time on IADC activities and attend the meetings, wherever they were. Since I was based in California, I often had to fly into Houston for the meetings.”

One of Mr Moomjian’s priorities with IADC was helping to revive Drilling Contractor magazine, which had fallen on hard times in the late 1990s. With drilling activity low, rig rates depressed and drillers struggling to keep their doors open, advertising was hard to come by and the magazine came close to shuttering. “There was a time when the magazine was so small that it was no longer bound – it was stapled together! We didn’t have advertising, and we didn’t have content,” he recalled.

Not only did Mr Moomjian serve as Chair of Drilling Contractor Publications, the entity that oversaw DC’s publication at the time, but he also offered to write a series of articles for the magazine covering the ins and outs of drilling contracts.

In addition to those articles, Mr Moomjian authored seven papers on drilling contracts that were presented at IADC/SPE Drilling Conferences. One of his papers was even cited in an amici curiae brief submitted to the US Supreme Court in August 2013 in litigation involving a rig equipment patent dispute between Transocean and Maersk Drilling. 

As Mr Moomjian nears retirement, he says he feels a sense of gratitude about being able to forge a career as long and distinguished as his. 

“I feel a sense of pride in what I’ve done. This industry is so cyclical – it’s very competitive and very capital intensive – so the good years can be few and far between. But boy, when those good years come – and I’ve enjoyed a few booms along the way – they’re to be cherished.”  DC