He was a unifier across ideological divides, but one who refused to “be a Ping-Pong ball” on issues that mattered. He was an engineer who became a lawyer, crafting solutions to problems by applying his knowledge of both fields. He was an American Gas Association president who helped lead natural gas into a more competitive era by deftly cultivating allies in the halls of power—including building friendships with former opponents.
George H. “Bud” Lawrence, AGA president from 1976 to 1990, died Nov. 12, 2016, at the age of 91. The Oklahoma native left behind a legacy of industry strength through unity. Under his AGA leadership, natural gas regained its dominance in heating for new-home construction, overcame supply shortages, shed federal wellhead price controls, entered new markets and won recognition for its environmental benefits.
“Bud Lawrence had the vision, passion and influence to attain favorable natural gas policies at a time when natural gas was being curtailed,” said Dave McCurdy, AGA president and CEO. “As a fellow Okie and a proponent of natural gas, I am proud to say that his vision has served our industry well for decades.”
During World War II, Lawrence was a U.S. Marine in the Pacific, part of the second wave to go ashore at Iwo Jima. After the war, with an Oklahoma State University degree in industrial engineering, he found work with Humble Oil and Refining Co., predecessor to Exxon USA. His eclectic training took him from roustabout and roughneck to staff coordinator for a high-level committee charged with encouraging conservation through production sharing and joint operation of leases.
Intrigued by a business law course at OSU, Lawrence later earned a law degree from South Texas College of Law and became the first night-school lawyer in Humble’s legal department. While there, he carried Humble’s natural gas causes, including the landmark Permian Basin Area rate case, before the Federal Power Commission (predecessor to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). When the American Petroleum Institute focused on winning field price decontrol for gas, Lawrence was recruited to fill the new position of natural gas coordinator, and he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1964.
“I consider myself a natural gas man.”
Lawrence often quoted an adage that he took to heart as a de facto lobbyist for API: “It’s not what you do by yourself that counts. It’s what you do with your friends.” He wouldn’t “be bullied,” he told American Gas in a 1990 retrospective, but “when you’re opposing people, try to do it so that you don’t leave scars and make enemies.”
“Today’s adversary,” he said, “could be tomorrow’s supporter and friend.”
In 1968, AGA—then based in New York—surprised some people in the industry by appointing Lawrence, from the producing community, to head its Washington office. But once again, eclecticism had its usefulness. Lawrence founded an industry roundtable, helped write a famous letter from buyers asking the FPC to lift wellhead price controls on natural gas and embraced AGA’s move to Washington in 1970, seeing it as an opportunity to join forces in the fight against talk of an “all-electric economy.”
At times, as Lawrence rose through the ranks, there were losses—but there were turnarounds, too. A few months before he succeeded F. Donald Hart as AGA president, a bill to deregulate natural gas prices won solid support in Congress, but died in a tangle of politically motivated procedures. Legendary U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, led the opposition to the bill but, thanks to Lawrence’s emphasis on unity, soon became an ally, helping lift controls on new gas in the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, repealing the Fuel Use Act that had imposed major demand restraints and amending the Clean Air Act to protect natural gas as it contributed to a cleaner environment.
“I’ve had John Dingell for me, and I’ve had him against me,” Lawrence would say. “For is better.”
NGPA passage in 1978 was a major victory, but one that came with compromises and consequences. An incremental pricing provision hindered industrial use of natural gas by preventing fixed costs from being spread over larger customer bases. Through Lawrence’s perseverance, AGA won elimination of most of the price controls the next year and the rest in 1987, when the restrictive Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act was repealed.
Combined with a successful fight against mandatory carriage for pipelines and distributors and legislation lifting price controls from the last old-gas categories, that repeal “heralded the arrival of a new, more competitive era for natural gas,” noted the American Gas retrospective. “It is widely agreed that no one has done more to bring about that new age than Bud Lawrence.”
Lawrence left the industry “far more unified than he found it in 1976,” the story added, and not just domestically, but also internationally. Lawrence ardently supported the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement that was ratified in 1988, and he was there as AGA president that same year, when the World Gas Conference came to the United States—to Washington, D.C., where it was addressed by President Ronald Reagan—for the first time in 33 years.
Lawrence made an impact in other areas, too. His community service included supporting the National Energy Foundation’s educational mission, leading 100 percent AGA participation in the United Way campaign and chairing a United Negro College Fund fundraiser. At the heart of it all was Lawrence’s family: his wife, fellow Oklahoman Shirley Jo Thompson, their four children and their grandchildren. As his obituary noted, he “joined his bride of 68 years” only three weeks after her death.
Lawrence used his managerial skills to centralize AGA operations through a program-planning process, and he strengthened energy analysis and planning to buttress the persuasiveness of AGA’s forecasts and policy arguments through sound documentation. Still, he never quite accepted the tag of association executive, “although that’s certainly an honorable profession,” he said.