ARCO (Atlantic Richfield) Oil & Gas was headquartered in the ARCO Tower in downtown Dallas since August of 1983. Designed by architect I.M. Pei, ARCO sold the building in the mid 1990 as recommended by auditors.

My first assignment as a Senior Consulting Engineer for the Systems Resource Groupd of Andersen Consulting, was originally thought to be a long term relationship, however, difficulties arose in that the numbers reflecting sales didn’t mesh with the volumes produced. Using Telon and SPUFI to generate audit reports, I queried the junctures between the systems to locate discrepancies. These discrepancy reports were generated weekly and produced so much detail that the Controller requested that only differences of 1 million barrels or more be reflected on the reports. As the endeavor continued to resolve discrepancies in the systems, ARCO was dealing outside consultants to devise its future strategy.

As the result of a research study by Coopers & Lybrand auditors, ARCO Oil & Gas divided into 5 independent oil groups located in Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Tulsa and Long Beach. By the first of 1994, all ARCO employees had been layed-off. Andersen Consultants were the last to leave.