Kerr-McGee
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Search complete. 42 mentions across 10 episodes found for "Kerr-McGee".
Sep 27, 2026
Janet Lee SheriffGUEST
When we acquired the assets from Encore Energy, it came with the URI database, which was Uranium Resources, historically very active in the state.
Janet Lee SheriffGUEST
We also purchased the Kerr-McGee database.
Janet Lee SheriffGUEST
And we've combined them into a very large warehouse type office in Durango, Colorado.
Janet Lee SheriffGUEST
And we have a staff now working through scanning everything and pulling all the information together.
Mike RoseHOST
It used to be an old people door into the basement from the outside.
Mike RoseHOST
And you curve around underneath Kerr-McGee and Avoca Yard and come back under Minooka there coming into Taylor Yard.
Mike RoseHOST
And the other ladder is right underneath Taylor.
Mike RoseHOST
And then there's about a, maybe it's three, seven, nine, it's about a 10 foot tail track
Les LeopoldGUEST
She was involved in a desert campaign out in Oklahoma.
Les LeopoldGUEST
Kerr McGee actually lost her life the next year trying to fight for it.
Les LeopoldGUEST
So Mazzocchi was involved in all these struggles, just amazing fights.
Richard BergHOST
So for younger listeners, Silkwood was actually a movie made about her, everything else, but she was a whistleblower on nuclear power and the dangers of nuclear power and to the workers as well as to the society in general.
Danny SheehanGUEST
Because we know who murdered her.
Danny SheehanGUEST
We tried to get it put into the trial back in 1979. uh we won the ten and a half million dollar judgment against the kermagee corporation shut down the entire nuclear fuel reprocessing facility there uh and but they wouldn't do anything about who murdered her because it was going to unlock the secret that they were smuggling 98 pure bomb grade plutonium out of the facility to go to israel to make nuclear weapon for israel and iran as it turns out under the shah So the source of the nuclear materials for both those countries came out of the Kerr-McGee facility.
Julian DoreyHOST
Whoa.
Julian DoreyHOST
And what was Karen's role over there again?
Danny SheehanGUEST
She was a health and safety organizer for the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union.
Danny SheehanGUEST
She was trying to organize a chapter of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers at the Kerr-McGee nuclear facility, the reprocessing plant outside of Oklahoma City.
Danny SheehanGUEST
And she was... she was trying to organize everybody like during the lunch hours and coffee breaks and stuff so they assigned her to the midnight shift so that she was only there from midnight until eight o'clock in the morning so they could get rid of her and so that since she was the only one running around in the plant she kept going around to the offices looking in the files and she ended up finding a set of files that showed that they were missing over 40 pounds of 98 pure bomb grade plutonium And she got on the telephone and called the oil, chemical, and atomic workers headquarters in Washington, D.C., and told them that she'd found these documents.
Danny SheehanGUEST
And unfortunately, her phones were wiretapped by the security department.
Janet Lee-SheriffGUEST
Our other projects, Ambrosia Lake and Nose Rock, will be next on the list after West Largo.
Janet Lee-SheriffGUEST
So we have a massive database, takes up two entire offices, 200,000 drill hole logs, incredible history of Kerr-McGee and URI.
Janet Lee-SheriffGUEST
Kerr-McGee, if people don't know, was the largest uranium producer in the United States.
Janet Lee-SheriffGUEST
As with most oil and gas companies, they became uranium producers and Kerr-McGee was one of them.
Janet Lee-SheriffGUEST
So we now have their database that we acquired after our transaction and combined it with the URI database from Alcor.
Jimmy ConnorHOST
And you mentioned you're working on a 43-101 for West Largo.
Nell ScovellGUEST
[laughs]
Jen WelchGUEST
... worked at Kerr-McGee gas station, and then she would have to go rub off all the potential radiation exposure
Joanna ColesHOST
Before we get into the specifics of the women who are able to get under Donald Trump's spray tanned skin
Jen WelchGUEST
[laughs]
JamieHOST
and a little more in a bit.
JamieHOST
The job she got there wasn't long-term because in August of 1972, Karen was hired as a metallography lab tech with the Kerr-McGee Corporation at their Cameron River Plutonium Production Plant.
JohnHOST
Can we just pause there? That was a lot of big words.
JamieHOST
It was a lot.
JamieHOST
She was getting to do real science in some ways on the cutting edge of science in the middle of Oklahoma.
JamieHOST
So she was really excited about this job.
JamieHOST
Kerr-McGee was a giant in Oklahoma and America's oil and gas industries.
JamieHOST
Karen was excited, and she joined the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Works Union, which was local.
GeorgiaHOST
So when an opportunity came up for a job as a lab tech at the Kerr-McGree Simaron nuclear facility, which is about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, she went for it.
GeorgiaHOST
The Kerr-McGee Corporation was a major American energy and chemical company founded in Oklahoma in 1929 by James Anderson and Robert Kerr.
GeorgiaHOST
Over the years, it became closely intertwined with state politics, with Kerr becoming the governor of Oklahoma in the 40s and serving in the US Senate from 1949 to 1962, all whilst also sitting on the Carnegie Board.
GeorgiaHOST
So we're talking powerful people in powerful positions, a powerful company, the kind you don't want to mess with, as we'll come to discover.
GeorgiaHOST
It seems she very much enjoyed it as well, at least when she first joined.
GeorgiaHOST
But she soon got involved in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union in the factory, which ended up going on strike just a few months after she joined in November 1972.
GeorgiaHOST
The union were demanding crazy things like better wages and better training and importantly better health and safety provisions, Because it turns out, Kerr-McGee had terrible health and safety, and everyone knew it.
GeorgiaHOST
Ten weeks into the strike, the employees were threatened of being fired if they didn't come back to work, and so the strike came to an end.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
I could never imagine leaving the company.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
I got an opportunity to work reservoir engineering, production engineering, business development, completions, and then ultimately when Anadarko bought Kerr-McGee and Western Gas in what I think anyone in industry who worked anywhere near those companies would know was really a reverse takeover because Kerr-McGee certainly took over, got all their options paid, and then reset their options at a new company.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
It was a pretty good deal for them.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
uh but anyway i got to get moved down to denver and so that was really how i ended up in the u.s even though i'm an american citizen uh i grew up in canada and i just feel so lucky that i i came to denver at the time i did the balkan was just kicking off the eagle for
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
2000 like yeah 2006 7 8 was sort of when they were testing and i remember i was at anadarko of the jokes was uh if you really sucked in your career or done something wrong they would move you to the to the dj basin and it was all vertical wells and they were all on the refracts and the trifrax and the quadrifrax and it was just like a horrible job and when i left in 2009 to go to enterplus one of my buddies who ended up um being the ceo of ultra petroleum uh but brad johnson they had just drilled the first horizontal well in the dj and it was flowing like 400 barrels a day hadn't declined at all and he was like this is kind of crazy these horizontal wells are are weird i wouldn't have thought it would have done this well And I'll never forget that, that the DJ, it went from being like the worst asset Anadarko had to the best.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
And it made careers and it made the company.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
And I think the whole Kerr-McGee acquisition was based on natural gas.
David Ramsden-WoodGUEST
Onshore natural gas was the best.
Jeff PhillipsGUEST
They should have draw results out.
Jeff PhillipsGUEST
But again, that was drilled by Kerr-McGee.
Jeff PhillipsGUEST
They're actually going to put that in the production in the 70s when uranium was a lot lower.
Jeff PhillipsGUEST
And the person that's on the board there that's a good friend of mine, Blake Steele, Brooke runs the company, and he's a very accomplished geologist, ex-Freedland.