Students Focus Their Energy on Oil Group’s Seminar

For some, it was a way to get a day off from school. For others, such as 18-year-old Dara Greaney, a senior at St. Bonaventure High School, it was an opportunity to learn about the energy industry.

“This is kind of cool,” said Greaney, who was trying on a portable breathing machine used in cleanups of hazardous materials. But “it takes awhile to get used to it.”

Greaney was one of nearly 400 high school students from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties attending Energy Day ’96 at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, an event organized by the American Petroleum Institute, an oil producers group.

“The goal is to get high school students to know more about what opportunities are available in the energy industry,” said Dan Lyons, one of the organizers of the event.

Students browsed through dozens of booths showcasing oil-drilling equipment, geological drawings, solar energy heaters and even a cast of a tyrannosaurus rex jawbone.

Meanwhile, other students attended lectures explaining how oil wells are drilled.

In the parking lot, 16-year-old Mark Chavez, a sophomore at St. Bonaventure, was admiring a truck used in emergency cleanups. For Mark, the idea of being part of an emergency team was nifty.

“It’s good to know there are people helping,” Mark said. “That’s what I would like to do.”