Rollin P. Eckis; Oil Company Executive Found Rich Fields

Rollin P. Eckis, a pioneering geologist and former oil company executive who helped discover oil fields from Kern County to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, has died at the age of 94.

Eckis died Friday in La Jolla of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter, Nancy Eckis of San Diego.

The future executive vice president of Atlantic Richfield Co., who retired in 1974, learned about science and open terrain from childhood. Born in Oakland, he grew up moving about the Sierra and the San Joaquin Valley while his father looked for gold.

Later, Eckis would roam the same area looking for black gold, with far better results.

After studying at what is now San Diego State, Eckis moved to Pomona College, where he was persuaded to study geology. He also explored a little chemistry with classmate Roger Revelle when they distilled Prohibition-era whiskey in the college laboratory.

After earning a master’s degree in geology from Caltech, Eckis worked first for Texas Oil Co. and then joined Richfield Oil Co. in 1937 as a field geologist. The next year he discovered the Kern County oil field near Bakersfield. By 1946, he was chief geologist, directing the geology that led to discovery of oil at California’s Cuyama Valley fields and Wheeler Ridge Eocene pool.

Named manager of the company’s foreign exploration department in 1954, Eckis supervised the search for oil in Canada, Peru, southern Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the bonanza itself--Alaska.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, Eckis sent wave after wave of geologists to Alaska, amassing millions of dollars in expenses with sluggish initial results.

His titles changed--Richfield vice president and in 1962 president, then executive vice president of Arco after the 1966 merger with Atlantic Refining Co.

But he was steadfast in his convictions about vast oil fields in Alaska. He assured the Greater Anchorage Chamber of Commerce in 1964 that oil production would soon double, triple and more.

His resolve led first to oil finds in Cook Inlet and in 1968 in Prudhoe Bay on the state’s north shore--the rich field that prompted construction of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Eckis helped organize and served as president of the Petroleum Club and was active in the Geological Society of America and the American Assn. of Petroleum Geologists.

But oil was never his only concern. He helped organize the city of Bradbury, and in 1957 was elected its first mayor.

Eckis maintained a lifelong interest in education, serving as a trustee of Pomona College and providing support to it and his first school, San Diego State. In 1986, he and his first wife contributed $50,000 with a matching amount from Arco to help establish the Rollin and Caroline Eckis Chair in Seismology at San Diego State.

Until illness and infirmity prompted his move to La Jolla, Eckis spent his retirement years in San Diego County’s Pauma Valley, growing avocado and citrus trees. He also became a watercolorist.

After the deaths of his wife and his good friend Revelle, an oceanographer who helped create UC San Diego, Eckis married Ellen Revelle, who survives him.

Eckis is also survived by his daughters, Nancy Eckis of San Diego and Ellen Schmitt of Phoenix; son Rollin Jr. of Yakima, Wash.; five grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren, and the Revelles’ four children.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the geology departments of either Pomona College or San Diego State, or to the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UC San Diego.