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FRED L
1 -
1 91 7-1 990
HARTLEY
BY JOHN R. KIELY
WHEN HE DIED in 1990, Fred L. Hartley, chairman emeritus of
Unocal Corporation, was praiser} as a creative engineer, an
executive of vision, and a man of great integrity. His passing on
October 19 was just two days after the one-hundredth anniver-
sary of the founding of the company he led for a quarter of a
century. In that time, he transformed Unocal from a small,
regional oil operation to an international energy resources
company.
Hartley was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on January
1 6, 1917. He attended grade school and high school in Vancouver
and then the University of British Columbia. He graduated in
1939 with a degree of bachelor of applied science in chemical
. .
engineering.
Fred worked much of his way through college. For the first two
summers, he was a dishwasher and then a steward on a Canadian
cruise ship runningbetweenVancouverand Skagway,Alaska. He
spent a third summer with a five-man survey party in the Willis of
the Yukon, and his last summer in college, he workocl as a
draftsman for Standard Oil Company of California's Canadian
subsicliary.
Unocal recruited Fred while he was in college. In 1939,
immediately after graduation, he was on his way to the Unocal
refinery at Oleum, near San Francisco. Hartley often recounted
the surprise on the face of the Union Oil employee assigned to
51
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52
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
meet the new recruit when he stepped down from the train
wearing a suit with a vest and a flat-topped straw hat.
He started at the very bottom. His first few months were spent
chipping rock-harcI residue from the bottoms of furnace stacks.
Within in a few months, he was promoted to junior research
engineer at the Los Angeles refinery, and he was on his way.
The nextyear, 1940, Fred's college sweetheart, Peggy Murphy,
graduated with a degree in physics. She came to California in
November, and they were married. Their children, Marnie and
lack, were born in 1956 and 1958.
Two things that characterized Hartley's career at Unocal were
his enthusiasm for what he was cloing and his vision of what
technology and hard work could accomplish. In 1990 Unocal
published a book celebrating its first one hundred years. The
chapter covering Hartley's twenty-four years at the helm is
entitled "Fred L. Hartley, Visionary Engineer."
As the war years approachecl, Fred moved up the corporate
ladcler. By World War II he was totally involved in working on the
design of plants for the manufacture of aviation gasoline and
toluene for explosives. Both the American and Canadian armies
clecided that he could be of most value continuing what he was
doing at Unocal.
By the summer of ~ 942, at the age of twenty-five, Hartley was
put in charge of the hydroformer's start-up at the Oleum
Refinery. As he told it, "I just sort of fell into the job as the key
man doing the initial work on the plant with the contractors.
Having operated the pilot plant, I probably was one of the best
informed men around to operate the commercial one." In 1944
he moved up to the headquarters office as manufacturing
process supervisor in charge of process engineering design for
all of Unocal's new plants. In 1950, at age thirty-three, he became
general superintendent at the Los Angeles refinery.
In 1953 Hartley was transferred to the research departmentin
Brea, California, where one of his activities was the sale and
licensing of Unocal technology to other companies. He was also
actively involved in two of Unocal's key developments. The first
was called Unifining, where cobalt molybdenum catalysts were
extensively tested and fount! effective as a means of removing
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FRED L. HARTLEY
53
poisonous sulfur and nitrogen compounds from naphthas,
straight run gas oil, and catalytic gas oils. Several hundred plants
were constructed as a result, and licensing income surged. In
1955 he became a corporate vice-president in charge of all of
Unocal's research.
In 1958 Unocal initiated the revolutionary development of
hydrocracking, called Unicracking, which is in use by refineries
around the world. The process made use of new materials called
molecular sieves, which as catalysts causer! hydrogen to react
with petroleum distillate feed stocks to produce gasoline in
yields of 115 or 120 volume percent of feed. By 1990 there were
sixty-five Unicracking plants around the world, and well over 60
percent of the world's installed hydrocracking facilities were
using the Unocal cleveloped technology.
In 1960 he became senior vice-president, marketing, and was
elected to the board of directors. Two years later he became
senior vice-president both for marketing and for all refining. In
1963 Hartley became executive vice-presiclent. In 1964, at the
age of forty-eight, he became president and chief executive
officer of Unocal, and in 1974 chairman of the board.
By 1964 Hartley had developed a firm opinion that Unocal
neeclecl to grow from a small company in the Western region to
a large national company if it was to survive. As soon as he
became chief executive officer he moved aggressively to accom-
plish this growth. Meanwhile the Pure Oil Company, headquar-
tered in the Midwest, had come under attack by raiders and was
vulnerable to takeover attempts. In late ~ 964 Milligan of Pure Oil
and Hartley of Unocal developed an outline for a merger. The
merger was consummated by micI-1965. Thus, Unocal became
twice as big with markets on both sides of the Rockies. This was
the biggest oil company merger up to that time.
Six months later, Hartley announced the formation of the
Unocal International Oil and Gas Division. Only one year after
he became chief executive officer, he hac! transformed the
company from a small regional company to a national company
with a growing international presence.
Hartley also took a keen interest in the development of
geothermal energy and in of] from shale. His college thesis had
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
been on shale oil. Unocal became the largest producer of
geothermal energy in the world. Unocal also built the nation's
first commercial shale oil facility, which produced nearly 4.5
million barrels of synthetic crude during its five years of opera-
tion. But oil and gas prices would need to rise substantiallyfor oil
from shale to be competitive.
Hartley's most difficult time came when T. Boone Pickens, a
well-known corporate raider, tried to take control of Unocal
using a combination of large debt and junk bonds. Unocal won
out, but it did so at a heavy price.
Hartleywas an honorary director and former chairman of the
American Petroleum Institute. He was a fellow of the American
Institute of Chemists and the American Institute of Chemical
Engineers. He was a member of the American Chemical Society
and the Society of Automotive Engineers. He was also a director
and former president of the California Chamber of Commerce,
as well as being active in many other civic organizations. He
served as a senior trustee of the California Institute of Technol-
ogy and a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development,
ant! was a member of the Conference Board. He was elected to
the National Academy of Engineering in 1980. Hartley was also
involved in three patents, and published many articles on the
various aspects of the oil business and on civic affairs.
Hartley was active in many cultural affairs. He served as avice-
president and trustee of both the Southwest Museum and the
California Museum of Science and Industry, a director ofthe Los
Angeles Philharmonic Association, a life trustee of the board of
governors of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, and a
member of the board of overseers of the Huntington Library.
On a more personal side, Fred was very fond of music and
singing. He could sit down at the piano and play from memory
for hours without stopping. He liked nothing more than an
even ing spent with friends or at company gatherings, playing the
piano and singing songs. He had a great sense of humor and was
pleasant to spend an eveningwith. He never hesitated to give his
opinion on subjects that he felt strongly about, as all who knew
him will agree.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
shale oil
