- Alumnus, entrepreneur calls on students to rise to the challenge
Growing up in rural Indiana, T. Paul Bulmahn and his family lived without indoor plumbing in a house where only the downstairs dining room was heated. To help support his family and make higher education a possibility, Bulmahn looked after the family's goats, whose milk was sold to people who were lactose intolerant and couldn't drink cow's milk.
"It's my earnest belief that every challenge is placed into our lives for opportunities and learning," said the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of ATP Oil & Gas Corp., who earned his bachelor's degree from Valpo in 1965.
On Oct. 27, Bulmahn called on current Valpo students to rise to the challenges presented by an increasingly complex and interconnected world during the University's Arnold H. Moeller Lecture.
Future leaders must use their ingenuity and ability to innovate in order to achieve success, said Bulmahn, an international leader in the oil and gas industry who is widely recognized for his innovative work in developing offshore properties for commercial production in the Gulf of Mexico and North Sea.
"An entrepreneur thinks differently, isn't wedded to current design concepts," said Bulmahn, who has successfully starting seven international and domestic businesses.
In 1991, sitting on the living room floor of his house with his wife and presenting his business plan for launching an independent oil and gas development company, Bulmahn asked his wife how much of their assets she was willing to risk.
"Fortunately, she said all of them," he said. "A supportive partner is critical. And now, we're fourth in the Gulf of Mexico in the number of well bores."
Discipline, born of necessity, has been critical for ATP to make it through lean times, Bulmahn said.
That discipline includes a commitment to safety and reducing risk. In the summer of 2007, Bulmahn said ATP invested an extra $4.5 million in redundant safety equipment for its ATP Titan project in the Gulf of Mexico, a deepwater drilling development similar to BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig that suffered a blowout in April 2010.
"I believe that if BP had adopted the safety measures we did, the oil spill they experienced would not have happened," Bulmahn said. "When it comes to safety, you can't cut corners."
Bulmahn said BP's negligence toward the safety aspects of its drilling operation led to the oil spill, yet he noted the energy industry's overall track record of success in drilling more than 58,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico without any significant spills until the BP incident.
"We were active in developing Gulf of Mexico wells because I believed in developing my own country's resources, and I am deeply unhappy with the government's moves against the industry," Bulmahn said. "There are other countries throughout the world who are crying out for our skills and talents."
Bulmahn married his entrepreneurial spirit with a childhood love when, in 2002, he founded GoldMark Farms, a 2,600-acre horse training facility in Florida.
In 2009, he celebrated his horse Backtalk’s come-from-behind victory the Sanford Stakes. Backtalk also was one of 20 horses to run in the 2010 Kentucky Derby.
While starting GoldMark Farms allowed Bulmahn to realize a lifelong dream, it presented another challenge: how to deal with the large amount of horse manure generated by a large stable of horses.
Bulmahn is investing in new technology to convert horse manure into electricity. If successful, the world’s first biomass gassifier reactor for horse manure would create a new source of green power in heavily populated areas where many horseracing arenas are located.
“I believe developing the entire spectrum of energy resources is essential and green power is part of that,” Bulmahn said. “This was an opportunity to look into a way to generate electricity from GoldMark biowaste.”
"There is always another challenge,” Bulmahn said. “With tenacity, resourcefulness, discipline, ingenuity and innovation, we can rise to that challenge."
