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Thursday, February 04, 2010
Roswell Native Was Head of N.M. Oil and Gas Association
By Lloyd Jojola
Journal Staff Writer
Peter Hanagan was an attorney and the former head of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, an industry advocacy position he held from 1970-85.
But count law teacher, newspaper publisher and writer among his avocations.
"He was very effective," said Maurice Trimmer, who served as assistant director of the oil and gas association while Hanagan was the director. "He worked well with legislators and the industry people. He was well educated and had experience in legal matters."
Hanagan served at a time when industry business was booming, Trimmer said. And during Hanagan's tenure as an administrator, chief lobbyist and spokesman for the association, it grew from 150 individual and corporate members to more than 400.
"He had good relations with people," Trimmer said. "He was a people person."
When Hanagan retired from the association, more than 200 business and political leaders attended his party at the Sweeney Convention Center.
Hanagan, who lived in Limerick, Ireland, for about the past decade, died there Jan. 23 at age 81. A memorial service is being planned for a later date in Santa Fe.
"He loved to write," said Mary Hanagan, his daughter. "He liked to just sort of read things and write.
"In fact, in his job he used to send out newsletter after newsletter, and with that would go jokes. He was a big jokester, known for his kind of dry sense of humor."
Read Hanagan's published memoir, "Unprovenanced Chinwaggery," and one will find a tongue-in-cheek obituary and those jokes: "When a geezer gives up smoking, drinking and chasing women, he doesn't actually live longer, it just seems that way."
Peter Paul Hanagan was born in Roswell — his father was an oil and gas producer — and undertook his graduate studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
He earned his law degree from George Washington University, and from about 1958 to 1970 practiced general law in the nation's capital.
At the same time, Hanagan taught a business law course at American University and started and published the Potomac Current biweekly newspaper.
"A little neighborhood newspaper," Mary Hanagan said. "He started that newspaper because there just wasn't anything like that in the D.C. area." He sold the paper, but it's still around today, she said.
From 1964-65, Hanagan also served as chief litigation attorney for the federal Subversive Activities Control Board, which investigated communist and other organizations in society.
Hanagan, with his family, returned to New Mexico in 1970, taking the job with the oil and gas association.
"That was a time when there was a lot of legislation that was being argued about regulating or deregulating domestic production of petroleum," Mary Hanagan said. "So that was a pretty heated time, and a lot of changes came about because of that."
Hanagan's legal expertise proved useful in his position with the association.
"I think he enjoyed it very much," his daughter said about her father's work with the group. "I think he had the right personality for it."
After leaving the association, Hanagan again practiced law, serving as special counsel with the Santa Fe law firm of White, Koch, Kelly and McCarthy.
He taught law at the University of Limerick, which is where he met his second and late wife Susan Fitzgerald, and also taught at Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Mexico.
After marrying Fitzgerald, Hanagan settled in Limerick.
"He had been to Ireland many times before he moved there," Mary Hanagan said. "He loved all the history and the people and the culture."
Among his activities over the years, Hanagan served on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's District Advisory Council and was on advisory committees for the state bar association, state Water Resources Institute and the Environmental Improvement Division.
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