Reuters hires Hiller to cover Exxon Mobil, Chevron

Gary McWilliams, the Houston bureau chief for Reuters, sent out the following announcement:

I’m pleased to announce that Jennifer Hiller has joined the Houston office as a reporter starting today. She covers Exxon Mobil and Chevron in their transition to major U.S. shale producers, and reports on the technology, trends and independent energy producers that have turned the United States into a top energy producer and exporter in just a few years.

Jennifer joins us from the San Antonio Express-News, where she was deputy business editor and an award-winning reporter. She was with the San Antonio paper more than a decade, and has covered the Texas oil boom, bust and resurgence since 2012. Her stories have brought alive the bitter fracturing of family relationships that sudden oil wealth introduced, as well as the hard times that hit Texas following OPEC’s response to a global oil glut. She earlier worked in Honolulu, Corpus Christi, Texas, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

She twice has been a finalist for Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, reporting with great insight and flair from RV camps and drilling rigs that sprouted during the boom, and from the towns and businesses suddenly abandoned during the bust. She has an ability to find the right elements and people to tell a story. Jennifer dug into state regulatory reports to show how much natural gas is wasted – vented and burned off – by Texas producers in their hunt for oil. And she found a family leaving their farm to get away from the gas releases to show the human impact.

When she is not thinking about shale, Jennifer is a runner, hiker, avid reader and mother of 9-year-old Pete and 7-year-old Sophie. She is a native Houstonian and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and when living in Hawaii would rise early to catch the Longhorns play at 7 a.m. from a cafe. She joins Houston’s high-energy team of Liz Hampton, Erwin Seba, Collin Eaton, Ernie Scheyder, and reports to me.

Please join me in wishing Jennifer the best as she begins her journey at Reuters.

Best,