| A Poker Face, A Winning Hand Texas oil man H. L. Hunt’s remarkable career reflected an equally-remarkable personality. According to longtime Hunt lawyer, George Cunyus, Mr. Hunt was a child prodigy who was reading the newspaper to shocked family visitors at age two. He was a mathematical wizard who could do complex petroleum engineering equations in his head on drilling rig floors, the kind that others in his era needed slide rules, scratch paper, and much time to solve. He was a pioneer in environmental preservation, helping to start the first cooperative salt water disposal company in East Texas. Before that, producers just dumped the salt water their wells produced out on the ground. He also pioneered improved safety practices. Drilling is an inherently dangerous business, but Mr. Hunt put his phenomenal intellect to work to make it less so. When, despite his best efforts, tragedy struck his workers, Mr. Hunt went out of his way to make things as right as possible for both employees and their families. This tradition has been continued by Mr. Hunt’s heirs and successors. Alongside all the other gifts, Mr. Hunt was a business genius. George Cunyus recounts a story that illustrates this. In the late 1950s, according to Mr. Cunyus, Hunt Oil was drilling a “wildcat” exploratory well in the Texas Panhandle. Word leaked out from the famously tight-lipped Hunt organization that this was a special well. On the day the well was scheduled to be brought in, Mr. Hunt himself arrived from Dallas in his trademark three-piece blue business suit and bow tie. A crowd gathered, consisting of locals, media, and major oil company land men, the folks whose job it is to buy leases for oil and gas production. They were on hand to buy leases on the surrounding acreage, as soon as the well came in. Donning a hard hat, Mr. Hunt mounted the rig floor in front of the assembled crowd. At the appointed moment, he threw the switch on the rig that was supposed to start the flow of oil from deep underground. Nothing happened. The crowd filtered away, disappointed. All that promise, it seemed, had vanished. Mr. Hunt himself climbed down from the rig floor, his face betraying nothing but disappointment. On the way to his car, he tapped Tom Hunt, now President of Placid Oil Company, on the shoulder. “Meet me in my room in half an hour,” he told the younger man. Half an hour later, Tom Hunt arrived at Mr. Hunt’s room. Mr. Hunt’s instructions were simple: get every Hunt Oil land man in the country into the area as fast as possible. Tom Hunt forwarded the instruction. By the following afternoon, Hunt Oil land men were on the scene, buying up the leases the major companies had decided not to bother with the day before. Why the foolish expense? According to Mr. Cunyus, Mr. Hunt had been on the rig floor the night before the big event with his driller, a man he’d worked with for thirty years. The driller showed him just how good the well was. Mr. Hunt instructed the man to drill another two hundred feet down, below the formation. The driller did so, somewhat puzzled. With the well now safely out of the “pay,” as oil-bearing formations are called, Mr. Hunt had flipped the switch the following day and brought in his “dry hole.” Once the major company land men left and his own personnel had bought the leases, he ordered the driller to back the well up the two hundred feet and bring in the well. According to Mr. Cunyus, the entire area continues to produce, all of it on leases bought by Hunt Oil Company land men. Text ©2006, John G. Cunyus All Rights Reserved John Cunyus is freelance writer working in North Texas. His work may be viewed at www.johncunyus.com |
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