Word: jacobsen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Garbo. Jacobsen's fame grew with his company. Not only was he admired as a great oil finder, but in the industry's councils he won a reputation as a man who could reduce the toughest problems to their essentials, reassemble them in simple, common-sense answers. Like the mysterious catalysts which speed up oil refining, Jacobsen made things go smoothly. The fact that he was not tied up with any of the major companies made them, as well as the independents, trust him. He was sought for the industry's toughest assignments. For example, when...
...could drill there. So the Cowdray family split its 60% ownership in half, and let Wall Street's Dillon, Read & Co. sell half the stock on the U.S. market at $26 a share.* Amerada went into Texas and found oil from the start. With their growing geophysical skill, Jacobsen and De Golyer were so confident of finding oil that when Louisiana Land & Exploration asked them to "shoot" (i.e., prospect) its holdings along the Louisiana Gulf Coast, they took the job for cost, took stock and mortgage bonds in the company as Amerada's profit. Soon after, Amerada bought...
...Jacobsen took over Amerada's presidency in 1929, when De Golyer stepped up to chairman.† He quickly made a series of shrewd deals (e.g., he bought 160 acres in California's Kettleman Hills for $200,000, sat by while others drilled, sold an undivided half interest in his lease for $8,600,000 after another company found oil), built up the cash Amerada needed to expand its oil hunting...
Thus, when the Depression hit, Amerada had an additional $9,000,000 in cash in its treasury, was able to start exploration and drilling in a number of new areas while others pulled in their drills. With so big a stake to bet, Jacobsen was able to take bigger & bigger risks, and, as he says, "We were lucky." But other companies that had the benefit of the same geophysical methods found little but dry holes. Amerada's greatest luck seemed to be the fact that it had Jacobsen. Amerada's net profit rose from...
...Horizons. Because of Jacobsen and the other great gamblers in oil, the U.S. oil industry has been able to make liars of the professors and bureaucrats who have periodically announced that the U.S. would soon run out of oil. In 1908, one expert put U.S. oil reserves at 15 billion bbls. Yet in the years since, the U.S. has burned about 40 billion, has proved up another 12 billion in reserves. It has managed to add to reserves every year despite today's record rate of consumption of 2.7 billion bbls. a year...