Word: mikes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rich well came in in an area everyone thought was exhausted. The flow: an initial 6,720 bbl. daily v. an average ½ bbl. daily for the only remaining wells near by. The name of the man responsible for the strike was no surprise. He is old Mike Benedum, 88, the king of the wildcatters and a man who says proudly: "I have unloosed more oil than anyone else in the world...
...Brooks County, Texas, still another well came in for the same three outfits, this one capable of producing 30 million to 40 million cu. ft. of gas daily on 1,600 acres of previously undeveloped land. But the Ohio strike was the most spectacular, smack dab in old Mike's backyard, not many miles from the Pittsburgh headquarters of an oil empire stretching from Canada to Africa...
...Lone Wolf. For Mike Benedum it was also the capper on as fabulous a career as the fabled oil industry has ever seen. He has had a hand in virtually every major U.S. oilfield, and wound up with a personal fortune estimated at something like $250 million.* "I've always been a lone wolf," says Benedum. "I started as one and I'm finishing as one. I may be the last "of the breed...
Caddo & Queen Marie. Mike Benedum was lucky, but he was also razor-sharp. Once he went gunning for a promising lease, but found that Standard Oil was there ahead of him. Looking up the deeds, he discovered that the land belonged to a sickly old widow, promptly persuaded her heirs to sell him the property on a "when-as-and-if" basis; the day after Standard brought in its first well, the widow died, whereupon Mike sold the property back to Standard at "a nice price-a very nice price." Like every gambler, he took some lickings and came back...
Ivory Coast. Today Mike Benedum is no longer the continent-hopping wildcatter of the past. Partner Trees died in 1943; his nephew Paul Benedum and half a dozen lieutenants run the empire he built. But from Miami Beach's Roney Plaza Hotel, where he spends each winter, and Pittsburgh's exclusive Duquesne Club, where he recently rebuilt an elevator to take him directly to his fifth-floor suite, he keeps tab on every well. Besides Ohio, Wyoming and Texas, Benedum's wildcatters are exploring 750,000 acres in Colombia, also have 450,000 acres in Guatemala...