Word: oiling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
Tall, spare, drill-pipe-straight Michael Late (after the doctor who delivered him) Benedum got into the oil business in the days when "anybody could drill for oil that was of a mind to. I don't remember ever meeting a geologist or even hearing the word." Benedum, son of a West Virginia cabinetmaker, teamed up with an oilfield roughneck named Joe Trees, and hit oil in Pleasants County, West Va. in 1895. He was soon making $1,500 to $2,000 a month from the property, and drilling more wells, at one point brought in eleven straight producers...
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...
...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, and are dickering with a French oil company to help develop 3,000,000 acres along Africa's Ivory Coast. Says old Mike: "There's no country in the world of any magnitude that does not have some oil. We have only begun to find the oil that's available in the world...
...owns 31% of Plymouth Oil Co. (assets: $90 million), is the man behind Penn-Ohio Gas Co., Melben Oil Co., Republic Pipe Line Co., Cavalier Oil Co., Bentex Oil Co., half a dozen others with combined assets of well in the hundred millions. He is also the biggest stockholder in Ohio Oil Co. and the largest individual stockholder in International Petroleum...