The author of Private Empire: ExxonMobile and American Power answers the question: In terms of difficulty, how would you compare reporting on Exxon with the reporting you did for your previous book, The Bin Ladens?
In 1996 a powerful South Texas ranching clan accused ExxonMobil of sabotaging wells on the family’s property. Thirteen years, millions of dollars in legal fees, and one state Supreme Court opinion later, the biggest oil field feud of its time is still raging.
The New Yorker writer talks about his latest book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
Forget the Outer Continental Shelf. There’s a good old-fashioned boom happening in Midland, thanks to a crafty drilling technique that unlocked the secret reserves of the Permian Basin and revived the late, great West Texas oilman.
The spill in the Gulf is just the latest in a string of catastrophic regulatory failures that prove how incompetent government is. And how important it is.
The BP oil spill hit the small world of Houston’s oil and gas business hard. So now that the well is plugged, who’s up and who’s down?
Skip Hollandsworth talks about rigs, the trickle-down effect, and the new generation of oilmen.
Oil patch old-timers said to stay away from the Austin chalk. But a few feisty newcomers refused to listen and cashed in for millions.
Midland’s energy companies are still laying people off a decade after the bottom of the bust. But—surprise—the city’s economy is booming again.
Thirty years ago, people couldnt believe it: The old man’s elixir boosted crops, ate up sewage, and made the desert bloom. Today half a dozen Texas companies claim the elixir does all that and a whole lot more.
Amarillo
After James and Linda Rowe were killed in a grisly refinery explosion in Texas City in 2005, their wild-child daughter could have taken a modest settlement and started to rebuild her life in a small Louisiana border town. Instead, she chose to fight—and brought a multibillion-dollar oil company to its
Offshore drillers are finding mammoth reservoirs in places that were once considered barren, which is why the Gulf of Mexico is booming again.
The moral of Tex Moncrief’s story: Father knew best.
Should nonproducing oil rigs be demolished, or are the habitats marine life have built around them too valuable to compromise?
If oil and gas drilling is considered "manufacturing" instead of "mining," the industry effectively receives a huge tax exemption.
The Republican congressman from Tyler says an oil pipeline radiates heat, making it a popular "date" destination for caribou.
Amid all the drink tickets, bikini-clad hostesses, and outrageous displays of wealth at the world’s largest expo for independent oilmen, I was determined to get some answers about the future of the business.
On October 27, 1900, an Austrian-born mining engineer named Anthony F. Lucas spudded in an oil well on a hill near Beaumont. He’d drilled a previous well in the vicinity to a depth of 575 feet before running out of money and giving up, but this time he’d secured financing
Wayland grew up in Midland and has worked in the oil industry for nearly a decade. He is now a mud engineer for Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids in Victoria.When I was growing up in Midland, I didn’t want anything to do with the oil field. In junior high, you learn
Texas Monthly talks with two online energy experts concerning peak oil and the future of energy demand.
The real Enron scandal.
Is Phil Gramm out of gas (and oil)?
Those rumors you’ve heard about him are true. Sort of.
Coming of age in Odessa and Midland.
Inside Tex Moncrief’s IRS mess.
The first commandment of fiction writing is: Show, don’t tell. Rick Bass knows it well, though he still struggled through many drafts before finishing his first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be (Houghton Mifflin, $25), which will be published this month. “Paint the images and trust the readers to
Since the day Stanley Marsh 3 finally went too far and locked up George Whittenburg’s son in a chicken coop, all of Amarillo has been abuzz about the bizarre battle between these intractable foes.
It’s not enough to say that associate editor Helen Thorpe was a fish out of water while reporting her story on the new oil plays in the Gulf of Mexico (“Oil and Water,”). She was really a fish out of water on the water. Three different times, the
There’s black gold in the South American rain forest—lots of it. Can the oil companies get it out without ruining the jungle and the way of life of the Indians who live there? The perils of drilling in the heart of darkness.
Ten years ago I guess you could call yourself a Texan if you hadn’t been to the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, but an easy conversance with the OTC and its ways certainly bolstered your credentials. Back then the OTC was, like riding a horse or drinking a beer in
My father loved his job at a Gulf Coast oil refinery. In fact, he loved it to death.
“Guys like me like Iraq,” says Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt. “That’s the way the real world works, baby.”
Pipeline leaks, unplugged wells, toxic drilling materials, and a virtually unregulated oil industry are leaving a legacy of polluted groundwater.
Don’t give up on oil yet, Texas. Come along to Pearsall, deep in the brush country, and learn how the new oil boom is different from the old.
Onward to the past.
Engineer Saba Haregot’s love affair with Houston (it’s not just all those job offers). How natural gas is helping to reinflate the economy. And a shuttered plant that tempers oil pipe opens up.
Times are rotten for refineries.
Once an oil-field service boomtown, Alice doesn’t live well anymore.
Despite all the mewling from the oil patch, there are still ways to make money at $15 a barrel. Here’s our guide to surviving the terrible teens.
The fond memories and hard times of a postboom oil heiress.
The death of an oil well keeps an oil-field service company alive.
So long, OPEC. So long, $27 oil. The Merc is king now.
At first, Hughes Tool used the count to plan its own future. Now an entire industry uses it to plan theirs.
Assailed by presidents, skewered by senators, decried by the New York Times, the oil depletion allowance has survived it all. It helps to have friends in high places.
So you think that OPEC controls the price of oil and that the glut is hurting everybody in the oil business? Wrong. Traders on the international spot market are pulling the strings and getting rich in the process.
In 1883 the University of Texas got stuck with two million acres of West Texas scrubland. Then it hit oil, and the money started rolling in.
Clinton Manges built his empire on brushland and oil wells, political contributions and lawsuits. His influence extends to the state capitol and oil company boardrooms. To get where he is, he studied under three masters of South Texas.
From his early days in Big Spring, Eugene Anderson wasn’t what he seemed; neither was the mysterious element he later claimed turned water into fuel.
Ed Jones rode the oil boom to a white-collar job. It was a short trip.
