Reporting and commentary on the Texas energy industry and innovations shaping its future
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.
Boone Pickens and his protégé, David Batchelder, built Mesa Petroleum into an energy giant. Now Pickens’ empire is crumbling and his former aide is leading the charge against him.
Citizens groups in Corpus Christi blame pollution for high cance rates—but they must prove it.
With the end of the cold war, the Pantex nuclear facility is dismantling its bombs. Will nearby Amarillo’s environment and economy get blown to pieces?
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.”
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.
Are customers of the Comanche Peak nuclear plant better off with safety advocate Juanita Ellis on the inside or the outside?
An entrepreneur captures customers in public rest rooms. A high-tech plant moves from oil to medicine. Space and biomedical manufacturing are finally off the drawing boards. And a former union boss becomes a bingo mogul.
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.
This story is from Texas Monthly’s archives. We have left it as it was originally published, without updating, to maintain a clear historical record. Read more here about our archive digitization project. Once Texans thought the boom would never end. Then they thought the bust
A lot stronger and more hospitable than barbed wire, this is one of those good fences that make good neighbors.
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.
Judges take his money. Juries buy his bull. And when clients like Pennzoil need a tiger in their tank, they hire Joe Jamail.
The death of an oil well keeps an oil-field service company alive.
At a time when Texas seems to have lost its gift for creating fortunes, there has emerged a group of entrepreneurs who are making money by catering to the needs of people who are going broke.
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.
People who have watched a certain prime-time soap opera think they know what goes on at the Petroleum Club. They don’t.
An old hand at Pickens-watching reveals the key to the Amarillo oilman’s corporate-takeover antics.
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.
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.
Don’t give up! There’s still money to be made finding oil. Up in Graham the Creswells are striking it rich with the help of Jesus and, er, creekology.
The quintessential wildcatter fills you in on free enterprise and Texas after oil.
Jack Young was the eighties’ oil boom in the flesh. Unfortunately, he also personifies the aftermath of the bust.
West Texas was a desert when this little irrigation device came along. Now it’s a desert that produces more cotton than anywhere else in the country.
The inside story of Boone Pickens’ adventures in the Wall Street merger game, featuring action, suspense, drama, a few laughs, and a special guest appearance by President Ronald Reagan.
Ranger was the most romantic field in the early oil boom. Now a major company is risking its future to prove that romance still lives.
The glory days of the oil industry aren’t over; they’ve only just begun.
Reading Big Oil’s annual reports for the truth about profits is a little like drilling for oil in the Baltimore Canyon: you know it’s there, but how deep will you have to go to find it?
How did we get into this sorry energy mess? By making sorry decisions.
Or, how we can all stop worrying and learn to love the crunch.
Oil is a slippery business.
With friends like these, Box’s company didn’t need enemies.
How the world’s largest corporation decides who will make it to the top—and who won’t.
Show us the hardest working man in Texas and we’ll show you a roughneck.
Second-generation refinery workers don’t believe in politicians or corporations and some of them don’t believe in unions. The question is, do they believe in strikes?
The feuding over H. L. Hunt’s vast fortune is a family affair, and what a family!
When Dad Joiner signed away all his oil leases to H.L. Hunt, all the cards weren’t on the table. Some were still underground.
A strip-mining company made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
A new method of oil recovery means more energy, more wealth, and . . . death.
How Coastal State Gas pulled the plug on the Texas consumer.
Here’s the plot for the legislature’s 140-day run, opening soon.
