Word: oilfield
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...rising oil prices have already touched off what is building up to be the biggest oilfield rush since the 1950s. Oilmen, particularly the independent operators, who do more than 80% of the exploratory drilling in the U.S. and off its shores, have been swarming across the country in search of promising new deposits and even returning to old oil hunting grounds in Texas, New Mexico and other states. More and more, however, they are making a painful discovery: it can be a lot easier to strike oil nowadays than get the pumps, piping and other paraphernalia needed to bring...
...result, second-hand equipment, once regarded as throwaway junk, is now attracting premium prices. New drilling pipe sells for $10.50 per ft. when available; when it is not, wildcatters often settle for used pipe supplied by oilfield hustlers at $20 per ft. "They charge an arm and a leg," complains Walter Bates, owner of a well-service firm in Odessa, Texas. "But I'm happy to pay any price to get the equipment I need." Sometimes, the equipment is not only high-priced but hot as well. Says Sheriff Elwood Hill of Odessa: "They are stealing just about everything...
...Hunt moved into the big leagues; he struck a hard bargain with legendary Wildcatter Columbus ("Dad") Joiner, an amiable man with a poor head for figures, and gained control of a vast newly discovered oilfield in East Texas. From then on Hunt expanded his business interests to include pecan growing, asphalt production and H.L.H. products, which marketed a big line of food items. At one point it was estimated that he personally earned $1 million a week...
Good News. Social problems are the most intense in Rock Springs, a huge trove of coal, oil, shale, potash, sand, gravel, clay and cement rock. Since 1971, about 5,000 workers have moved in to build the giant Jim Bridger Power Plant- and work in a newly discovered oilfield. Another wave of outsiders, lured by the expansion of trona mines, a source of widely used sodium compounds, and the reopening of old coal mines, is expected to increase the town's 26,000 population...
...Bradshaw, president of Atlantic Richfield, further contends that the industry was caught short by a whole congeries of events beyond its control. As recently as 1968-a "year of euphoria" for the industry, in his words-the companies thought that their supply problems were over: the Alaska North Slope oilfield had just been proved and was expected to be powering cars by 1972, drilling had started on a large offshore field in California's Santa Barbara Channel, and coal production was still going strong and was expected to take some of the slack from oil. Within months...