Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rick Bass was a fence post in his third-grade play. His father still calls him "Animal." As a petroleum geologist around Jackson, Miss., he drove a lot but was hard on automobiles. After he steered one company car into shallow water, the boss sent him a 20-ft. length of chain for Christmas. Bass acknowledges his clumsiness: "Sometimes I feel almost out of control." But he glories in a rare natural gift: "I know how to find...
...attest, he also knows how to write; and like his oil witchery, this gift is % extravagant and natural. His new book is based on notebook jottings he kept for about three years, 1984-87, chasing a quarry that was "shy here, coy there, blatant elsewhere." His father, another petroleum geologist, complained after reading Oil Notes that he didn't learn much from it about finding oil, but to the uninitiated it richly reveals just what that line of work involves. There is no better conversation, spoken or written, than good shop talk, and this is superb -- direct, expert and reeling...
...dividends. Pickens is believed to be interested in making a run for the Texas governorship, so his Japanese offensive may be calculated to play well back home. Koito, for its part, is launching its own publicity offensive, contending that if such eminent U.S. companies as Gulf Oil and Phillips Petroleum can turn away Pickens' bids, Koito can snub...
...about 70% had been cleaned up. The smallest of the spills, which occurred when a barge collided with a cargo ship in the Houston Ship Channel and released 250,000 gals. of heavy crude, was almost completely recovered. Nature cooperated: high winds blew most of the petroleum into an industrial channel where it could be scooped up easily...
Cain's rise began in 1987 when his company added to its string of petrochemical plants, buying at bargain prices. Sterling and its partners gambled $1 billion on these plants, which were assembled into a single firm known as Cain Chemical. Last year Sterling sold the package to Occidental Petroleum in a deal that was valued at $2.2 billion. Cain shared his bounty ! with some 1,350 employees, who took home a total of $537 million...