Autry Stephens, a petroleum engineer raised on a Texas peanut and watermelon farm who grew to become the richest US oilman, has died. He was 86.
The corporate he based, Endeavor Power Sources LP, introduced Stephens’ dying Friday in an announcement. The trigger was most cancers, a spokesman for the corporate mentioned. Stephens advised the Wall Road Journal in February 2024 {that a} most cancers prognosis made him prepared to promote Endeavor after constructing it into one of many largest intently held drillers within the Western Hemisphere’s hottest oil patch.
“Autry embodied the wildcat mentality of braveness, grit, and tenacity related to the Permian Basin,” Lance Robertson, chief govt officer of Endeavor, mentioned within the assertion.
- Advertisement -
Diamondback Power Inc. agreed in February to purchase Endeavor for $26 billion in money and inventory. It made Stephens the wealthiest US oil driller, with a internet price of $25.9 billion based mostly on the Diamondback share worth on the time of the announcement. The deal ended years of hypothesis over who may purchase Endeavor.
Stephens based the Midland, Texas-based firm in 1979 after working for Humble Oil and Refining Co., now a part of Exxon Mobil Corp. At first, he centered on offering advert hoc engineering assist. Over the next a long time, Stephens transitioned from an engineer-for-hire to an oil tycoon, shopping for up drilling rights and branching into ancillary companies akin to trucking, nicely providers and roustabout development. His first exploration enterprise, based in 1996, was known as Huge Canine Drilling.
The drilling rights it acquired and held included 344,000 acres — an space 400 occasions the scale of New York Metropolis’s Central Park — within the core of the Permian Basin. These holdings grew to become far more priceless when oil corporations found out the way to entry crude locked inside impermeable shale rock by way of a mix of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, extra generally referred to as fracking.
The follow, pioneered by American drillers, took off within the 2010s in what grew to become referred to as the shale revolution. It pushed the US from a internet importer of oil to internet exporter.
‘Close to-Loss of life Expertise’
The 2008 monetary disaster, which crushed oil demand and bankrupted some US operators, pressured Stephens to close down nearly all of his rigs. That was a “near-death expertise,” Stephens advised Forbes journal in 2014, and he might need needed to promote the corporate had oil costs not spiked quickly after. He mentioned he responded by lowering his firm’s reliance on credit score strains by issuing long-term bonds and used futures contracts to lock in secure costs for his oil.
“The accomplishments I’m most happy with are creating 1,800 jobs and that our firm produces a product that’s important to our nation’s nicely being,” Stephens advised his alma mater, the College of Texas at Austin.
“Having the spirit of a real entrepreneur, Autry instantly acknowledged alternatives, strategically buying mineral rights and drilling vertical wells one-by-one,” Endeavor mentioned Friday in its assertion. “As others fled the market throughout downturns, Autry purchased further leasehold and consummated a number of company acquisitions, all of which added large worth to his portfolio.”
Born in 1938, one among 5 youngsters, Stephens was raised on his household’s farm close to De Leon, a small city 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Fort Price. His dad and mom had been Martin Stephens and the previous Lila Johnson.
He didn’t present a lot promise as a farmer, and a serious drought throughout his remaining yr of highschool prompted his father to advocate he search a special line of labor, he recalled to the Midland Reporter-Telegram newspaper in 2022.
He attended the College of Texas at Austin and studied petroleum engineering, incomes a bachelor’s diploma in 1961 and a grasp’s in 1962. The potential of working in unique locales akin to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela lured him to the oil trade, in line with a profile on the web site of his alma mater. As an alternative, he made his mark at house in Texas.
After graduating, Stephens labored for Humble Oil, then spent two years with the Military Corps of Engineers. He spent a decade at an area Midland financial institution, the place he appraised oil and gasoline holdings. Impressed by the entrepreneurial purchasers he met, he determined in 1979 to forgo a company profession monitor and spent a short while as an impartial consulting engineer.
He drilled his first nicely in 1979 within the Spraberry Development, an oil subject throughout the Permian Basin, adopted by two in 1980 and 4 extra in 1981, in line with his interview with the Reporter-Telegram.
Stephens had an surprising brush with fame as a actuality star within the truTV documentary sequence Black Gold. He was a key determine within the plot of Season 2, which centered on employees on one among his rigs racing to complete 4 wells in 50 days.
Stephens, who was not a smoker, was initially identified with lung most cancers, and the illness unfold elsewhere, the spokesman for Endeavor mentioned.
“He leaves a legacy that may proceed to form the way forward for our firm, group, and the oil and gasoline trade for years to return,” Robertson, Endeavor’s CEO, mentioned within the assertion.
