The Big Strike

At 78, rough, tough Mike Benedum, "greatest wildcatter in the world," wanted just one more big strike. His Plymouth Oil Co. had leased 800 acres in desolate Upton County in western Texas and started to drill for oil. Plymouth drilled down 10,000 ft. and lost $1,000,000 before it quit. That was in 1946.

Subsequently, San Antonio's Slick-Urschel Oil Co. (TIME, Jan. 28, 1946) took over the drilling for a half-interest in the field. It drove down another 1,500 ft. Last week the big news came out. Slick-Urschel had struck oil and it looked like the biggest strike in years. The news sent Plymouth stock up 15 1/2 points in two days--to 49 1/2.

Mike's Memorial. Not till more wells are drilled will the size of the new pool be known. But the discovery well was pouring out 500 barrels a day, the maximum under Texas regulations.

The high gravity of the oil (it is almost pure gasoline), and the depth of the oil-saturated strata (about 1,700 ft., the deepest of its kind ever found), caused experts to guess that the pool may contain a minimum of 50 million barrels, a maximum of 600 million barrels. In honor of Old Mike, the area was named Benedum Field.

Though the credit for it was only partly his, Michael L. (for Late, after the doctor who delivered him) Benedum amply deserved the tribute. He started in the oil business at the age of 20 with $500 in cash and a million dollars' worth of nerve. Along with the late Joe Clifton Trees, the technical brains of a lifelong partnership, he struck his first oil in West Virginia.

He moved on to make the first big strike (Crawford Field) in Illinois. He lost most of his cash in Oklahoma mud, recouped it by discovering the huge Caddo pool in Louisiana.

Oil at Sea. Mike Benedum prowled the world in search of oil, losing fortunes in Peru and China, but making bigger ones on major strikes in Mexico, Colombia, Rumania. His most spectacular achievement was the discovery of the great Yates pool in Texas, in 1926. It prompted his claim that "Joe and I have unloosed more oil than anyone else." In unloosing it Benedum piled up a fortune estimated at over $80,000,000. The new strike, big as it was, proved only that a wildcatter could never quit.

Last week from Pittsburgh, where Mike runs his scattered ventures from the Benedum-Trees skyscraper, came word of a still newer Benedum venture. His recently formed Melben Oil Co., which had spent $1,000,000 exploring for oil along Texas' coast, leased 120,480 acres of tideland area from Texas for $1,383,467. From a specially equipped $500,000 float, Mike Benedum will soon start drilling under the Gulf of Mexico.

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