Bad Days for Wild Ones

In the oil business, the wildcatter is an operator who combines the cunning of a coyote, the nimble independence of a mountain goat and the ornery courage of a longhorn bull. Relying on instinct and experience as often as scientific aids, he drills wells in places where competitors feel sure that he will not find oil. Still, the wildcatters have discovered three-quarters of the producing areas in the U.S., and their exploits have written a rich chapter in the nation's industrial history.

C. M. ("Dad") Joiner, then a septuagenarian wildcatter, opened up the great East Texas oilfields in 1930 when he brought in his gusher, Daisy Bradford No. 3. Legend has it that soon afterward he lost oil leases worth $100 million in a three-day card game. "Anything you hear about the boom towns won't be an exaggeration," says H. L. Hunt, the multimillionaire, who remembers that holdup men were so common that he and his partners would always walk single file and 16 feet apart when they went to town. The reason, he explains, was that "the bandits wouldn't stick us up if they couldn't cover us all with the same gun."

Victims of Reform. Oldtime violence could not stop the wildcatters, but modern-day economics and politics are slowing them. The tax-reform drive in Congress threatens to reduce the 271% depletion allowance enjoyed by wildcatters, along with other drillers. Costs of drilling a well in Texas have risen 28% since 1959 and, as oil near the surface has become depleted, crews have had to go three times as deep for almost the same returns. Meanwhile, the wellhead price of oil has risen hardly at all. Partly because of climbing costs, the number of wildcat wells drilled has declined from 16,200 in 1956 to 8,900 last year. While many other countries are sharply increasing oil production in 1969, U.S. output is expected to rise only 1.8%.

Another problem is that if and when oil is found, the landowners who lease acreage to the wildcatters make heavy demands. Once they were satisfied with a one-eighth share of profits; now they insist on bonuses or a larger slice of the earnings. The oil companies, which once farmed out much land to independents, now have much less to distribute because their attention has turned increasingly to offshore properties, Alaska and foreign lands.

In the Hole. Costly seismic surveys that backers now insist on have also tended to add to wildcatters' expenses. Oil has become harder to find in the continental U.S. as obvious geological structures have been exploited. Since 1963, Wildcatter Carl W. Van Wormer, who was once worth $300,000, has drilled 20 consecutive dry holes and has moved from a suite of four offices into a cubbyhole in Houston. Keegan Carter, of Kilgore, Texas, last hit oil three years ago. The whole town of Kilgore is in an economic decline, as are such once-wealthy wildcatting communities as Overton, Henderson and Gladewater. "It's impossible to get risk money now," says Carter. Adds Jim Clark, a small operator: "People who don't understand the business become angry after a series of dry holes. An oilman will shrug it off if he can, put an X in his book, and go to the next one."

However depressing matters may seem for the wildcatters, there are still some signs of hope. Companies and syndicates have been created recently to finance independent exploration. Among them are Denver's King Resources, Los Angeles' McCulloch Oil Corp. and Houston's Austral Oil. One wildcatter recently discovered a field at Bell Creek, Mont.; it is capable of producing 130,000 bbl. a day in previously unexplored territory, which suggests that some large untapped pools of oil still exist for the wildcatter to find.

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