Show H L L hunt nations most successful oil man probably the most successful individual oil operator in the united S states t ates is II 11 L hunt of dallas texas according to an article in the oct 30 1954 issue of 0 the oil OU news and uranium digest digen the article was written by leonard bedillion another oil man until about 1924 or 1925 hunt had been in montana ranching with a brother then he went to arkansas where be sought a an a opportunity to go into the oil od business he did by getting hold of a plot of ground 33 feet wide oy wl feet long from a scalper there were twenty such leases in a ten acre tract and each of the lessees lessels drilled two wells on his own wan little lot some produced oil but soon went dry all except Hu hunts rits that is most of the holders of the small leases had been so optimistic they th had built storage tanks on an the their properties in anticipation of the gushers bushers they hoped would be brought in hunt H did likewise and it long before he was renting all of the storage tanks on the property surrounding his ow own n lease which incidentally was right in the middle of the ten acre plot hunt was pumping banels barrels ban els of oil per day at 2 a barrel when hunt had bad stored barrels of oil he went to Bedd bedillion lion then a civil engineer oil buyer and scout for a pipe line duyff although the deal with bedillion was not completed hunt did sell bis his oil ell to a pipe line company bedillion writes that hunt sometime later bought a 10 acre lease about six or seven miles south of the shoestring properties on which he bad had made initial strike again he struck oil had a little bad luck with sanding blocking of the flow but eventually the second well was classed as a producer too about 2500 barrels per day from then hen on it was the same story for hunt it seems that aee e cry well he drilled was a brodu producer although some were pu ropers s and he sometimes used poor judgment in his operations As explained by bedillion hunt was an introvert who never ever sought advice from anyone therefore he sometimes pulled boners during the depression years hunt stepped up drilling operations moving into louisiana and texas where new discoveries had been made his stupendous successes continued baffling operators and making BOWS news headlines constantly when he had as many as 90 offset wells to drill at the same time right in the middle of the 1932 1 depression he put ia in his ids own pipeline gathering system and marketed his own oil at that time be he had wells producing barrels daily there are many reports says the article that hunt rant has accumulated a half billion dollars from his oil operations wrote bedillion 1 I haye have known many men with a fine run of V good luck to run a few dollars up into to one to twenty million dollars but very few held on to it i long they would lose it as fast ai as they made it As we used to it say in the oil ou business it takes luck 1 to win a million and brains to bold onto tl it in all the years I 1 have known him hunt I 1 have never known him film to pull a fast one nor have I 1 ever heard anyone challenge his integrity he was the same man at as he be was at we could use a few more like iiii him in any business |