World's Greatest Gamblers

The present economic woes of the world cause me to think of something that happened nearly three decades ago. Despite all my efforts, the company I had formed and fostered had gone “belly up” during the eighties oil bust. It was an awful time in my life - not the worst, but in the top three.

My second wife Anne was my partner in the company and we spent six months trying to find a “white knight” to bail out the company. We were not successful. Everyone - except of course the people that make a living in the industry - hates oil companies. This is because crude oil is the number one commodity in the entire world. No one can live without it. When prices get high, for whatever reason, everyone feels the pinch.

Back in the eighties, oil companies began going “belly up” right and left. Since the main industry in Oklahoma is oil, the state and everyone in it suffered direly. Drilling rigs that had cost millions to build were first stacked (stored) and then cut up for scrap metal when it became apparent the bust would last longer than expected. It lasted for more than a decade.

We are now into yet another recession, and the only good thing about it – for the oil industry, that is – is it signaled an end to President-elect Obama’s proposed windfall profits tax designed to punish the evil oil industry. Well, he was much too young to remember the oil bust of the eighties and the adverse effect it had on thousands of everyday working people, or the fatalist saying, “Last one to leave the State, turn out the lights.”

I digress. Anne and I were looking for a “white knight” to bail out our company. A rich oily from Midland, Texas dropped by to hear my story and see if he could help. He sat across the desk from me, listening to my sad tale when suddenly he got a big grin on his face.

“Did I say something funny?” I asked.

“You’re bringing back memories of when my own oil company went bankrupt. I know it seems like the world has ended and that you will never recover, but you will.” The man began grinning again.

“What?” I implored him.

“This is your first time around,” he said. “You can never really call yourself an oil man until you have been bankrupt at least twice.”

I have yet to go “belly up” a second time but the old oilie informed me of something I probably should already have known. There is no business on earth as risky as the oil business, and those that engage in it are truly the world’s greatest gamblers.

If you are an oilie, you also need to stand on your own two feet because – unlike Wall Street fat cats - you can bet that no matter how many people in your industry lose their jobs, their homes, their cars, and are unable to afford milk for their babies, Congress will NEVER bail you out.

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