Ah yes, the Hunt Brothers. And Hunt Oil. The original wealthy Hunt was Haroldson Lafayette "HL" Hunt, an Arkansas oil man who rushed to Texas when oil was discovered there and in 1930 bought one of the first producing wells in East Texas, the Daisy Bradford 3. More importantly he also acquired 5580 acres, about 2250 hectares, of what turned out to be the most productive part of the East Texas Oilfield, still the biggest oil field in the USA.
HL Hunt was a bigamist and later married a third time. With his three wives he fathered a total of fifteen children. Politically, he was very right wing (Republican) and there was circumstantial evidence to suggest links to Jack Ruby, who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald, while the latter was in police custody in Dallas after the shooting of JFK.
When HL died, in 1974, he was thought to be the world's richest individual, with a private wealth of about $1 Billion. His wealth, and subsequently that of his descendants, was and is mostly held in a spiderweb of private companies centred on Hunt Oil. This includes companies involved in exploration, production, pipelines, CNG plants, and refineries. It is difficult for outsiders to find the true wealth of these companies, but it is obviously substantial.
HL's fortune passed on to his many children, including to some of his daughters, in various ways. The sons you are thinking of as the "Hunt Brothers" are Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, from the first marriage. At the time of their Father's death, they were independently wealthy, mostly from their own oil dealings but their inheritance turbo charged their wealth.
In the next few years they began to buy up large quantities of silver, mostly by taking out long futures contracts and then taking physical delivery when the contracts expired. This forced the silver price up about 800% and eventually nearly caused a major financial meltdown in 1980 that took many years to unwind. Bunker and Herbert declared bankruptcy in 1988, to avoid paying a $US130 million fine levied by a New York Court in favour of a Peruvian metals trading company. The two Hunt brothers appeared to emerge from this technical bankruptcy some years later without too much damage.
When the old man died in 1974, control of Hunt Oil passed to Ray Lee Hunt, Ray Lee is the youngest son from HL Hunt's third marriage, so he was 31 when he took over. He is still in charge today and is said to be worth $5.3 Billion. He's done well, young Ray.
I am wondering if Hunt Oil was particularly looking for gas when drilling in 1998. They might have been more interested in oil, so plugged and abandoned their well when none was found. Just a guess based on no information whatever.
SGC Price at posting:
8.8¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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