Robert O. Anderson Rode High With ARCO And Ranches

In his first 16 years drilling for oil, Robert O. Anderson came up dry 200 times. But having done his homework on the Empire-Abo field in New Mexico, he had an educated hunch that eventually his investment would pay off. In 1957 it did, big time. Anderson's find uncorked a quarter-billion-barrel reserve, one of the biggest in North America. He built on that to create the nation's sixth-largest oil company, ARCO. Anderson (1917-2007) was born in Chicago, where his banker father built a reputation for successfully lending to wildcatters, the independent oil explorers who were colorful figures in a risky business. When Anderson spent a summer in Texas laying an oil pipeline, he knew it was the industry he wanted to be in. "I liked the opportunities for initiative, experiment, independence and an outdoor life," he said in Kenneth Harris' book "The Wildcatter." "We were too young to be conscious of money in the depths of the Depression." Graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in economics in 1939, Anderson read intensively about geology while working as a management trainee at an oil company in Chicago. He began looking for a small refinery that wasn't reaching its potential. He found one in December 1941, convincing his father to put up $150,000 — worth $2.3 million today — to buy a half-share in Malco Refining in New Mexico. As the new vice president, he experimented with equipment and processes and within six months had taken production from 1,500 barrels a day to 4,000...Meanwhile, he spent much of his time where his heart was — on his ranches. By the late 1960s their size across New Mexico and Texas totaled over 1 million acres — three-quarters the size of Delaware. With 120,000 head of cattle and innumerable sheep, the ranches brought in $50 million in revenue a year. He made sure to dirty his hands with his cowboys for 12-hour days whenever he could, according to Paul Patterson in "Hardhat and Stetson."...more