“You don’t breed a prize bull with a scrub heifer.”
— Glenn McCarthy
“Diamond Glenn” McCarthy was born on Christmas Day 1907, seven years after the epic discovery of the Spindletop oil field in Texas.
A poor man’s son who became the epitome of the fighting, gambling, badass Texas oil millionaire, McCarthy made his bones in hydrocarbons by schlepping water for $0.50 a day for the roughnecks.
I doubt you’ve ever heard of him…
He once blinded a Navy officer in a barroom brawl. Another time, he scarred a business competitor for life after smashing his head in with a can of lye at a hunting lodge.
He would fight anyone — any time — and as young Mike Wallace said: “The bigger they were, the better he liked it.”
Mean as a Rattlesnake
Diamond Glenn had a mean streak and carried a grudge. He fought his way to the top.
After hitting dry wells for more than two years at a young age, he struck oil near Anahuac, Texas, and his luck turned…
Between 1931 and 1942, McCarthy found oil 38 times.
By the time he was 26 years old, he’d made $1.5 million. He came to own airlines, hotels, and even a brand of whiskey called Wildcatter during his career.
The elites of the day didn’t like him; they made him out to be a rich country bumpkin.
He told the world to ‘stuff it’ and lit cigars with $100 bills.
When you think of Texas wildcatters, you think of Diamond Glenn. The James Dean character in the movie Giant was based on him…
According to a Vanity Fair article:
The stereotype of the raw, hard-living, bourbon-swilling, fistfighting, cash-tossing, damn-the-torpedoes Texas oil millionaire did not exist before Glenn McCarthy rocketed into the national imagination in the late 1940s.
Natural Gas Is Cheap
You might think that old-school wildcatters are long gone and dead. But I can tell you they aren’t. I’ve spent far too many days driving down corduroy roads in ancient Fords just to look at a rusty well head…
I’ve been from Mongolia to Kenya to North Dakota — and I can tell you that at the end of every backbreaking, teeth-jarring, spring-lurching ride, there’s a tall man with two fingers of bourbon, a bit of branch water, and an East Texas twang.
The hard-knuckled guy with a grudge who bets his life savings on the off chance of getting rich is not only alive and well; quite a few of them make it.
Boomtown, USA
Ever wonder why natural gas is $18 in Japan and $12 in Europe — but under $3 here in America?
Well, you might want to thank Diamond Glenn and his ilk.
Despite what the politicians say, they don’t have much to do with job creation.
Sure, they can stick their fat thumb in the process and muddle it all up…
They misallocate funds and pay off rent seekers; they hire government workers to paste red tape down the block, and they steal your money and give it out to those ne’er-do-wells who suck off the government teat.
They do a lot — but they don’t create jobs.
You know when jobs bloom? When there is opportunity and optimism.
Recently, Bloomberg put out an article saying cheap natural gas will produce 3.6 million new jobs and add 3% to GDP within the next eight years:
It’s a harbinger of a nationwide investment boom spreading from the oil fields of North Dakota and the Marcellus gas shale in Pennsylvania to power plants in California and chemical refiners in Texas.
A surge in U.S. natural gas development has spurred $226 billion in spending plans on pipelines, storage, processing facilities and power plants, most slated for the next five years, according to Industrial Info Resources, a market- intelligence provider in Sugar Land, Texas.
Eat Gas
There are a lot of manufacturers — from steelmakers like Nucor Corp. (NUE) to fertilizer companies like Potash Corp. (POT) to semiconductors like Methanex (MX) and chemical companies like Dow Chemical (DOW) — that are spending billions on new plants.
These plants will be located at the end of natural gas pipelines.
This is all because of the U.S. hydrocarbon boom.
Oil imports are down 17% since 2005 to 45% of U.S. consumption. This will drop to 39% next year and continue to fall every year thereafter.
The impact all this oil and gas fracking will have on the U.S. economy and its manufacturing base is vastly underestimated.
The U.S. pays $20 less for oil than Europe (West Texas Intermediate versus Brent Crude). We pay up to 70% less for natural gas than Japan. The Gulf Coast is now competitive with the Middle East — and spares us the endless fighting.
According to Bloomberg: “Companies plan to invest $138 billion in more than 700 natural gas storage, pipeline and processing plants in the U.S., and another $88 billion in more than 500 gas-fired power generation units.”
This isn’t government money; this is real people laying up hard-earned cash on a money shot.
Keith Kohl has been all over the fracking boom for years. You should definitely pony up the $4.08 a month to hear what he has to say.
And if you want to make the real money when the low-cost NG boom hits manufacturing, check this out.
You’ll be glad you did.
Don’t count the USA out yet… We’ve got some fight left in us.
Christian DeHaemer
Check us out on YouTube!Christian is the founder of Bull and Bust Report and an editor at Energy and Capital. For more on Christian, see his editor’s page.
