Nothing Ventured

by Roderick Price

  As soon as the press conference wrapped, the acquisition teams started rolling to their respective private landowners. But as they got to each homestead, they had the same conversation over and over again. Yes, they’d love to lease their land if there was oil under it. No, they hadn’t leased their oil rights to anyone. They had clear title to their properties, too, except for the timber lease they had signed just last week with a nice fella from Texas named Larry Walker. Larry had come around the house and took his time, several of the people had gotten to know him, and everybody had signed up with him. Going to develop high grade timber on the properties. It was going to take some time, all right. Even Larry had said you didn’t grow a sixty-foot oak or a fourteen-inch walnut overnight. Didn’t know if that would interfere with the oil drilling, but the owners said, if it was all the same, they’d just as soon still let Larry’s company get on with planting the trees, too.

  The oil guys looked over Larry’s contract. It was a Producer’s 88, a standard oil and gas and minerals contract. It had held up on appeal for fifty years in Texas and Oklahoma courts. Occasionally, a landowner down in Texas would claim he’d been delirious or under medication, when he’d signed an oil lease down in Texas after he found out what he was sitting on. Once in a while someone would sue for fraud or misrepresentation on the lease document or say that they’d signed it only under duress from their spouse, anything to try and get the lease contract nullified. But the Producer’s 88 had stood up in appeal after appeal and judge after judge now for the last sixty years. It was bulletproof. At the top of each contract, in bold letters, it clearly stated: “Lease of interest in timber rights and various other mineral rights as may be defined herein.” But once you got past the title, the text was straight off the Producer’s 88 and there was no mention of timber, planting, pulp or anything that even sounded like paper. In fact, if you looked real closely below the header you could see fine gray line where the header had been pasted over the standard oil lease. Larry had given them all of the time they needed to read the lease. Larry had even suggested they have their attorney look it over—not that any of them had an attorney. The only attorney this side of Solon Springs was some quack with an office behind the Spur station in Iron River and he charged forty dollars an hour just to get the family business settled when one of the older relatives would pass on. The younger land men had never seen anything like this before, but the veterans smelled it right away. Somebody had gotten advance notice of this oil discovery to this Larry Walker fellow, or whoever Larry worked for. With this advance notice, whoever it was had gotten this area sealed up even before the governor knew what was going on. Oh sure, the oil companies were going to get all of the state forest land for oil drilling, but some private individual was getting all of the private land from these eighteen farmers.

  Over the weekend, Dick Jansen and Sheldon Mack arranged a meeting. They accused each other of secretly hiring this man named Larry Walker. They demanded answers from each other. And more than anything they wanted to find Larry Walker. Larry would know the story. A couple of the older land men even remembered Larry from his Austin Chalk and Permian Basin days, but they had lost track of him. Larry had always been kind of a loner, a tough cookie, and not the kind of guy you wanted to claim as your friend. He was dangerous, too. One of the land men had recalled a night when Larry had been in a bar over in Pasadena, Texas, over by the Ship Channel. Larry got up to use the restroom, and when he returned, a muscular young man had taken his barstool. When he came back, Larry had asked the man politely to return his barstool, and the man had told Larry in no uncertain terms to go to hell. Larry had broken a beer bottle over the bar and then used it to rip half of the man’s face off with the jagged edges. Larry never said a word. When they carried the poor bastard out on a stretcher, Larry just sat back on the same bar stool and continued to quietly sip straight vodka the rest of the night. Nobody said a word to him for four hours, and at closing time, he dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar and walked out.

  Hilton squinted as he emerged from the shadows of the massage parlor. He walked briskly to his car, grabbed his briefcase out of the trunk, hopped in, and locked the doors. He opened his case and returned what was left of his cash to his wallet. He clicked the big Rolex back around his wrist. Time to check in with Martin.

  CHAPTER 50

  Taylor had asked Jason to arrange her press conference for the top of Bascom Hill. Abraham Lincoln sat stoically in his chair behind her as she began her speech.

  “Ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming today on such short notice and thank you for giving me a small opportunity to share a few of my thoughts with you about the future of Wisconsin.”

  It really hadn’t been short notice by press standards, but all of the cameras would eventually pan the crowd that was engulfing her as she spoke. Just the idea that so many people would attend her press conference on what seemed to be short notice added immeasurably to her credibility.

  “Over the last three years, I have worked hard to maintain the integrity and dignity of the office which I hold. As you know, I have worked tirelessly for you, the people of our state, to conduct our affairs with surety, fairness and a fact-based framework that enables us to make the right decisions for all of the people, not some of the people.” Even Jason was hearing this for the first time.

  “In the last week, as our governor has become aware of what may be potential oil reserves of benefit to our people, and he has embarked on a non-stop campaign that is, I believe, reckless, irresponsible and in the end, self-promotional for the governor himself. I have asked the governor to exercise due diligence, and he has declined. I have asked to let the people of our state be a partner in this, not a spectator, as the huge oil companies move in to take our natural resources and harm our environment. Unfortunately, the governor has told me that he—and the party—have lost confidence in me and cannot attempt to respond to my simplest request for fairness and equity. In fact, I believe strong forces within the oil industry are pushing the governor’s programs forward, including this ill-conceived quest for oil riches. Despite my repeated attempts for justice, for prudence and for due diligence, the governor has pushed relentlessly forward with his half-baked ideas and ill-informed programs.”

  Taylor continued, “Nobody is perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. It is easy to make a bad decision. Over a year ago,” Jason was shaking his head, “no, no, no” as Taylor continued, “I had a brief affair with a married man. A good man. It was Clark Everson, our lieutenant governor, and I am deeply sorry for that. I have apologized to Clark and his family. It was a mistake. But for me, it is time to move on.”

  Jason’s eyes were wide with disbelief. For the press, this was too good to be true. First, the oil story was the biggest in a decade, and now a public battle was shaping up at the highest levels of Wisconsin state government. Taylor was easily one of the most popular and familiar faces in state politics. A fight between Taylor and the governor over this oil thing was too much to ask for.

  “I have asked myself why the governor is moving ahead at breakneck speed. He has been unwilling to respond when I have directly asked him the question. I believe the reasons are twofold. First, as a man who has been in politics a long time, he now finds his own political future to be waning and he is desperate to revitalize it before the elections by bringing forward this sensational but unproven claim of oil wealth. Second, his close personal and professional relationship over the last few years with the big oil companies has compromised his integrity. He now relies on these people as a primary source of financial campaign support and he must be under tremendous pressure from these companies to proceed with this program at this alarming rate.”

  She had stayed up late rehearsing her speech. First, she had written it out in long hand. Then she typed it into her home computer and printed it out. She knew what she wanted to say; it was just a matter of putting it in concise terms, with enough color and easily quotable phrases to obtain maximum pu
blic impact.

  “As your steward and your servant,” Taylor continued, “it is my job is to protect the interests of the people from reckless and selfish acts that benefit a few at the expense of the many. I have enjoyed and I have been proud of our many fine accomplishments in the Department of Natural Resources during my tenure here. Regrettably, over the last week or so, I have found my hands tied by the governor, by others in the party and by others in the industry. I ask the people of this great state to call upon the governor and those around him to act with diligence and to proceed judiciously with this oil program. As for me, it is with regret but with finality that effective immediately, I am tendering my resignation as Director of the Department of Natural Resources.”

  CHAPTER 51

  The biggest oil companies were huge. It was hard for an average person to understand the sheer magnitude. One recent project, off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada, was going to cost more than ten billion dollars. In terms of assets and technical capability, only the automotive industry came close. As big as they were, they preferred joint ventures. The bigger the field and the greater the investment, the greater the desire to form a joint venture to spread their risks and spread their costs of oil development. Research laboratories at such companies had historically been rated the best in the world when compared with any other industry or any of the great universities. Over the years, the scientists from major oil companies had filed thousands of patents, from fuel additives to diamond drilling bits. The petrochemical arms of these companies had invented the nylon and Lycra compounds that paved the way for a revolution in everything from tires to women’s bras. Leading science and engineering graduates fought to join the ranks of these companies where they could continue to work in the finest labs with rich research budgets—at much better pay than they could expect as a college professor. But cost cutting over the years had taken its toll. First, they just stopped hiring new graduates. Then they began offering “early retirement” to the most senior researchers, and anyone else who was willing to “take the package.” They stopped buying new equipment. When an old piece of equipment that was expensive to maintain stopped working, they just let it sit there and ran fewer tests and fewer models and accepted smaller projects that could add immediate value to the business. After several years the Exploration Research Departments were no different than any others. They had a small number of very powerful computers. They had a skeleton staff of personnel, who, by working very smartly and planning their work well during the year, could perform the analysis and run the models needed for new exploration.

  When the nine tapes arrived on the Empire Oil company plane from Madison, it took them more than four hours just to unscramble the format. Newer equipment from companies like Geovision could process and store data like this a hundred times faster, but those machines were expensive. Only a handful of oil companies—and both big oilfield service companies—had the latest Geovision platform.

  The old magnetic tape format was a complex but effective format that was widely used fifty years ago but never used today. The tapes were large, and data was packed in double density. When they ran their fastest computer against the tapes, it chugged along for more than two hours. By the time they had started the third tape, it had completely filled up all available storage on the computer. Word went up the line from the engineers and the geophysicists to management that this was going to take some time. Business management had convened to consider the economics and run their numbers. A large array of technical computing infrastructure would be needed to analyze all of this data that had suddenly appeared on Empire’s doorstep. Not only was all of this data from Wisconsin showing up, many other oil companies had found out that this had all originated from old CCC seismic tapes. Empire and Arbor and the other oil companies were scrambling to contact other states to see if they had tapes like these for their states. Its exploration research potentially worth tens of billions of dollars. Which state would be the next Wisconsin? The mountains of data coming in would be almost unfathomable to the skinny, tired out little work forces that had survived fifteen years of cost cutting. And the stripped-down computers, decimated by years of budget cuts, were no match for the mass of data and analysis to be performed. It was now known throughout the industry as the Chequamegon field. When word was announced at Empire Oil that they had gotten a concession for half of the state’s oil, a cheer went up in the exploration department. This was virgin territory; essentially unexplored terrain. The fact that the discovery had been made after a routine inquiry into the state’s archives made it all the more intriguing.

  Pradeep had worked at Empire Oil for nearly thirty years. He was quiet, meticulous, organized, and obsessive. Over the years, his wife had grown accustomed to his work habits. Frequently, she would call him at eight or even ten o’clock at night when she hadn’t heard from him. She would worry that he had been in some terrible accident or mugged and beaten senseless in the parking lot. But time after time, she would find him completely immersed in his work, often even unaware that it was long past dinnertime, endlessly apologizing that he had failed to call. Ultimately, she realized that Pradeep just loved his work. She had seen his behavior at home, too. When their old television had broken a few years back, Pradeep had spent an entire weekend taking the television apart and then testing every single component until he found a bad relay switch, which he then rebuilt from scratch using his soldering iron out in the shop in his garage. After ignoring the family over that entire weekend, he came to bed late on Sunday night, simply observing that it had certainly taken longer than he had expected to fix the old TV.

  Everyone had been called in on Saturday. At 9:00 a.m. they were still waiting on the decoded tapes until they were finally distributed at 9:30 a.m. When Pradeep first looked at the digital interpretations from the CCC he was impressed with the quality and clarity of the data. The oil was deep, about a mile below the surface, and yet it showed up beautifully on his seventeen-inch Unix workstation. He had heard the tapes had been stored in metal canisters in the basement of the Capitol. Heat is what ruined tapes like these. If you kept them cool and dry, they would last forever. The blasts used to do the soundings, back in the 30s by the CCC, had been large too, especially for onshore formations. He could see the impressions the sound waves had made as they coursed through the layers of sediment and limestone. The charges had been spaced far apart, meaning the detonated caches had to be larger. Such an approach was often used undersea, where the environmental impact and cost of each detonation was much higher. Better to have fewer large detonations than lots of small ones. On land, the economics and the environment were different. Lots of small blasts were preferred on land. Odd that the CCC hadn’t used a lot of small blasts to send out shockwaves. In fact, Pradeep knew that some shallow oil seismic waves in the old days were generated by repeatedly dropping huge, heavy blocks of weight from giant trucks that would drive over the landscape. The impact would create the sound waves needed to profile the oil reservoir, somewhat like a giant ultrasound. Pradeep’s guess was that the CCC had plenty of explosives which had compensated for what had to be the primitive equipment that was the norm back in the 30s. So, they chose to do fewer bigger blasts. Still, these images were very, very good. It was going to be easy to find the key formations to drill.

  They had given him the first half of Tape Number 3 to analyze. Navigating the data was somewhat like riding in an underground digital submarine. First, he quickly jumped vertically down to the layers of oil sand. In some areas, the pay sand was more than eighty feet thick. Amazing. Kuwait and Saudi had pay sand like this. Some areas in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, but Wisconsin? Empire Oil had drilled onshore wells when the sand was less than fifteen feet thick. The porosity was excellent, too. He had a vague recollection from his college studies that the Midwest generally had poor porosity, especially in the farming areas of southern Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Northern Illinois. He also recalled a heavy sedimentary belt that ran across the
Great Lake basin from Winnipeg on the west to Erie on the east. That might explain the excellent porosity. Large, even granularity, little evidence of gypsum, the oil was likely to be light. One perforation in the well casing in the middle of each formation and the oil would flow from hundreds of yards in every direction. With modern production techniques and some chemical enhancements, it could flow from more than a mile away. Easy to find and easy to produce.

  Pradeep had been told he had only twenty-four hours to complete his initial analysis. They were going to reconvene on Sunday morning. Time was critical, and in the morning, there would be a large caucus where each of the explorationists would profile the top sites in their segment. Then the group would rank in order the top three formations recommended for drilling. Pradeep wanted to find the top prospect for drilling.

  He spent several hours combing slowly over his entire set of data, cataloging each of the reservoirs, calculating their gross size and key characteristics. Even though the biggest formations were easy to find, there were a number of outlying smaller formations that he documented, as well. This was no time to be careless. In the afternoon, he began to analyze the five largest formations in painstaking detail. He loaded each of the reservoirs into a 3-D software program that enabled him to more accurately calculate reservoir size. He sliced off the “tops,” or the highest portions of each of the big formations to determine the curvature and thickness of the “ceiling” of each reservoir. Ideally, the drill casing would enter the formation in an area where it would not splinter or fragment the rock formation that had trapped the oil, ensuring that the oil—and gas, if there was any—would remain in place and not escape into neighboring formations. It took him several hours to examine each of the highest points in each of the three largest reservoirs and find the best “top” to drill, or best path into the reservoir. At each stage, he recorded copious notes and observations in an electronic exploration log that he always used, and he captured hundreds of digital frames that documented each step of his analysis. By eight in the evening most of his colleagues had looked over the tapes, found their top drill sites, and summarized their findings for the Sunday morning meeting. It was Saturday night, and they wanted to get out of the office and not ruin the entire weekend.