The Great Texas Oil Heist by Robert Cargill

Little Oil vs. Big Oil

“The slant-hole story is a significant piece of Texas history, and it must be told before no one is left to tell it.”

Live in Longview, Texas? Shop Local!

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS NACOGDOCHES, TEXAS

Follow Robert Cargill

About the Author

Robert Cargill

Robert Cargill Jr. is a native son of East Texas where as a child he was fascinated by the flaring gas from oil wells in his grandfather’s back yard. He studied chemistry at Rice, earned a PhD at MIT, and was a research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley before becoming a chemistry professor at the University of South Carolina in 1962. His research there led to what became known as the “Cargill Rearrangement” and to the Russell Award for Excellence in Research in 1974. In 1980 he joined his father’s oil and gas business in East Texas that had suffered from the effects of the oil crises of the late 1970s. He maintains interests in the East Texas Oil Field and in other oil deposits. He is an active alumnus of Rice and MIT. He and his wife Martha have a blended family of seven children, twelve grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He and Martha live in Dallas.

Book Reviews

He unearthed a lot of things I didn’t know about and turned it into such a good book. Each chapter stood alone and you don’t have to read the entire book to catch on. He tied all the names and family together and turned it into a good historical novel. It is just enough little ‘Peyton Place’ to make it juicy.

The thieves continue to work — not just in the oilfield but wherever you find gluttony, envy and greed. Recognize it for what it’s worth. The Great Texas Oil Heist is a magnificent read filled with facts, unquestionable details and documentation.
This book is highly recommended for those who have lived in Texas or wished they had; those who work in the oilfield and those who just want to know the truth behind the scandals. It is a valuable learning tool from slant-hole drilling to Big Oil and Little Oil.

"Who would have thought a book about slant-hole drilling, even the illegal kind, would be interesting and enjoyable, much less a very good read? Bob Cargill has accomplished all of those things in his The Great Texas Oil Heist. He has done so in an accessible manner and with solid evidence. Highly recommended!”

"It is better written than most scholarly books, more tightly researched than most books by journalists, more intelligently understood than books by people who have not themselves been part of the industry, and fairer-minded than much of the polemical literature on the politics of oil."

“No other industry, I dare say, boasts such colorful characters as the oil and gas industry. Cargill’s meticulously researched book carries the reader from the earliest discoveries in Texas to later events such as the Arab oil embargo that struck at the core of our nation’s economy.” “Seeking to understand the role and motivation of his father, who despite his foibles, was an inspiration to the author and others, Cargill exposes the intense rivalries between “little” oil and “big” oil, and how this tension encouraged Texas’ notorious political chicanery.” “The Texas oil heist has only before been told as a footnote. Perhaps because the notoriety of the families whose fortunes were built through thievery was something better swept under the rug like the awkward uncle at Thanksgiving. Cargill’s meticulously researched book shows why Texas and the oil industry have been and continue even today to be both envied and reviled.”

"In The Great Texas Oil Heist Robert Cargill tells the story of the slant-hole drilling scandal of the 1960s with both the thoroughness and the verve it deserves. Impeccably researched and clearly written, this work is a well told and compelling tale of how politics, geology, money, and human nature combined to create a uniquely Texan scandal and how it was finally broken up. Cargill has done a service by shining a bright light on this long-running episode of criminality that has been talked about but never before explored in such meticulous detail."