From pioneering technologies that shattered geological limits to building empires that outmuscled governments, these oil titans didn’t follow the energy industry — they dragged it behind them. Some were wildcatters with nothing but a hunch and a homemade rig. Others were empire-builders who transformed family fortunes into multinational juggernauts. All of them left the oil patch a very different place than they found it.
Here’s a look at the people who didn’t just strike it rich — they struck history.
1. The Koch Brothers
“I don’t want to have any kids that are country club bums,” Fred C. Koch famously said about his four sons. Koch Senior had developed a new cracking method to turn heavy crude into gasoline, which made him a fortune. It also led to some patent disputes, but most importantly, it set up the foundations of what would become one of the largest energy players in the world.
Decades later, two of his sons, Charles and David, turned that fortune into one of the largest privately held companies in energy. How? Through aggressive dealmaking, starting with energy and expanding into other industries. By the end of the 20th century, Koch Industries was a conglomerate, featuring real estate, chemicals, financial, services, and, of course, oil and gas. By the time David, the older brother, passed away in 2019, the two were worth close to $60 billion each.
2. Kelcy Warren
When Kelcy Warren started Energy Transfer Partners in 1996, the company operated 200 miles of pipelines and 20 employees. To date, the company operates close to 125,000 miles of pipelines, including the notorious Dakota Access. The way it all happened? Through acquisitions.
Warren started his career as a pipeline engineer—after almost dropping out of school, by the way. But he stuck with it, earned his degree, and went to work for the Lone Star Gas Company. After over a decade in the industry, working for other companies, he set up Energy Transfer and went on an acquisition spree, benefiting from a fast-growing energy industry. The company remains an active buyer—its deals from the last few years alone are worth $14 billion.
3. Harold Hamm
It is an indisputable fact that fracking changed the U.S. energy industry—and the world’s. And this happened thanks to people like Harold Hamm. Hamm struck his first oil at age 25, trying to test a theory he had about an untapped reservoir. The theory prove right and Hamm got to work, first in Oklahoma and then in North Dakota, where he made history.
Continental Resources bought 300,000 acres in the Bakken formation in early 2003, after Hamm learned that in Canada, producers were doing something called hydraulic fracturing to release oil from tight formations. If there was so much oil north of the border, he figures, there must be some on the U.S. side. The Bakken play turned out to be the biggest oil discovery since the Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 1968. “I find oil,” Hamm says.
4. George Mitchell
The U.S. shale revolution began in the 21st century, but the technology that drove it began much earlier, with people like George Mitchell, the son of a Greek immigrant who came to the U.S. in the early 1920s. As fate would have it, Mitchell’s father decided to settle in Texas. By the late 40s, young George had earned a degree in petroleum engineering and had become a wildcatter. But he didn’t like the way oil was extracted at the time, so he thought he’d try something different.
Fracking wasn’t popular because it was expensive, resource-intensive, and it didn’t really make sense—but Mitchell changed that by experimenting with fracking fluids in a place that would come to be known as the Barnett Shale. It took 17 years. By the end of that period, the fracking process was so refined, it made all the sense in the world—and still does, above a certain price threshold. And Mitchell cashed in nicely, selling his company Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. to Devon Energy and going home with $3.5 billion.
5. Monty Moncrief
The early 20th century was the era of the gushers. Basically, wherever a wildcatter drilled a hole, he got a gusher—or so they said. Success for William Alvin Moncrief, however, was not instant. After surviving the First World War, he entered the oil industry as an accountant, before moving to the land department of Marland Oil. There was more money to be made as a scout and Monty Moncrief needed money because he had plans. In 1929, smack in the middle of the Great Depression, he struck out on his own.
Moncrief did not strike oil at his first try. His gusher followed as many as 29 dry holes. Moncrief had tapped the giant East Texas field. Here’s how his son, 10 years old at the time, described the experience years later: “It was just the greatest thing I ever saw. People were jumping around and hollering and hugging each other just like they’d won a football game. I decided on the spot that I wanted to become an oilman.” So began the first golden era in American oil, driven by people who, as summed up by Continental’s Hamm, “find oil”.
Credit: Oilprice.com
