From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   How a Houston Oilman Confounded Climate Activists and Made Billions   
   By Benoît Morenne, July 11, 2023, WSJ   
   HOUSTON, Texas—Climate activists and Wall Street are making it tougher for   
   Big Oil to stay in the oil business. They’ve also helped make Jeffery   
   Hildebrand a multibillionaire.   
      
   Hildebrand, who is little known outside his hometown of Houston, has become   
   one of America’s largest independent drillers by buying assets on the cheap,   
   cutting costs and then squeezing out both oil and profit from wells that   
   others left for dead.   
      
   “Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted   
   wealth will gush forth,” Hildebrand said in a speech last year, sharing a   
   quote from Ashbel Smith, who has been called the father of the University of   
   Texas. He then offered to    
   cut the university’s president a check to have the words inscribed on   
   campus—if “this Green New Deal era that we live in” would allow it.    
      
   A knack for well-timed deals and a Rolodex filled with oil-industry CEOs have   
   lofted Hildebrand, once a competitive pole vaulter, into the billionaire’s   
   club. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs his net worth at $8.98 billion,   
   which would make him    
   the second-richest man in Houston, behind Houston Rockets owner Tilman   
   Fertitta ($10 billion) and before pipeline mogul Richard Kinder ($8.78   
   billion).    
      
   Hildebrand’s company, Hilcorp Energy, aims to increase production nearly 40%   
   to 500,000 barrels of oil and equivalent hydrocarbons a day by the end of   
   2026, according to Chief Executive Greg Lalicker. That would likely turn   
   Hilcorp into one of the 15    
   largest oil companies in the U.S. If the company hits the mark, Hildebrand   
   will award his 3,000 employees hefty bonuses that have become a trademark, in   
   this case, $75,000 toward a new car, and $25,000 to a charity of employees’   
   choice, company    
   executives said.   
      
   It’s a business model that is growing from a niche into a juggernaut as the   
   industry’s giants, facing mounting calls to cut their carbon emissions, dial   
   back on drilling and shed assets. Hilcorp is privately held so it doesn’t   
   face ESG demands—   
   short for environmental, social and governance issues—from investors. That   
   means the pressure on big oil companies isn’t necessarily leading to less   
   pumping, but rather pumping by less-accountable players.   
      
   Hilcorp has become a natural clearinghouse for big oil companies looking to   
   unload aging wells that may leak copious amounts of methane, a powerful   
   atmosphere-warming gas. It’s now the second-largest emitter of greenhouse   
   gas among U.S. oil-and-gas    
   producers after ConocoPhillips, according to a May report by environmental   
   nonprofits Ceres and the Clean Air Task Force. Hilcorp’s production is about   
   a fifth that of ConocoPhillips, which declined to comment.    
      
   According to Hildebrand, the company invests responsibly in older assets,   
   whose environmental performance had often been neglected. Hilcorp has reduced   
   greenhouse gas emissions from its operations and energy use by over 40% and   
   cut methane emissions by    
   35% since 2019, he said. Hildebrand said Hilcorp’s role in the energy   
   transition is to continue to produce fossil fuels to meet global demand.   
      
   Between 2017-2021, companies with methane-reduction goals sold $115.6 billion   
   worth of assets to firms that don’t have explicit targets for reduction, the   
   Environmental Defense Fund said in a report last year.   
      
   Over that same period, Hilcorp bought more than $9 billion worth of assets   
   from companies including an Exxon Mobil affiliate, ConocoPhillips and BP,   
   according to a tally by energy analytics firm Enverus.   
      
   Hildebrand’s ability to identify underperforming assets on other   
   companies’ books has been the backbone of his success, said his close friend   
   Anthony Petrello, the chief executive of drilling company Nabors Industries.    
      
   If a company is considering selling something to Hildebrand, it should   
   probably ask, “Why weren’t my guys able to make money on it?” said   
   Petrello, who serves as a Hilcorp director.   
      
   Hildebrand said his company focuses on older oil-and-gas properties where   
   Hilcorp’s scale, experience and deep pockets give it an advantage over the   
   smaller companies that have typically targeted aging assets.   
      
   “It’s what we’re good at,” Hildebrand said in an email.   
      
   After oil prices plummeted during the pandemic, Trump convened a White House   
   meeting with the CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and other oil   
   giants in April 2020. Hildebrand was the only private-company executive at the   
   table.   
      
   Hildebrand is obsessed with efficiency and a student of the minutiae that make   
   the difference between profit and loss, say friends. When he and his wife   
   decided to open a doughnut shop in their mansion-studded River Oaks   
   neighborhood, they sampled    
   kolaches from more than a dozen shops to find the optimum flavor for the local   
   pastry, according to people close to the couple.    
      
   Devout Catholics who avoid the limelight, he and his wife have donated   
   millions of dollars to Christian ministries and organizations. Hildebrand   
   often references a favorite Bible verse: “To whom much is given, much will   
   be required,” said Les Csorba,    
   a close friend of his and an adviser.    
      
   Hildebrand sees his charitable giving through the lens of efficiency, said   
   Csorba, a partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, using metrics   
   such as return on investment to measure the impact of his philanthropy.    
      
   Hildebrand’s rise began modestly. The son of a Texas veterinarian, he did a   
   brief stint at Exxon as a geologist before earning a master’s degree in   
   petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Soon, Hildebrand   
   struck out on his own.   
      
   In the first of a series of gambles, he offered his wife Mindy’s car title   
   as collateral for a bank loan to drill wells. The wells were a bust, but for   
   Mindy, “the rate of return was infinite,” he said at an event last year.    
      
   In 1989, he shifted strategies. With financial backing from Jack Trotter, a   
   prominent Houston investor, he co-founded Hilcorp—short for Hildebrand   
   Corporation—and started meeting with vice presidents at large oil companies,   
   negotiating small    
   properties away from them, said people close to him. Hildebrand’s bet was   
   that he could stimulate older wells on the Gulf Coast with gas and water to   
   coax out more oil, among other remediation techniques.    
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)