The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

Not only economics and geology drove the restructuring of the oil industry. So did the hatreds, resentments, and feuds that fester inside families. A war among the heirs to the Keck family fortune resulted in Mobil’s acquiring Superior Oil, the nation’s largest independent, for $5.7 billion. But the most prominent family troubles were those that fastened on Getty Oil, the great and rich integrated company that J. Paul Getty had begun building in the 1930s and then turned into a world company in the 1950s with the discoveries in the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Getty, the firm believer in value, had died in 1976. Now, in the 1980s, Getty Oil was not replacing its reserves, and its stock was selling at a very low price relative to the value of the company’s holdings in the ground. One of J. Paul Getty’s sons, Gordon, was more interested in making music than in searching for oil—he had just composed a song cycle based on the poems of Emily Dickinson—but he wondered where all the value had gone. That put him at odds with the professional managers running Getty. They may have thought they controlled the levers of power, but Gordon Getty and his allies controlled the stock. J. Paul Getty had treated all his sons poorly, including Gordon, and the younger Getty had no great reason to be loyal to the memory, or the handiwork, of his father. When opportunity came knocking, he was ready to open the door.