Roy Huffington

Roy M. Huffington (October 4, 1917 ’Ŭ July 11, 2008) was the founder and chairman of Huffco, one of the most successful independent international oil and gas companies in the nation. He was a legend in the world's oil patches and boardrooms. His father, an oilman, died in an accident when he was 14, so Roy had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to deliver papers to help pay family bills. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and earned his master's and doctorate in geology from Harvard University. He spent three years in the U.S. Navy on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Huffington set out on his own in 1956, but "didn't make a red cent for 18 months," then hit oil in 17 of the first 18 wells he drilled. He suspected that there might be natural gas in Indonesia, he once said, because its geology resembled that of the Gulf Coast. Huffington defied oil industry precedent by signing an unusually generous deal with Indonesia, and made a fortune on natural gas there. Previously, oil companies mostly the giant ones called majors, had demanded ownership of the reserves they found and produced. The companies then paid the producing countries royalties and taxes. Mr. Huffington, by contrast, made a deal to share the revenues from any oil and gas his company found. Big oil companies fought back with money and influence. Huffington himself raised the money by bringing in other independent oil companies as partners. In 1972, his company discovered a giant natural gas reserve in Indonesia. He helped persuade Japanese utilities to pay for a pipeline and a plant to convert gas to liquid form, or LNG. He then persuaded the United States to subsidize building tanker ships. After only seven years of operation, Indonesia was the world's largest LNG supplier. The project increased Huffington's personal net worth to more than $300 million and he sold his business to the Chinese Petroleum Corporation in 1989. In 1990, his old friend President George H.W. Bush asked him to be U.S. Ambassador to Austria, and he served for three years. His son, Michael Huffington, won a Congressional seat in California but lost a senatorial bid there. The political commentator Arianna Huffington is a former wife of Michael’Ŵs. Roy Huffington addressed the student delegates at the 1986 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. about his career as an oilman.