The story begins in 1913, when a Toronto lawyer named David Fasken bought the land for US $ 1.5 per acre with a plan to turn it into a ranc...
The story begins in 1913, when a Toronto lawyer named David Fasken bought the land for US $ 1.5 per acre with a plan to turn it into a ranch.
In the Permian oil basin of the United States, the production is so vibrant that the light stays on all night. It makes NASA's satellite images look like a giant Lite Brite toy. However, there is still a darker place here.
It is a large area of more than 250 square miles (approximately 65,000 hectares) that contain an estimated US $ 7 billion in oil and gas reserves. At the present time, when everything in this oil tank can be sold, the Fasken farm is dormant there. Simply because the owners are not interested in selling their land.
The story begins in 1913, when a Toronto lawyer named David Fasken bought the land for US $ 1.5 per acre with a plan to turn it into a ranch. However, there was too little water so he could do it. Sixteen years later, Fasken died, and it remains unknown how abundant the underground resources would be.
Now his heirs are among the top 100 families with the most land in the US, at 40th by area and slightly higher by value. In addition to the land in the Fasken oil basin, they also own 3 lands in South Texas and a variety of real estate of various types scattered in Lone Star State and California, along with a grape farm in Napa Valley.
The Permian oil basin is primarily shale oil, located in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico and is producing more crude oil than all members of the World Petroleum Exporting Organization (OPEC) except Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The oil giants all have plans to increase production in the Permian oil basin by acquiring land and companies that have been owned by clans for generations. Two years ago, Exxon Mobil bought Bass land for $ 6 million. The next deal could be Royal Dutch Shell, which acquires Endeavor Energy Resources, which is owned by Autry Stephens and the family for more than $ 10 billion.
Fassken Oil & Ranch is still following the ancient traditions of Western Texas with the motto "never sell your oil fields". The company is owned by descendants of Barbara Fasken, who married David Fasken's nephew and had stepchildren before entering Fasken's house. Her son, Robert Dickson, who died in March, inherited 50% of her fortune, while 2 grandsons each own 25%.
The company is also operating in an ancient way. Instead of transferring clean water to the wells, they use mostly non-potable water or recycled water. While the Permian basin recently exploded vertically, wells, Fasken is still sticking to the old school of horizontal exploration.
Over the past decade, the booming shale oil industry in the US has been largely funded by debt, but Fasken is not. As Davis explained, the Fasken farm was unusually quiet because the family wanted to go slowly and conserve resources. They do not want to rush like other places. Even at the present time, an acre in the Permian costs more than US $ 70,000, or 46,000 times the price that ancestors paid for land.
Reference from Bloomberg
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