Michel Halbouty, 95; Oilman Was Friend of Two Presidents

Michel Halbouty, a legendary Texas wildcatter and independent oil and gas man who was a friend of two Republican presidents, has died. He was 95.

Halbouty died Nov. 6 at a hospital in Houston. He had been battling cancer.

Known as Mike, Halbouty influenced George H.W. Bush to locate his presidential library at Texas A&M;, and he was an advisor on Ronald Reagan’s energy task force in Reagan’s first presidential campaign.

Halbouty is “one of the tallest Texans of our time,” Richard J.V. Johnson, chairman and publisher of the Houston Chronicle, said in presenting Halbouty with a leadership award in 2000.

A native of Beaumont, Texas, whose parents were Lebanese immigrants, Halbouty as a teenager carried water to workers in the oil fields of Spindletop, the famed oil field near Beaumont that launched the Texas oil industry in the early 1900s. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas A&M; and discovered his first big oil field shortly after leaving school.

He served in the Army during World War II as a lieutenant colonel, heading production for the Army-Navy petroleum section. After the war, he continued wildcatting, going broke a couple of times but making millions of dollars in between. At one point, he said, his company had 60,000 rigs.

The outspoken Halbouty was an ardent defender of the oft-maligned oil industry.

“The oil industry gave us our strong standard of living because of the assets and the money [that] flowed into this country,” he told the Houston Chronicle in 1996.

He was once quoted as saying that the oil business was not for the pessimist, “or even the realist.”

“You’ve got to be an optimist,” he said. “You’ve got to believe no matter how many dry holes you drill, the next one is going to hit.”

He is survived by his wife, Billye; a daughter, a son and seven grandchildren.