Autry Stephens, a petroleum engineer raised on a Texas peanut and watermelon farm who became the richest US oilman, has died. He was 86.

The company he founded, Endeavor Energy Resources LP, announced Stephens’ death Friday in a statement. The cause was cancer, a spokesman for the company said. Stephens told the Wall Street Journal in February 2024 that a cancer diagnosis made him willing to sell Endeavor after building it into one of the largest closely held drillers in the Western Hemisphere’s hottest oil patch.

“Autry embodied the wildcat mentality of courage, grit, and tenacity associated with the Permian Basin,” Lance Robertson, chief executive officer of Endeavor, said in the statement. 

Diamondback Energy Inc. agreed in February to buy Endeavor for $26 billion in cash and stock. It made Stephens the wealthiest US oil driller, with a net worth of $25.9 billion based on the Diamondback share price at the time of the announcement. The deal ended years of speculation over who might buy Endeavor. 

Stephens founded the Midland, Texas-based company in 1979 after working for Humble Oil and Refining Co., now part of Exxon Mobil Corp. At first, he focused on providing ad hoc engineering help. Over the following decades, Stephens transitioned from an engineer-for-hire to an oil tycoon, buying up drilling rights and branching into ancillary businesses such as trucking, well services and roustabout construction. His first exploration business, founded in 1996, was called Big Dog Drilling.

The drilling rights it acquired and held included 344,000 acres — an area 400 times the size of New York City’s Central Park — in the core of the Permian Basin. Those holdings became much more valuable when oil companies figured out how to access crude locked within impermeable shale rock through a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking.

The practice, pioneered by American drillers, took off in the 2010s in what became known as the shale revolution. It pushed the US from a net importer of oil to net exporter.

‘Near-Death Experience’

The 2008 financial crisis, which crushed oil demand and bankrupted some US operators, forced Stephens to shut down almost all of his rigs. That was a “near-death experience,” Stephens told Forbes magazine in 2014, and he might have had to sell the company had oil prices not spiked soon after. He said he responded by reducing his company’s reliance on credit lines by issuing long-term bonds and used futures contracts to lock in stable prices for his oil. 

“The accomplishments I am most proud of are creating 1,800 jobs and that our company produces a product that is vital to our country’s well being,” Stephens told his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.

“Having the spirit of a true entrepreneur, Autry immediately recognized opportunities, strategically purchasing mineral rights and drilling vertical wells one-by-one,” Endeavor said Friday in its statement. “As others fled the market during downturns, Autry bought additional leasehold and consummated several corporate acquisitions, all of which added tremendous value to his portfolio.”

Born in 1938, one of five children, Stephens was raised on his family’s farm near De Leon, a small town 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Fort Worth. His parents were Martin Stephens and the former Lila Johnson.

He didn’t show much promise as a farmer, and a major drought during his final year of high school prompted his father to recommend he seek a different line of work, he recalled to the Midland Reporter-Telegram newspaper in 2022.

He attended the University of Texas at Austin and studied petroleum engineering, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1961 and a master’s in 1962. The possibility of working in exotic locales such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela lured him to the oil industry, according to a profile on the website of his alma mater. Instead, he made his mark at home in Texas.

After graduating, Stephens worked for Humble Oil, then spent two years with the Army Corps of Engineers. He spent a decade at a local Midland bank, where he appraised oil and gas holdings. Inspired by the entrepreneurial clients he met, he decided in 1979 to forgo a corporate career track and spent a short time as an independent consulting engineer.

He drilled his first well in 1979 in the Spraberry Trend, an oil field within the Permian Basin, followed by two in 1980 and four more in 1981, according to his interview with the Reporter-Telegram.

Stephens had an unexpected brush with fame as a reality star in the truTV documentary series Black Gold. He was a key figure in the plot of Season 2, which centered on workers on one of his rigs racing to finish four wells in 50 days.

Stephens, who was not a smoker, was initially diagnosed with lung cancer, and the disease spread elsewhere, the spokesman for Endeavor said. 

“He leaves a legacy that will continue to shape the future of our company, community, and the oil and gas industry for years to come,” Robertson, Endeavor’s CEO, said in the statement.