Hail Halliburton as it turns 100
In today’s Texas Inc., we celebrate 100 years of Halliburton.
Here, you’ll read that Erle Palmer Halliburton pawned his wife’s wedding ring to start this business, which then survived a century of violent swings in the price of oil, not to mention the Great Depression and myriad other calamities. It also survived some of it’s own follies, including misguided mergers and national scandals. But in the long run — and it has had a long run — Halliburton clearly has gotten most things right.
Like Richard Pryor once remarked, “You don’t get old being no fool.”
Lasting 100 years is amazing when you consider the numbers.
A pretty stable statistic captured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is that roughly 70 percent of businesses do not survive after 10 years. This number seems to hold up in booms and busts, so the timing of when one launches a business doesn’t matter. Other statistics I’ve read say the average lifespan of a large company is about 15 years. Too often they fail, or get eaten up in a merger, and are long forgotten. But not Halliburton.
And thanks in large part to Halliburton, we are talking in realistic terms about energy independence for the United States. Texas is becoming the next Middle East as a net exporter of liquified national gas. And the Gulf Coast is thriving with plants that use natural gas as a feedstock to make plastics.
This revolution was made possible with drilling technology that Halliburton began developing as early as 1949.
The shale revolution was unimaginable as we crawled out of the 2008 financial crisis, but by 2010, there it was: hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, creating massive amounts of energy and wealth. It’s not like the banks we were bailing out to the tune of billions and even trillions could produce anything like that.
And at the same time, we’ve benefited from developments in renewable energy technologies, especially with wind and solar, but what natural gas represents is a cleaner burning fossil fuel that can serve as a bridge to a more renewable energy future. Halliburton — wittingly or not — is providing that bridge.
We think 100 years is worth noting. We hope you’ll enjoy learning about Halliburton’s long and impressive history in Texas Inc.