OIL: Exit Rieber

Into their handsome board room on the 26th floor of Manhattan's spike-topped Chrysler Building last week strode 15 grave directors of $661,067,033 Texas Corp. Eleven of them were there to debate the fate of their $100,000-a-year chairman — hardheaded Torkild Rieber, Norwegian-born onetime tanker master. Three, officers of the company, had come to listen. In the witness chair was Oilman Rieber. Out side, in the anteroom, were war and Adolf Hitler.

For seven violent, often distressing, sometimes incoherent hours the eleven directors wrangled over ways & means of piloting Texas Corp....