Entrepreneurs: The Great lam

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Dr. Wendell Phillips, paleontologist, is rather like a mirage on one of the Arabian deserts that he frequents. He looks too good to be true and he never quite comes into focus. By his own account, he has an apartment in Hawaii that is "the most beautiful in the world." He also says he has the world's largest library in South Arabia, owns part of a large apartment complex in Sacramento. He neither smokes nor drinks, but he is such a prodigious dancer that in his own words, "I have to take young 17-and 18-year-old girls in shifts." He adds, almost incidentally: "I am the largest private oil concessionaire in the world."

All this comes from a slight, softly spoken but highly persuasive man of 44. For the past 20 years, notables ranging from Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman have been talked into doing nice things for Wendell Phillips—like backing his archaeological expeditions and giving him oil concessions.

Bursting Talents. Born in Oakland, Calif., Phillips graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943, became a merchant seaman during World War II. After the war, his talents as a promoter burst upon the archaeological world. At 26, with backing from Nimitz, President Robert Sproul of the University of California, Prime Minister Jan Smuts of South Africa and others, he organized and led a mammoth archaeological expedition from Cairo to the Cape. He established his own grandly named American Foundation for the Study of Man and led further expeditions into Sinai, Aden and Yemen.

Some of his work was significant. For the Library of Congress he microfilmed the library at the monastery of St. Catherine's at Mount Sinai. His book,

Qataban and Sheba, was praised by scholars. But the U.S. State Department got annoyed when Phillips started dabbling in sensitive Mid-East politics. Scholars on his own expedition com plained that he was more interested in angles than in artifacts. And the Yemen trek ended abruptly when Phillips fled the country, fearing assassination by uncontrolled Yemeni soldiers.

By the Will. After the Yemen fiasco, Phillips took refuge in Oman in 1952 and became a good friend of Sultan Said bin Taimur. He went into the oil business one day when the Sultan, after complaining that he had not found oil like other Middle Eastern rulers, said to Phillips, "And by the will of God we shall have oil, for I am granting you the oil concession for Dhofar." Dhofar, an area the size of Ohio, has not yet produced any oil. But it made Phillips a millionaire, because he divided his 21% interest in the concession into 1,000 units, sold a quarter of them for about $1,500,000—and kept the rest, in case oil should be found. Later, the Sultan gave Phillips two offshore oil concessions, one of which he sold to a group headed by Wintershall A.G. of West Germany, keeping a 5% royalty. The West German firms are about to start seismic soundings. This year Phillips also acquired from the Sultan copper-mining and commercial fishing rights in Oman.