CORPORATIONS: The Unknown Giant

From under the white sands along the Persian Gulf two new oil wells gushed up 4,400 bbl. a day last week. The twin strike, in the Wafra field of the 50-mile-square Neutral Zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, meant more than just a new source of oil. For Wafra, it pushed output above 50,000 bbl. a day and increased estimated reserves to more than 5 billion bbl. For a tall, stoop-shouldered American named Jean Paul Getty, it was a multimillion-dollar payoff on a daring gamble.

Getty Oil Co., which is 82% owned by Getty and which controls a $1.5 billion oil-and-tanker empire, bought a 50% interest in the Neutral Zone eight years ago, when it had yet to produce a drop of oil. Today Getty holds one of the most important stakes in Middle Eastern oil, where he is the only U.S. individual producer among the giant corporations. Says Getty: "I own my companies. How many others do? There are just a few left like me."

To get his oil to market, Getty is as busy building tankers as he is drilling wells. For Tidewater Oil, which is also controlled by Getty, he has embarked on a $250 million program to build supertankers to carry Getty Co. oil from the Neutral Zone to its major markets in Western Europe, Japan and the U.S. Last weekend the 53,000-ton S.S. Tidewater slipped down the ways at Saint-Nazaire, France. It was the ninth new tanker for Tidewater since 1954 and the second in the past month. Sixteen more are on order at cut-rate French and Japanese shipyards. The total tonnage for all 25 will be 1,234,530 d.w.t. For his flagship, Getty is now dickering to build a 130,000-tonner in France. Said Getty: "My competitors have been burdened with small tankers. I am determined to obsolete their fleets by building no tanker less than 46,500 tons."

Sugar Candy. Oilman Getty, 64, is one of the least known among the world's oil giants, usually breaks into the press only with news of his marriages and divorces (five of each). An expatriate, he lives in hotel rooms from Europe to the Levant, has little social life, usually eats alone and frugally, wears out-at-the-elbow sweaters. A notorious penny pincher, he passes out tips sparingly, constantly grumbles about the high cost of everything from restaurant food to taxi fares. But he freely pays thousands for such hobbies as his private art museum (Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough, and perhaps the best U.S. collection of Louis XV and XVI furniture) and the zoo (four buffalo, two bears, an Abyssinian mountain goat), adjoining the Malibu home he has not visited in five years.

Getty's everyday pleasures are munching maple sugar candy and talking over big-wheeler deals in English, French, Arabic, German, Spanish or Italian. He has plenty to talk about. Besides his $300 million interest in Getty Oil, he controls 64½% of Tidewater Oil*($460 million worth), 59% of Skelly Oil (worth $335 million). He also has .417% of the Iranian Oil Consortium (worth about $8,000,000) and Oklahoma's $15 million Spartan Aircraft Co., $10 million worth of real estate from Acapulco to Manhattan's plush Hotel Pierre.