Larry Hagman, the actor best known as J.R. Ewing on TV's "Dallas" has gotten way too much attention this week for his new gig as spokesman for German solar maker SolarWorld. Hagman has garnered hundreds of internet headines for quotes like: "When affordable oil gives out, we're in real trouble--I mean the collapse of civilization, within 15 to 20 years."
That's the standard line from the Peak Oil crowd, no more interesting when coming from an actor. (see Jon Fahey's take on this: Why Is This So Hard? Solar Doesn't Replace Oil.) More interesting is to consider what the "real life" J.R. Ewing has been up to recently.
The "Dallas" character was based on the real-life Ray Lee Hunt, the Dallas billionaire oilman. Hunt's father H.L. Hunt founded the family oil company on poker winnings. Ray set himself apart from his many siblings (who in 2008 sold Hunt Petroleum to XTO Energy for $4.2 billion) by forging out on his own with Hunt Oil.
Though oil is still a big part of Hunt's business, in recent years his focus has been on natural gas. Hunt made some international headlines a couple weeks ago when Russia's Gazprom revealed that it was interested in buying out Hunt's 17% stake in a liquified natural gas plant in Yemen. France's Total operates the plant with a 40% stake. Hunt's share reportedly could fetch upwards of $1.5 billion, giving a huge boost to a fortune that Forbes valued at $3 billion last year.
Hunt reportedly said he hadn't had any talks with Gazprom and had not been looking to sell the stake because it complements his other big LNG investment, Peru LNG, which launched earlier this year. Hunt owns 50% of the Peru plant, which cost $3.8 billion to build. He also has big stakes in a number of Peruvian gas fields and pipelines.
As we explained in last year's cover story, ExxonMobil: Green Company Of The Year, pushing natural gas as a replacement for coal will do far more to clean the air and stop global warming than decades of solar development.
Outside of oil and gas, Hunt owns stakes in power plants in the Northeast, transmission lines in Texas, including a 150 megawatt cross-border line with Mexico built in 2007. This month Hunt Power bought Cap Rock Energy for $221 million. The company says that its Texas power lines are well situated to carry cheap juice from the many wind farms springing up across west Texas.
Instead of whining about the end of oil like Larry Hagman, Ray Hunt is building solutions in natural gas and power transmission, and perhaps most importantly, preparing son Hunter Hunt to some day take over the empire.