Albert Hrubetz III, chairman and president of Dallas-based Hrubetz Oil Company, died on Feb. 26, 2025, after a brief illness.
He was an oilman, geophysicist, business leader, patriot and inventor, as well as a devoted husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and is also remembered as a lifelong Catholic, civic leader, hunter, fisherman and martini master.
Hrubetz was born on Jan. 9, 1929, to Jennie and Albert Hrubetz, Jr. He grew up in the coal mining town of Maryville, Ill., at a time when oil began upending the coal business. As he wrote in his memoir, published in 2017, “I was raised in humble surroundings, no stranger to gangs, saloon life, coal miners, gangsters and political corruption. I learned early on to be self-reliant and make decisions under uncertainty – traits that unconsciously guided me through life.”
Hrubetz set out to overcome his impoverished childhood by conquering the then-new world of oil exploration. He did – and in his own indomitable style. The New York Times aptly observed, “Mr. Hrubetz is no stranger to innovation in the pursuit of oil and gas.”
Bright Spots of His Career
After serving in the Marines shortly after World War II, he earned a bachelor’s in geological engineering from the Institute of Technology, St. Louis University. He later received a degree from the Advanced Management Program and the Owner-President Management Program of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University.
In 1953, Hrubetz joined the Exploration Department of Continental Oil Co. (Conoco) as a geophysicist. While assigned to its Geophysical Research and Development Department in 1957, he developed a seismic technique that directly detected oil and gas deposits by amplitude analysis. Conoco did not utilize the method. However, other major oil companies successfully used the “bright spot” technique nearly 20 years later in the Gulf of America/Mexico. As Conoco’s chief geophysicist of international exploration, he discovered the major oil field offshore Dubai, only after the company warned him not to use an untested technique discredited by its research department. Hrubetz resisted, stayed the course and prevailed.
Hrubetz advanced to executive assistant to the president, and then executive manager responsible for integrated petroleum operations in the southern United States, Conoco’s chief profit center. Hrubetz became vice-president of an independent oil company from 1968 to 1972, overseeing worldwide negotiations, exploration and production. He organized an exploration program that resulted in the discovery of an oil field during the North Slope of Alaska boom. His elaborate, covert bidding process utilizing a moving train to secure highly competitive leases prior to the State lease sale became an oil industry legend.
In 1972, Hrubetz joined Texas Pacific Oil Co. as senior vice president of exploration and international. In 1975, he was named executive vice president and later became president and director of its 17 foreign subsidiaries. Hrubetz led the team that discovered what remains the largest gas field in Thailand, overlooked by two major oil companies. Upon becoming president and CEO of Texas Pacific in May 1978, Hrubetz took the company from an asset value of $376 Million to $2.3 billion in less than two years. In 1980, Texas Pacific was sold to Sun Oil Co. in what was then the second-largest commercial sale in U.S. history.
In September of that year, he founded Hrubetz Oil Co. in Dallas after independently raising $100 million. In addition to oil exploration, HOC was awarded multi-country patents for innovative in-situ contaminated soil remediation techniques. Hrubetz followed up by researching and developing mobile remediation equipment for successful cleanup operations in the United States and Canada.
Legacy
As a hobby, he recorded worldwide earthquakes with a seismic station incorporating highly sensitive detectors, some self-designed. Hrubetz’s leading-edge work and bold approach garnered respect and admiration among a host of business leaders. Frank Palamara, former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, said “Al is a big part of America’s ‘greatest generation.’” Legendary oilman Herbert Hunt commented “Al’s involvement around the world tells of the hurdles, workings, challenges, and history of the energy industry.” T. Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of BP Capital Management, wrote “You would be hard-pressed to find two Depression-era children growing up in more divergent places than Maryville, Illinois and Holdenville, Oklahoma, yet that is one of the first ties that bind Al Hrubetz and me. We are also bound by being oil industry mavericks passionate about our industry, the many changes it would see in our lifetimes, and the American Entrepreneurial spirit.”
Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Assoc. and former Texas Agriculture Commission, noted, “Al Hrubetz’s remarkable life is the quintessential American story. Over six decades and six continents, Al was an original globetrotter as he rode the highs and lows of the industry that built America into the powerhouse she is today.”
Bestselling author and filmmaker, Dinesh D’Souza, might have put it best: “This swashbuckling man has not only lived life to the fullest, but in the process, he has enriched the lives of his fellow man.”
Hrubetz served on many committees of many professional associations and scientific societies, including as a Trustee Associate of the AAPG Foundation, as well as director of the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, chairman of the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
He authored two books: “Maryville Illinois: Growing Up During the Great Depression,” and “A Geophysicist’s Memoir: Search for Oil on Six Continents.”