Joseph Googins, Roosevelt’s maternal grandfather, started buying mineral rights there after moving to Fort Worth to build stockyards in 1902. He bequeathed the rights to his daughter Ruth, who married Elliott Roosevelt, Franklin’s son, in 1933. They divorced 11 years later. She passed the rights to her son Elliott Jr., who remembers visiting the White House as a boy but says he doesn’t focus much on being a Roosevelt.
“It’s just the name I was born with,” he says.
Roosevelt is so sure he’s on to something that he has spent $10 million on additional mineral rights. Sitting near a framed collection of FDR campaign buttons, both pro and con, he declines to give the location, saying he fears others may buy competing claims.
“The Permian has produced 32 billion barrels to date,” he says. “Residual oil zones mean the Permian has the potential to produce that much again in the future—plus, plus, plus,” says Roosevelt, whose gray hair, streaked with white and parted on the left, is reminiscent of his famous grandfather’s.
“We don’t view this as a high-risk project.”
Roosevelt, a Republican, says he disagrees with some friends in the party about climate change: He says it’s real. Yet he no longer subscribes to another hydrocarbon premise—peak oil, or the idea that global output is poised to permanently decline. The remaining oil, however, won’t be cheap.
“It’s not coming out of the ground at $20 a barrel,” he says. “All our models are run at $90.”
West Texas Intermediate crude sold for $97.07 on April 1.
Roosevelt uses a $90-a-barrel selling price for his financial calculations. When he reaches full production, he says, he can generate a 15% internal rate of return if crude sells for $50 a barrel—greater if it sells for more.
Philip Verleger, once an energy advisor to former President Jimmy Carter, says cost could be a big deterrent to CO2 EOR. The risk for WTI crude to plunge back to its 2008 low of $32.40 a barrel means most drillers lack the patience to nurture the technology.