By Steve Sjuggerud
A year ago, I put 40,000 acres of land in West Texas under contract.
My plan was to buy it with a couple of friends. I couldn't believe our good fortune...
Oil was incredibly cheap and hated at the time, which you know is exactly what I want to see. It was selling below $40 per barrel, or below the cost of production. Also, nobody was drilling for oil back then... The number of active oil rigs in the entire state of Texas had dropped to an all-time low of 100 in August 2020.
So I went to Texas looking for opportunity.
One bank (out of the many we talked to) said it would lend to us with no money out of our pockets, because the appraised value of the land was so much higher than the purchase price. The 40,000 acres were highly productive... They were home to producing oil wells, agriculture, livestock, contracts for solar power, and more.