Brought Down by Long Bust, Texas Oilmen Pray for Another Boom From the Wall Street Journal (Paywall)

I have nothing againist the energy sector and the people who make any kind of living from it. I worked in the industry and I have a lot of family and friends that are still umemployed as the result of the 2014 bust. However this article focuses on a former CEO who lived a life of unbridled opulence and got "wrecked" by the same oil bust. It's a sob story that doesn't illicit any tears:

quote:
Just 2½ years ago, when a barrel of oil sold for about $100, John Schiller and his wife, Kristi, were living luxuriantly in Houston high society.

Mr. Schiller, the founder and chief executive of Energy XXI Ltd., had just closed a $1.5 billion deal to buy rival EPL Oil & Gas Inc. and create the largest publicly traded oil producer in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Mrs. Schiller, a former Playboy model, was featured in People magazine for her work with K9s4COPS, which gives trained police dogs to law enforcement. The nonprofit ran a float in California’s Rose Parade, and the Schillers waved to crowds as they stood beneath a 20-foot statue of their German shepherd, Johnny Cash.

Today, the Schillers are trying to avoid going broke. What many in the oil industry hoped would be a brief season of pain after prices began plunging in 2014 has turned into an arduously long recovery with oil stuck around $50 a barrel, affecting not only the bottom lines of companies but the personal finances of once-prosperous families.

Much of the couple’s net worth was wiped out when Mr. Schiller bet big that prices would quickly rebound—and lost. He’d used his Energy XXI shares as collateral for personal loans, and when their price fell along with the price of crude, he faced a series of devastating margin calls, documents show

Here’s some of the best tidbits:

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Mr. Schiller was on the host committee for this year’s Super Bowl, held in Houston, but he didn’t get to go to the game. Energy XXI sold its tickets.

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Mrs. Schiller, 46, is promising to make the best of things, regardless of what happens.

“If John and I have to move to a Mickey Gilley double-wide trailer, by God, I will have the first one ever photographed for Architectural Digest,” she says.

quote:
The Schillers haven’t been forced to declare bankruptcy, and they still have their 350-acre Texas ranch. But they put their 7,502 square-foot mansion in the exclusive River Oaks neighborhood on the market in August for about $5.4 million and have since cut the price by $500,000. Among other amenities, it features a two-story, air-conditioned playhouse used by their daughter, who is in elementary school.

And my favorite about this aggy alum:

quote:
By late November, the bottom was falling out of the oil market. As the Schillers attended a Texas A&M football game against Louisiana State University on Thanksgiving Day, they took in some bad news: Saudi Arabia announced it wouldn’t prop up flagging prices by cutting its oil production. LSU wound up beating A&M, 23-17. The next day, Energy XXI fell 37% to $4.01, a 90% decline from just a few years before.

“It was like watching your house burn down, but the water from the fire hose couldn’t quite reach it to put out the flames,” Mrs. Schiller recalled.