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But ultimately it's the price of oil that will determine Van Dyke's success. Thanks to intense demand for production, the cost of operating a drilling rig is now $400,000 a day; it was half that just a year ago. This year alone, Van Dyke drilled two dry holes off the coasts of Morocco and the Ivory Coast. Next year he'll try again in Morocco and in Ghana. He has just finished a $15 million 3-D seismic program in Madagascar, and he is planning his first well there, 6,000 ft. underwater. "You might spend $20 million on a well, but if you hit on it, it's worth $5 billion to $10 billion," he says.
No wonder Van Dyke isn't getting out. "People say, Van Dyke, why in the hell don't you retire?" he says. "Well, hell, I don't hunt and fish. I don't play golf. My wife won't let me chase girls, so what else is there?" And like any other great oilman, he's still got big dreams. "I'm taking all the properties we have in West Africa, going to make a great big sale, probably to the Chinese, the Indians, going to keep about a 15% interest." A deal like that could make him a billionaire and, of course, set him up for the next big play. "We're looking at the Black Sea, Russia, maybe the Caspian Sea area. We're getting into tar sands--getting into that in a big way," he says. "That's what the next generation of wildcatting will be doing." Van Dyke plans to be there.