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Relentlessly, he kept up his fight for Tidewater. In 1948 he got Mission Corp. to form a new holding company, called Mission Development Co., as an ingenious vehicle to swallow up Tidewater stock as Mission Corp. acquired it. He then had Pacific Western buy 127,777 shares of Tidewater's common stock from a Dutch brokerage house, giving him control of 35% of Tidewater's outstanding stock. By 1951 Getty had won numerical control of Tidewater, and in 1953 he elected all but one of his directors to the board. Tidewater had been sitting for years on a big cash reserve and watching the rest of the oil world go by; Getty kicked it off and got it running. He used the cash to build new tankers, expand refineries, build the Delaware refinery.
With the Tidewater victory in sight, Getty figured that he needed even more oil to feed the giant refiner. The place to get it was one of the few Mideast areas left untouched: the Neutral Zone, a barren, null tract owned jointly by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Already, the American Independent Oil Co. (Aminoil) had a 60-year concession from Kuwait for its half share in the zone, and several companies were negotiating with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia for his share.
Getty stepped in and outbid them all. Though not a drop of oil had yet been discovered in the Neutral Zone, he offered Saud $9,500,000 in cash, $1,000,000 a year whether he hit oil or not, to be applied against 55¢-per-bbl. royalties and 25% of the company's net profits from Neutral Zone production. In 1949, "in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate," Pacific Western and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed an agreement giving Getty one-half interest in the Neutral Zone for 60 years. Getty sent son George to run the new venture, pumped $7,500,000 into drilling and exploration (Getty shares such costs, and all oil removed, on a fifty-fifty basis with Aminoil).
Luck in the Eocene. The gamble did not begin to pay off until 1953, when drillers hit a rich field 3,500 feet down in the Burgan sand at Wafra. Oil began flowing plentifully the next year, and production had doubled by 1956, when Getty made his second trip to the zone. He clambered over the rigs, walked tirelessly over the sands. A good practical geologist, he decided to drill in the neglected Eocene formation, down only 1,200 ft. Eocene oil can be pumped cheaper and faster than other oil ($30,000 and one week to drill a well, v. $200,000 and six weeks), is ideally suited for refining into heavy fuel oil. But oilmen laughed at the idea that there was enough oil in the Eocene formation to be commercially produced.