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Chairman Rieber did not buy the Barco concession itself. What he bought and now shares with Socony is all of the stock in a Gulf subsidiary which in turn owns 79% of the stock in a company called Colombian Petroleum. The other 21% of Colombian Petroleum is still held by Carib Syndicate. In the highly involved concession arrangement both Colombian Petroleum and the Gulf subsidiary are the concessionaires, each being responsible for the other's obligations, which include a prescribed amount of well-drilling and, after potential production has reached about 20,000 bbl. per day, the building of a pipeline more than 200 miles to the Colombian coast. In the end, though, Texaco and Socony will have to stand the costs. Most favored parties in the Barco setup are the Colombian Government and the heirs of old General Barco and interests like American Maracaibo Co., who have bought shares in his original royalty rights. Without putting up a cent, Colombia and the Barco heirs & assigns will eventually receive total royalties amounting to some 10% of all Barco oil delivered to the pipeline terminal. What Chairman Rieber had been willing to pay for one of the richest concessions in South America remained a secret. In the oil industry the price was thought to be somewhere between $10,000,000 and $15,000,000. Two things were certain: the Mellons would never have let the Barco go at a loss, and Chairman Rieber would never have paid a dollar more for it than the figure he had set his mind upon.
Show Downs. The first thing in his life that Torkild Rieber set his mind upon was his own career. Born in a little town called Voss in the interior of Norway, he went to sea at 14, thereby upsetting the future plotted for him by his father, a progressive woolen manufacturer who expected to rear his eldest son in the family business. Son Torkild learned seamanship in sailing vessels, passed his examination for a master's ticket at 19, got his first command at 21. It was a sailing vessel and, more important, an oil tanker.
On the bridge of a steam tanker Captain Rieber sailed into Texaco in 1905, the company having bought the vessel he commanded. For four years he sailed for Texaco, was brought ashore to superintend the conversion of a peach orchard in Bayonne, N. J. into a great Texaco terminal. Today such a job would probably be given to a trained engineer. At that time it was given to Captain Rieber because he had horse sense, a command of men and the driving force of a triple-expansion engine.
His upward push within the company was interrupted just after the War, when he joined Joseph Stephen Cullinan, Texaco's first robustious president, in another oil venture. Mr. Cullinan had quit the company a few years before in one of those periodic management eruptions which have given Texaco such a peculiarly individualistic tang ever since it was founded in 1902. Mr. Cullinan had called for the usual showdown with the board of directors. A loser, he picked up his hat and walked out, with no hard feelings, to start what he hoped would be another Texaco. When he needed a good oil man he went to his old company, persuaded it to release Captain Rieber. But by 1927 Captain Rieber was back with Texaco again.