William Myron Keck

In his younger years, he became a "roustabout" in the oil business in Pennsylvania, before making his way to California. In California, he worked as a speculator drilling wells on contract for big oil companies. He often would take payment as leases instead of cash.[3] He struck oil in Huntington Beach[4] and in California's Kettleman Hills oil fields.[5] Keck was very successful as an oil prospector. In one instance at the height of the oil boom in the 1920s in Los Angeles, he was the only "wildcatter" to purchase a retain a lease on 300 acres of Andrew Joughin's farm outside Torrance. While other prospectors turned away from the property, Keck's "46 highly productive wells were considered one of California's most successful oil-drilling projects.[6]

By 1921, he had accumulated enough leases to start his own firm.[3] In 1921, Keck founded the Superior Oil Company in Coalinga, California.[7] The company focused on the exploration and production of oil and gas, and was involved with a number of new methods under Keck. Under Keck, in 1930 the company was the first to successfully use directional drilling in California.[8]

Author Kevin Krajick has described Keck as "the world's greatest oil prospector, a man whose instincts about the location of petroleum were so uncanny, some believed him clairvoyant."[2] He was one of the first oilmen to move his business to Houston, Texas,[5] and by 1931, his company had wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana and Venezuela.[3]

In 1933, under Keck the company was the first to use a reflection seismograph to help with finding hydrocarbons.[8] Keck was a "pioneer" in deep offshore drilling,[2] and in 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.[8] The first independent to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico,[5] he was the first to find commercial deposits in the Gulf of Mexico,[2] where he set consecutive records for the deepest-drilled well.[5] Running his company like a "one-man machine", he kept control of the company's stock after it went public.[5] The company also became the largest independent oil producer in the United States.[4] According to author Kevin Krajick, Keck also "practically ran the oil-rich nation of Venezuela."[2] Keck was an active stalwart of the oil lobby politically, in part through his attorney Harold Morton and lobbyist Monroe Butler.[6] Upon his death in 1964, his son William M. Keck Jr. became Superior's chief executive officer,[3] followed by leadership from his second son Howard.[9] He served as chairman of Superior. At one point, his fortune was estimated at $160 million, and at the time of his death, he and his family owned 51 per cent of Superior's shares.[10]

In 1954 he founded the W. M. Keck Foundation,[7][8] one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States.[1] The organization has funded the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Keck School of Medicine at USC.[4] His foundation provided $70 million of the $87 million cost of the Keck Telescope on the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, which upon its start of construction in 1990, was to be the largest astronomical telescope in the world.[14]