In Africa, people have a concept called Big Men. Everyone wants to be big. These are the men who have the most wealth, status and power among their communities, tribes or nation.

The oil and gas industry is full of such men. At a resources investment event in Dallas recently, T. Boone Pickens, 86, was the keynote speaker. He declared, “In my lifetime I’ve made $4 billion, lost $2-, given away $1- and I still have $1- left, so I guess that’s enough to see me to the finish line.”

At our recent Energy Capital Conference in Houston, Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, our Executive of the Year and another Big Man, detailed his company’s vast potential, and that of the U.S., for increasing oil production. The Spraberry/Wolfcamp Trend is now the world’s second-largest oil field, even though it has been producing black gold in significant quantities since the 1950s.

In yet another case of six degrees of separation in the oil patch, Sheffield recently sold his Alaskan North Slope assets to his friend Jim Musselman, another of the industry’s Big Men, who now runs Caelus Energy LLC in Dallas. He was formerly the CEO of Kosmos Energy, the Warburg Pincus-backed company that in 2007 found the 600-million-barrel Jubilee Field offshore Ghana—the largest find offshore West Africa in a decade. From discovery to first oil was achieved in record time, under four years, despite Kosmos’ disputes with the government, its PE backer, and accusations of flouting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Not to mention the ongoing saga of getting enough capital to the right place, on time, to get to first oil.

Along the way, ExxonMobil, CNOOC and the government of Ghana each tried to buy out Kosmos’ stake in the field, for as much as $5 billion. It did not sell. Also along the way, Musselman was deposed from the company, although he is still on its board.

At the recent Houston premier of a new documentary aptly titled, “Big Men,” he told us why he decided to cooperate in making the film. “I decided, ‘Let’s do something cool.’ I thought I was helping our industry. I wanted to show that there is not a resources curse every time a country finds oil. Sometimes it works out and we can add real value.”

This powerful documentary explores the intersection between four kinds of Big Men: American wildcatters like Musselman, their leaders and finally, local activists (some would say terrorists) who try to sabotage oil development. All four are struggling to find and produce oil and generate a return, amidst delays, controversies, government corruption and pipeline sabotage. The common man rarely benefits from that oil income, which has so much potential to transform a country.

Filmmaker Rachel Boynton followed Jim and his team for five or six years with unlimited access. She interviewed on film energy officials in Nigeria and Ghana, private-equity player Jeffrey Harris, formerly of Warburg Pincus in Manhattan, and Kosmos employees. She stayed with masked terrorists in the impoverished Niger Delta who routinely blow up oil pipelines there, in their effort to gain oil and power, to become Big Men.

What does all this mean? To take the risks in Africa or elsewhere takes Big Men. In the film, Musselman emphasizes that risk. To go into a foreign country that has no oil production and never has had, and try to negotiate fiscal and legal terms with the government, and actually get an offshore well drilled, takes risk to a new level. To show your data to someone on Wall Street and convince them to pony up millions of dollars on a wildcat well in a new province takes guts. To juggle the various players and suppliers and get the right equipment on site in order to develop a new field in deepwater, takes someone who can push the envelope.

Elsewhere in this issue, see Steve Toon’s column on another Big Man, Aubrey McClendon, who has come roaring back with ever-bold business plans and several acquisitions, backed by $10 billion in fresh debt and equity commitments.

In Dallas and Houston, Denver and Oklahoma City, you see the effects of Big Men all around you, from hospital wings to museums to schools. The new Perot Museum of Natural Science in Dallas displays the names of many familiar donors, Big Men such as Pickens, Trevor Rees-Jones, Bobby Lyle, Forrest Hoglund.

To these men, and many others, we owe a huge debt, for they have led us to where we are today, approaching all-time-high levels of oil and natural gas production, generating millions of jobs and contributing in numerous ways to the U.S. economy, changing the geopolitical calculus. We are exporting our knowledge to countries around the world, and they in turn, send their best and brightest to our shores. Everyone wants to be big.

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