Roy Huffington, 90, Tycoon Tapped Indonesian Oil

Roy Huffington, an oilman who played a major role in developing Indonesia's oil and natural gas sector and later served as an ambassador to Austria, died Friday at 90.

Huffington also founded the Huffington Foundation, which donated millions of dollars to Houston charities, and served as the chairman of the New York-based Asia Society for more than seven years in the 1980s.

Huffington served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and upon his return he became a field geologist for Humble Oil Co. He later established his own gas and oil firm, Huffco.

He worked in Texas and Louisiana until 1968, when he struck a groundbreaking production-sharing contract with the government of Indonesia.

"I was interested in Indonesia because no oil and gas exploration had been done there for a significant period of time," he said in a February interview with the Houston Chronicle.

"Major companies at that time didn't like production-sharing contracts. They wanted to own (the oil and gas) in the ground, but the Asians said no, you get your money back in a share of the profits," he said. "Whether it's war, love, or business, you can lose the battle, the girl, or the business deal, so my timing happened to be very good on that."

Discoveries in East Kalimantan led to the development of a multibillion-dollar LNG export project between Indonesia and Japan, which became a major source of revenue for the country.

Huffington and his wife, Phyllis, lived in New Mexico and Midland, Texas, after marrying. In 1951, they moved to Houston, where he started Huffco.

Huffington sold his company for about $600 million after President George H.W. Bush appointed him as U.S. ambassador to Austria, where he served from 1990 to 1993 and worked to establish business links between former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe and Western firms.

Huffington's son, Michael, served as Huffco's vice chairman between 1976 and 1990 and then served a single term in the House of Representatives. He launched a failed, self-financed bid for Senate in 1994.

Huffington and his wife, who died in 2003, also established the Huffington Center on Aging at the Baylor College of Medicine.