Back in 1913, David Fasken paid $1.50 an acre for plains outside Midland to make a fortune raising cattle. Fasken died 16 years later, unaware of the riches below the surface. Now his heirs are among the 100 families that are the biggest private landowners in the U.S. In the Fasken portfolio are the 165,000 acres in the Permian, a sedimentary basin of oil-steeped rock in Texas and New Mexico that produces more crude than every OPEC member except Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
