Larry Nichols gave his father two years. He had a law degree, a Supreme Court clerkship behind him and a perfectly respectable future in Washington ahead of him. Returning to Oklahoma City to help start an oil company sounded like a useful business education. Afterward, he could go back to practicing law. It was a sensible arrangement, subject to one small complication: the business kept giving him reasons to stay.
His father, John W. Nichols, had spotted European investors interested in American producing properties. Larry initially declined the invitation to join him. The salary negotiation did little to flatter the recruit. When Larry pointed out that he already earned more in Washington, his father replied, “you're not worth that!” Parental recruitment has certain freedoms unavailable to a human resources department.
The temporary assignment became Devon Energy. Nichols served as its chief executive from 1980 to 2010 and remained on its board until 2016. A career that began with an escape clause ended up helping change how American gas was produced and how his hometown looked. The interesting part is how often he reached those destinations by taking the less obvious turn.
A geologist takes the Washington exit
John Larry Nichols was born in Oklahoma City on July 6, 1942, and graduated from Casady School in 1960. Princeton came next. Economics was his initial direction, but fieldwork offered a persuasive alternative: being paid to spend time outdoors. He switched to geology and earned his bachelor's degree in 1964. His route into the oil business had acquired its scientific foundation before he had decided to enter the business.
Geology did not immediately furnish the career he wanted. He went to the University of Michigan, earned his J.D. in 1967 and distinguished himself academically as a member of the Order of the Coif and a comment editor of the law review. There was plenty in that record to support the Washington plan.
His 1967-68 Supreme Court clerkship linked him to Justice Tom Clark and Chief Justice Earl Warren. He then worked at the Justice Department, including as special assistant to William Rehnquist in the Office of Legal Counsel. Warren and Rehnquist supplied an unusually broad political education. Nichols had worked close to consequential legal decisions before he ever had an oil company's decisions to make.
That background makes his return home more interesting than a routine succession. There was a profession to leave. There was also a father whose financial experience complemented his son's knowledge of rocks and law. Between them, they had several ways to examine the same proposition.
A company small enough to share the receptionist
Devon began operations in 1971. Its early staff amounted to “four and a half employees,” Nichols recalled, because the receptionist was shared with another firm. That fraction is a useful corrective to the view from the eventual executive suite. The first task was to raise money and acquire producing interests. Before Devon could become an institution, it needed a transaction that would keep the lights on.
Even the name came from practical improvisation. While raising capital in London, father and son considered English counties. Devonshire offered a connection to the Devonian geological period. They shortened it to Devon. Larry remembered the discussion taking place at a bar after meetings with investors; his father's version involved a map. He allowed that both recollections could be true. Corporate naming is rarely improved by removing the refreshments.
The family business also benefited from the fact that they were creating something together. Larry was not being installed over a settled hierarchy of employees who had spent years waiting for promotion. He brought an independent career and the option to return to it. His father brought the appetite for starting again.
Buying a future, one company at a time
The industry downturn of the 1980s forced a larger question. Devon could simplify itself as a private business or enter the public markets and pursue consolidation. Bank financing had become harder to obtain after the bust, and the 1986 tax changes had altered familiar funding arrangements. Nichols saw those constraints as reasons the industry would reorganize.
Devon went public in 1988. Acquisitions became a way to assemble capabilities and properties that the company could subsequently develop. PennzEnergy and Santa Fe Snyder were among the combinations that expanded its reach. The ambitions were considerable; the logic was cumulative. Each completed deal changed what Devon could attempt next.
“They all fit,” Nichols said of the acquisitions. By 2003, the company had also combined with Ocean Energy in a $5.3 billion stock transaction. The portfolio reached across different geographies and kinds of exploration. Building size was useful because it opened opportunities that a smaller balance sheet could struggle to finance.
There was a limit to growth by purchase. Eventually the acquired assets had to produce. Nichols described a deliberate movement toward an organization that could increasingly grow through drilling. Buying businesses had assembled the ingredients. Engineers and geologists still had to make the recipe work, underground, where a persuasive presentation was of limited assistance.
The turn beneath North Texas
Devon's acquisition of Mitchell Energy in 2002 brought it into the Barnett Shale. George Mitchell's company had spent years developing ways to make gas production from shale practical. Nichols was explicit about that debt: “There's only one pioneer, and that's George Mitchell.” His own company's contribution followed that earlier persistence.
After the purchase, Devon experimented with applying horizontal drilling to the Barnett. A vertical well crosses a formation; a horizontal section can run through it, exposing more of the productive rock. Combined with the work on hydraulic fracturing, that change helped extend drilling beyond the most favorable part of the field.
By 2004, Devon was expanding its horizontal program into more complex areas of the Barnett. In 2007, it drilled its 1,000th horizontal well there. The sequence matters: acquisition, experiments, encouraging results, then a wider application. A purchase supplied the opportunity; a series of technical decisions made more of it.
For Nichols, it was another way to look again at territory others already knew. The rock had been there all along. What changed was the combination of techniques, capital and willingness to keep testing. The shale story is crowded with participants, and his insistence on Mitchell's place in it gives his own part a useful sense of proportion.
The skyline was a space problem
Above ground, Devon had another problem of its own making. Its Oklahoma City employees had spread across several buildings. Growth had made communication awkward. A new headquarters offered a way to bring them together, and the resulting Devon Energy Center opened in 2012 as a 50-story addition to the skyline.
The architecture was conspicuous, but the planning began with practical requirements. The architects worked from the company's space needs and developed a complex that included public amenities as well as offices. A café, green space and an auditorium helped connect it to the surrounding city. A corporate address could also be somewhere other people had a reason to go.
That outward connection extended across the street to Myriad Botanical Gardens. Devon lent the city $95 million to accelerate downtown improvements through a tax increment financing arrangement. The distinction matters: this was a loan tied to future tax revenues, rather than a simple gift of that amount. Streets, sidewalks and public space were part of the undertaking.
The gardens offered a particularly legible result. An office tower expresses success from a distance. A park has to persuade people to come inside and use it. Nichols delighted in the response of children playing in the renovated fountains. Their verdict arrived without a consultant's report or a quarterly conference call.
A different sort of working day
Succession came in stages. John Richels became chief executive in June 2010, and Nichols continued as executive chairman. The transition had been in preparation for several years. Nichols retired from the board on June 8, 2016. His plans for the following day included an investor presentation in New York.
“It's not your typical, go take a nap and play golf.”
Larry Nichols, on retirement, 2016
Oklahoma City continued to occupy his time. In 2018, Allied Arts honored Larry and Polly Nichols together for their support of the cultural community. Their granddaughter Addison Starling presented flowers at the event. The setting was the top floor of the Devon Tower: a fitting venue for a gathering about what the city might do with the resources its businesses created.
The University of Oklahoma named him its 2023 Oklahoma Trailblazer. The Oklahoma Geological Foundation followed with its 2024 Living Legend recognition. His later public affiliations include lifetime trustee of The Nature Conservancy in Oklahoma, listed in its 2025 impact report. The National Petroleum Council's 2024/2025 membership roster identifies him as Devon's chairman emeritus.
The two-year arrangement had become a lifetime's work, with room for more than an oil company. Washington supplied one possible future. Returning home supplied another, less predictable one. Nichols kept finding reasons to extend the stay. Oklahoma City eventually acquired a rather tall reminder of the decision.