Just 62, Mike Linn is retired from his third exploration and production (E&P) start-up, this one the 11-year-old Linn Energy LLC with an enterprise value of more than $18 billion. A native Appalachian, Linn entered the business from a law practice. “I worked four summers in college on a drilling rig in western New York. My fourth summer, I said, ‘I’m going to law school.’”

With his law degree from the University of Baltimore in 1977, he worked as a prosecutor and, moving to Pittsburgh, as a litigator. But his father, a petroleum engineer, and brother, a geologist, pulled him back into oil and gas in 1980. “My father said, ‘Mike, why don’t you run the business and raise the money, and Eric will drill the wells.’” The brothers bought Dad out in 1985 and sold the Appalachian assets in 1990.

They kept the name, Meridian Exploration Corp., built a new portfolio in Appalachia and in the Permian Basin, and sold that in 2000. Linn formed Linn Energy in 2003 and, in 2005, an investment banker, Kolja Rockov, suggested he turn the E&P company into the first U.S. upstream MLP. “I hired him as my CFO. I said, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this together.’”

The IPO in January 2006 netted $261 million; its market cap was $584 million. Through June 2014, the company’s acquisitions totaled some $17 billion.

Linn remains on the Linn Energy board and runs his MCL Ventures LLC, which buys royalty and nonoperated interests. A past chairman of the IPAA, Linn also serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, such as the Texas Children’s Hospital and Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Oil and Gas Investor visited with him recently.

Investor: You moved Linn Energy to Houston from Pittsburgh. Is Houston home now?

Linn: I root for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s why Linn Energy’s company colors are black and gold. But I have Texans tickets now and Astros tickets. I’m not going back to the winters; I like the heat.

Investor: You took Linn public as an MLP but without a general partner.

Linn: We did the LLC approach. There would be no GP, no IDRs, no backing from the GP. It would be fair capital. Everyone owns the same stock. And an LLC is a corporation, so you have annual meetings and more governance, just like a C-corp. And, when you’re an LLC, you can check the box to be taxed as a partnership. We’re lumped into MLPs even though we’re an LLC. I thought when we did that in upstream, everyone would follow us, but they haven’t.

Investor: Is this why Linn is the biggest?

Linn: That’s one of the reasons. Another is that we were out a year before anyone else. We had first-mover advantage and we were able to buy a lot because our cost of capital is unique.

Investor: Were transactions harder to come by, as producers were holding onto legacy leasehold in case they could produce their shale?

Linn: It was a road bump. We started drilling for ourselves in the Granite Wash. That doesn’t fit the MLP space. It has a high decline rate. It’s hard to maintain the capital when you’re shipping it out [in distributions]. We’re bringing the [overall portfolio’s] decline rate back under 20%.

Investor: As the shale plays were being sorted out, producers started shedding some mature assets to fund their unconventional-play drilling.

Linn: Yes. That’s why we just did the deal with Devon Energy and with BP. And, we traded Wolfcamp acreage in the Permian Basin to ExxonMobil for Hugoton [Basin], long-life gas reserves. I always said that, if you work for Linn Energy and there is a seismic log on your desk, that shouldn’t be there. We’re not explorationists; we exploit.

Investor: What are the threats to continued monetization of U.S. resources today?

Linn: Water is going to be a big issue if more of us don’t recycle it, especially when we’re drilling in drought conditions like in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico. Another issue is the endangered-species law. Also, the inability of the industry to educate the public, especially kids, on what it is. It’s really pro-environment because it’s where we live; we want to do it right. We can’t seem to get that across to the public.

Investor: What do you advise young people on how to be successful in business and in life?

Linn: I lectured on this [at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston]. A lot of people are entrepreneurs and a lot aren’t. There is nothing wrong with being an implementer or being an entrepreneur. You need both.

Second, enjoy what you do. If you enjoy what you do, it’s fun to go to work, your life will be fulfilled, your home life will be happier.

Third, make decisions. At the end of the day, you’ll hope you made more good ones than poor ones. Make decisions, live with your decisions and go forward.

And, in the old oil and gas days, which I loved, if I said to you ‘Let’s drill a well and you take a half and I take a half,’ we didn’t have any written agreements because you looked me in the eye and I shook your hand, and my word was my bond. You better damn well do what you said you would do; your reputation is worth more than money.