American Controlled Oilfields was incorporated in Maryland January 10, 1925, ”to contract for lands, maintain claims, oil wells, gas wells, oil lands and other real property.” It joined many other oil exploration companies seeking investors to fund drilling.
Incorporated by Camille Weidenfeld, Robert O. Deyer and Enos Curtain with offices in the Calvert Building in Baltimore, the company was capitalized at $12.5 million and assigned a stock par value as $5.
Stock certificate for American Controlled Oilfields Inc. Like many small oil exploration companies, stockholders and investors were ask to fund drilling near proven oilfields.
American Controlled Oilfields, Inc., eventually owned acreage in Louisiana (De Soto and Sabine parishes) and Kansas (Anderson County).
In July 1925, the New York Curb Market allowed trading of 2.5 million authorized shares, which reached a high of more than $7.60 – but fell to $2 a share by September.
Between 1925 and 1927, the Wall Street Journal periodically reported on American Controlled Oilfields activities.
“American Controlled Oilfields, Inc., has completed nine new wells on properties in Anderson County, Kan. Wells produced from 75 to 250 barrels initial. Company now has 100 producing wells on these leases,” the newspaper noted on November 11, 1926. The wells were not far north of the state’s historic 1892 oil discovery at Neodesha.
The company also secured leases on about 37,000 acres bordering Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela — and like many small oil exploration companies — sent an encouraging letter to stockholders and potential investors.
The letter reported the discovery of a 7,000-barrel oil producer by Sun Oil Company on property immediately next to American Controlled Oilfields’ concession.
Despite these apparent successes, by 1927, the company’s fortunes faded.
On February 11, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the company as “highly speculative,” without the cash to develop its properties and a very doubtful investment.
The New York Curb Market suspended trading of American Controlled Oilfields in 1930, “because the company failed to maintain a transfer office in this city.”
The Robert D. Fisher Manual of Valuable and Worthless Securities reported American Controlled Oilfields as defunct by 1934.
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The stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything? The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this AOGHS.ORG energy education website. For membership information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells.
