The Centralized Oil & Gas Company operated in Gotebo, Oklahoma, and was still in business as late as 1922, according to existing records.
Incorporated in Oklahoma and selling shares by 1919, the company last appeared in the American Oil Directory in 1922 – along with listing of Fair Play Oil & Gas Company and Gotebo Oil & Refining Company.
Like many other oil regions at the time, entrepreneurs in Kiowa County who could quickly secure leases on properties proximate to producing fields improved their chances of drilling a successful well.
The Oklahoma Corporate Commission has no record of a successful well drilled by the Centralized Oil & Gas Company. Note that the same oilfield vignette is used in certificates issued by the Double Standard Oil & Gas Company, the Evangeline Oil Company and the Buffalo-Texas Oil Company…among others.
Oklahoma oil history began when exploration companies rushed to Indian Territory in 1897 after a dioscovery well near Bartlesville, which came a decade before statehood. It was the First Oklahoma Oil Well, although some historians maintain a well drilled a decade earlier was Oklahoma’s Other First Oil Well. More discoveries quickly followed, each attracting investors seeking riches in Mid-Continent oilfields.
By the 1920s, auctions for Osage Nation mineral leases took place in the shade of a Million Dollar Elm near Pawhuska. South of Oklahoma City, the 1926 oilfield discovery at Seminole launched the Greater Seminole Oil Boom.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence of Centralized Oil & Gas Company participating in any booming Oklahoma oilfields beyond 1922.
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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. © 2018 Bruce A. Wells.
