by Bruce Wells | Jan 2, 2014 | Petroleum Companies
Sawyer Petroleum Company was formed by Ernest Walker Sawyer, a millionaire hotel developer and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior.
The company was active in Beaverhead County, Montana, in the 1960s. It partnered with the Union Pacific Railroad Company in pursuit of rare-earth minerals (radioactive thorite) in the Lemhi Pass district, part of the Bitterroot Range in the Rocky Mountains.
The company’s name changed to Sawyer-Adecor International in the 1970s. In March 1997 the company was renamed again as Oil Retrieval Systems, Inc.
The newly named company reportedly was in the business of manufacturing and distributing portable swabbing units to the oil and natural gas industry.
However, the Securities and Exchange Commission records Oil Retrieval Systems Inc. as a dissolved Arizona corporation, having not filed any required periodic reports since 1996.
Sawyer Petroleum Company stock certificates sell on eBay for about $10.
The company is not related to Sawyer Petroleum Inc., founded in 1948 and today a distributor of fuels from refiners to the greater Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in California.
In 1990, at age 71, Ernest Walker Sawyer entered the Alaska gubernatorial race “under the banner of the extremist Alaska Independence Party – a party that advocates the 49th state’s peaceful secession from the Union,” according to Ernest Walker Sawyer and Alaska: The Dilemma of Northern Economic Development, by Terrence M. Cole, in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 42-50.
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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.
by Bruce Wells | Dec 20, 2012 | Petroleum Companies
Sawyer-Adecor International’s roots go back to a 1901 Arizona gold ore discovery in western Mohave County that brought investors scrambling.
In 1906, the Tom Reed Gold Mines Company, Oatman, Arizona, incorporated, purchased the “Argo Gold Mine” and started producing gold two years later.
The property yielded about $13 million (gold was then priced at $20 an ounce) between 1908 and 1931.
But as the vein depleted, Tom Reed Gold Mines Company fortunes’ faded. The mine produced its last gold nugget in 1939.
In 1956, the Sawyer Exploration Company of Los Angeles filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission to take over and reactivate the moribund Tom Reed Gold Mines Company, using incorporation date (1906) and renaming itself Sawyer Petroleum Company.
Ernest Walker Sawyer, a former Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Interior, was named president.
Sawyer Petroleum then actively engaged in mineral exploration in Beaverhead County, Montana, and in the 1960s partnered with the Union Pacific Railroad Company in searching in the Lemhi Pass for rare-earth minerals like thorite, a rare nesosilicate of radioactive thorium.
In September 1969, the company changed its name to Sawyer-Adecor International and exercised a one-for-five reverse stock split. Each five shares of Sawyer Petroleum were exchanged for a single share of the new Sawyer-Adecor International.
Such reverse stock splits often resulted in a reduction in the number of a corporation’s shares outstanding that increased the par value of its stock or its earnings per share, according to Investopedia.
“It’s usually a bad sign if a company is forced to a reverse split,” added the investment magazine. “Firms do it to make their stock look more valuable when, in fact, nothing has changed. A company may also do a reverse split to avoid being delisted.”
In March 1997, Sawyer-Adecor International filed again with the Arizona Corporation Commission to rename itself Oil Retrieval Systems, Inc. (ORSI). Its corporate office changed to Fort Worth, Texas.
ORSI executed a one for ten reverse stock split leaving the company with six million shares of common stock and an estimated public float of 300,000 shares. The business was reported to be manufacturing and distribution portable swabbing units to the oil and natural gas industry.
ORSI failed to file required periodic reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission for several years. In 2002, the SEC recorded the company to be administratively dissolved.
Stock certificates from Tom Reed Gold Mines Company, Sawyer Petroleum, Sawyer-Adecor, and Oil Retrieval Systems retain only collectible value.
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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.
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