by Bruce Wells | Jan 27, 2016 | Petroleum Companies
The land around Bristow, Oklahoma, was once dismissed as “condemned territory” and deemed unproductive by geologists. Thirty-five dry holes had substantiated their judgement, despite the location between two of Oklahoma’s most productive oilfields, Cushing-Drumright and Glenn Pool.
The Cushing-Drumright field, about 30 miles northwest of Bristow, was discovered by Oklahoma’s “King of the Wildcatters,” Tom Slick, in 1912. Once known as “Dry Hole Slick,” his Wheeler No. 1 well revealed an oilfield that produced a lot of oil for the next 35 years, reaching 330,000 barrels of oil every day at its peak. With its pipelines and vast storage facilities, Cushing today is the trading hub for oil in North America.
Thirty miles east of Bristow, the Glenn Pool field was discovered on the Creek Indian Reservation south of Tulsa in 1905 – two years before Oklahoma statehood. Combined with the earlier “Red Fork Gusher,” Glenn Pool would help make Tulsa the “Oil Capital of the World.”
Despite the Bristow area’s dry holes between the giant oilfields, Continental Petroleum Company attempted an exploratory well just east of the town. On October 17, 1921, its Ben Sharper No. 1 well was completed with oil production of 1,000 barrels a day. It was the discovery well for what became known as the Continental Pool. The success soon drew many competitors and Bristow’s population soared.
Continental Petroleum had been formed as a Delaware corporation in January 1919, with former Colorado banker A.A. Rollestone as president. Rollestone had also purchased and was president of Continental Refining Company, which operated a 2,500 barrel-a-day refinery in Bristow, where both companies were located.
One Rollestone company was in the oil exploration business and the other was refining crude oil piped in from the Cushing-Drumright field. Moody’s Analyses of Investments reported Continental Petroleum had about 6,000 acres under lease in Oklahoma and another 3,000 acres in Texas.
Continental Petroleum’s success with the Continental Pool brought suitors. In January 1922, stockholders approved purchase of the company by Michael L. Benedum’s Transcontinental Oil Company.
Benedum, a successful independent oilman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1924 formed the Big Lake Oil Company, which built the first oil company town in the Permian Basin in West Texas. A 1923 wildcat well there, the Santa Rita No. 1, had uncovered the 300-mile basin. He would also be known as “King of the Wildcatters.”
The Transcontinental Oil buyout of Continental Petroleum made A.A. Rollestone a wealthy man, according to the trade publication the Petroleum Age, which said the deal gave him an address “on a prominent Easy Street corner.”
In 1936, the Ohio Oil Company (later Marathon), acquired Transcontinental Oil Company. Although Continental Petroleum stock certificates, redeemed and canceled long ago, have no value as negotiable securities, the company’s Oklahoma oil patch history may help make them collectable.
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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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by Bruce Wells | Nov 2, 2015 | Petroleum Companies
The first Louisiana oil well revealed the Jennings oilfield in 1901 – just nine months after the historic “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill in nearby Beaumont, Texas. The discovery launched the Pelican State’s petroleum industry. Read more in First Louisiana Oil Well.
Louisiana’s young petroleum businesses boomed in the early 1920s, energized by discoveries of the Monroe natural gas field in 1916, the Homer oilfield in 1919, and Haynesville gas field in 1921.
With abundant investment opportunities – thanks in part to the public’s fascination with “black gold” – oil companies drilled wells to meet growing demand for gasoline. But high exploration and production costs, transportation, refinery hazards and price fluctuations created an unforgiving business environment, then as now. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Oct 27, 2015 | Petroleum Companies
In the early 1900s, the Ohio-Kansas Oil & Gas Company financed drilling operations with capital raised from stock sales. It had wells 12 miles southeast of Burlington, Kansas, and secured a franchise to supply natural gas to the town.
The Burlington Republican newspaper in April 1905 reported that “a prospectus of the Ohio-Kansas Oil and Gas Co., advertising its stock for sale, is in circulation, and a copy has been received here. It is circulated by J.H. Andrews & Co, Broker, 40S Fidelity Trust Co. Building, Kansas City, Mo., who will give all necessary information concerning the matter.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Oct 23, 2015 | Petroleum Companies
When a shady publisher decided to become a wildcatter seeking oil riches, the end of his story might have been predicted.
Ft. Worth publisher Chester R. Bunker, head of the World Company, began by seeking to expand subscriptions to his trade journal, which ostensibly offered readers insights into the booming Texas oil business. The 1917 “Roaring Ranger” discovery well between Ft. Worth and Abilene had brought oilfield discoveries close to home.
Bunker’s Texas Oil World (formerly Western World) was in fact a tip sheet largely for promoting his own business interests. To increase circulation, beginning in 1922 Bunker successively added memberships in his “Texas Oil World Marathon Fold Club” or “Texas Oil World Marathon Fold Drilling Club” as premium inducements for potential subscribers.
These clubs entitled each subscriber to a miniscule interest in any profits that might be drawn from his company’s distant oil leases: “a 1/10,000th interest in all emoluments and profits accruing from certain oil and gas leases of 10,000 acres, more or less in Crockett County, State of Texas, and held in trust for all members by the undersigned trustee.”
Court documents later noted that with Bunker the trustee, “the interests given to the subscribers were simply for the purpose of promoting the circulation of the oil journal and its business, and that neither Bunker nor his corporation were to benefit or profit from the promotions.”
Accordingly, Bunker undertook an unlikely wildcat drilling venture on the company’s remote Crockett County lease in 1923, prompting the offer of another subscription inducement, the “Crockett County Lease Bonus.”
After two years of drilling and to the surprise of all, on June 8, 1925, Bunker’s L.P. Powell No. 1 discovery well was completed at 2,650 feet with daily production of 25 barrels of oil. The well opened the Powell Field and prompted a flood of investors and speculators.
Twelve days after the oil discovery, the World Company – now renamed Bunker Printing & Book Company – negotiated sale of its well and 2,500 acres of its leases in Crockett County to Humble Oil Company for almost $1.4 million. Within two weeks of the Powell No. 1 well, more than $5 million had been exchanged in lease and royalty trades. Humble Oil would later become Exxon thanks to other leases at the King Ranch in Kleberg County.
On June 29, 1925, Bunker chartered the World Oil Company using capital from “assets theretofore belonging to the three clubs.” Subscribers surrendered their membership certificates and became shareholders in World Oil on the basis of $10 for every unit of membership.
World Oil Company searched for oil beyond Crockett County, reportedly drilling wells in Glasscock, Hockley, Pecos, Reeves, Shackelford, Taylor and Tom Green counties. But the company failed despite these exploration efforts.World Oil offered stock to the public through advertisements in Bunker’s publications. The stock’s price advanced from about 70 cents per share to $2.60 per share by September 1926.
According to Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1845-1945 by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Hinton, the company was bankrupted by Bunker’s inability to manage the businesses he created; he “drowned them in red ink.” The authors add that he was convicted of mail fraud a few years later. His wildcatting did leave a mark, however.
Today, a Texas historical marker dedicated in 1975 near Ozona notes Crockett County’s first producing oil well. “Powell No. 1 was the beginning of a vital new industry for Crockett County, before 1925 primarily a ranching area. The next important strike occurred in the Crockett Field in 1938. There are currently over 2,000 producing oil and gas wells in the county.”
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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 | Aug 21, 2015 | Petroleum Companies
The Texas oil patch was making headlines as World War I raged in Europe. An earlier major discovery at Electra had launched a drilling boom that brought new exploration and production companies to nearby Wichita Falls. (more…)
