by Bruce Wells | Apr 11, 2023 | Petroleum Companies
A Nevada independent oil company made headlines just one month after it was formed in 1960. It would not bode well for Henderson and Las Vegas investors.
“Geologist Claims There’s Oil At Foot Of Black Mt.,” the Henderson Home News proclaimed in its February 4, 1960, edition. “Starts Drilling Operations Tomorrow,” the headline continued.
The Nevada newspaper quoted the newly formed Trans-World Oil Company and on-site petroleum expert A.J. (Arthur James) Bandy. The consulting geologist also owned Petroleum Engineering Company of Bakersfield, California, home to prolific Kern County oilfields.
The Henderson, Nevada, newspaper added to the public’s oil fever with February 1960 headlines like “Well! Well! Well! City Might Try For Another.”
As Trans-World Oil began exploring for petroleum at Henderson, A.J. Bandy educated newspaper readers about geology.
“The oil found here is a gift of the sea, formed by deposits of marine mollusks and mammals, and still later by the hulks of enormous Saurians which stomped the earth in the Permian era,” Bandy proclaimed. His enthusiasm would prove misinformed.
Company officers J.K. Houssels, Leonard Wilson and Bill Boyd had leased 5,000 acres southeast of Las Vegas. They chose a drilling site in what later became O’Callaghan Park in Henderson.
As nearby drilling continued in 1960, the Henderson newspaper quoted enthusiastic reports form the company geologist.
With drilling of the Houssels-Wilson-Milka No. 1 well beginning on February 4, 1960, the Henderson Home News began periodic updates for its readership — which included potential investors in Trans-World Oil Company.
Making Hole
After a month of drilling with an obsolete cable-tool rig to reach 300 feet, the consulting geologist urged going deeper.
“I know that between seven hundred and eight hundred feet we will have a commercial showing – maybe even a gusher,” Bandy declared of the Clark County wildcat well. By March there indeed were intermittent showings of oil and natural gas.
“We’ve struck oil!” A.J. Bandy proclaimed on April 4, telling the Henderson Home News that he had drilled into commercial quality oil strata at 1,312 feet.
“Henderson will have oil wells all over the place – there’s oil under the whole town,” the front page exulted. Bandy further explained that drilling had been stopped so an electric log could be run the next day.
“If you don’t believe it, go cut yourself a slice of sand up there which has been taken from the hole,” Bandy said. “Put the sand in a bottle and put ether in it. Then shake it. Oil will come out of it.”
However, at least one local oilman was skeptical. “I’ll drink every gallon of oil that’s found here,” said Mark Leff, who reportedly “laughed off any possibility of such a find.”
Despite Leff’s doubts, “several Las Vegas people” invested in geologist Bandy and Trans-World Oil, which continued to drill until July 1960. There were no more showings of oil or natural gas, no Henderson oilfield.
When the total depth reached 2,155 feet, the company suspended drilling.
People vs. Bandy
The well remained idle for two years as Trans-World Oil’s fate became increasingly obscure — and “consulting geologist” Bandy discovered problems of his own. On August 9, 1961, a California court convicted A.J. Bandy of check fraud.
Court documents report that Petroleum Engineering Company was “a fictitious firm name adopted by defendant Bandy” and that the company’s address “was a telephone answering service.”
Bandy’s deceptive business checks were “a specially printed form containing a picture of a gushing oil well.” His final appeal was denied on May 21, 1963. People vs. Bandy documents note the defendant’s credibility was impeached by three prior convictions dating back to 1942, including one for federal criminal conspiracy. He ended up in San Quentin.
A map of Henderson, Nevada, today a Las Vegas suburb. The blue dot is the 1960 drilling site of the Tans-World Oil Company exploratory well north of O’Callaghan Park. Map courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.
Former Trans-World Oil company officer Leonard Wilson took one last gamble on the Houssels-Wilson-Milka No. 1 well. In March 1962, he returned to the site and drilled another 145 feet over the next five months. The added depth still found no commercial quantities of petroleum.
Admitting defeat on August 6, 1962, Wilson plugged and abandoned the once headline-making well.
The last business days and fate of Trans-World Oil Company have been lost. The Henderson Home News quit reporting on the Nevada oil patch venture. The newspaper ceased publication in 2010 after being acquired by the Las Vegas Sun.
First Nevada Oil Well
On February 12, 1954, after decades of noncommercial wells — the first drilled 1,890 feet deep near Reno in 1907 — Nevada became an oil producing state.
Shell Oil Company’s second test of its Eagle Springs No. 1 well found oil in Railroad Valley, Nye County. The well, 260 miles north of Trans-World Oil’s attempt, revealed Nevada’s first oilfield, according to the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.
The discovery well produced oil from a productive interval between 6,450 and 6,730 feet deep. About a dozen wells in the Eagle Springs oilfield produce 3.8 million barrels by 1987.
Learn more in First Nevada Oil Well.
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Recommended Reading: Roadside Geology of Nevada
(2017). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2023 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Trans-World Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/trans-world-oil-company. Last Updated: April 15, 2023. Original Published Date: May 15, 2015.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 1, 2023 | Petroleum Companies
A wildcat well struck oil in 1930 and pumped it for decades from the city dump of Hermosa Beach, California.
As the Great Depression began, California-Ventura Oil Company discovered the Hermosa Beach oilfield. The newly revealed field proved to be a key addition to the prolific Torrance oilfield, discovered a decade earlier. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 1, 2023 | Petroleum Companies
High hopes for oil riches from someone’s family heirloom.
Despite years of mergers and acquisitions, the 1924 Palmer Union Oil Company stock certificate Tony Marohn bought at a garage sale did not make him a millionaire. As with most obsolete securities, no ownership in the company or its successors remained by the time it became part of Coca-Cola.
For many people like Marohn, discovering an old stock certificate brings hopes of wealth. This seems especially true if the certificate is one of the thousands of petroleum companies incorporated since the first, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York, organized in 1855.
Unfortunately, as the research posted in Is My Oil Oil Stock worth Anything? shows, the highly competitive, boom-and-bust world of oil and natural gas exploration leaves many casualties. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 14, 2023 | Petroleum Companies
Updated research and articles about the histories of old oil company stock and petroleum company histories.
Found an old oil company stock certificate and hoping for a petroleum financial gusher?
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s research and accompanying forum depend upon your individual financial support. The historical society is an independent, energy education organization — unaffiliated with upstream or downstream petroleum companies, state or federal government, or industry advocacy groups.
A petroleum company’s old oil stock certificate vignette sometimes has value for collectors of scripophily – the buying and selling of certificates after they have no redeemable value as a security.
Although use of fossil fuels today is highly controversial, the history of U.S. petroleum exploration, production, and transportation provides context for modern energy debates.
From 19th-century kerosene for lamps, 20th-century gasoline for cars, and modern plastic polymers for everyday products, the petroleum industry’s huge social, economic and technological heritage should be preserved.
A Popular Vignette
Collectors have found a surprising number of examples where quickly formed exploration companies picked the exact same oilfield scene for stock certificates.
In the rush to print stock certificates during oil booms, new companies often chose to print certificates using a vignette of derricks!
It might have saved time and money by choosing a common vignette today found on shares of Centralized Oil & Gas Company; Double Standard Oil & Gas Company; Evangeline Oil Company; Texas Production Company; Tulsa Producing and Refining Company; Hecla-Wyoming Oil Company; Oil Prospectors Inc.; Craven Oil & Refining; Buck Run Oil and Refining; Home Oil & Gas; Hog Creek Carruth Company; Buffalo-Texas Oil Company; and the Champion Oil Company (see links to them below).
Can you tell me anything about this old petroleum company (for free)? I found its stock certificate in an attic. Am I rich? Probably not. Since first commercial U.S. oil well in 1859, the petroleum industry’s boom and bust cycles have left many casualties.
The vast majority of old oil stock certificates (especially prior to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), simply become family mementos — and not connected to any modern company. For one that led to extended court battles, see Not a Millionaire from Old Oil Stock.
America’s first oil company – the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York – organized it 1855.
Unfortunately, this small historical society cannot grant requests for free research regarding individual company histories and the potential value of stock certificates. As you may have discovered, financial research is difficult and time consuming. If you are fortunate, a visitor to this website or a society volunteer may have posted helpful information.
If your certificate is not listed here, and to share further research experiences, you are invited to submit your query in the current Stock Certificate Q&A Forum.
(more…)
by Bruce Wells | Sep 29, 2022 | Petroleum Companies
Elk Basin United Oil Company incorporated in 1917 seeking oil riches in Wyoming’s booming Elk Basin oilfield. Oilfields found in North Texas, including a 1911 gusher at Electra, already had resulted in a rush of new exploration ventures – and created boom towns like Burkburnett.
Wherever found, America’s newly discovered oilfields led to the founding of many exploration ventures that competed against more established companies.
Newly formed companies frequently struggled to survive as competition for financing, leases, and drilling equipment intensified, especially as exploration moved westward.
Wyoming Oilfields
In a remote, scenic valley on the border of Wyoming and Montana, a discovery well opened Wyoming’s Elk Basin oilfield on October 8, 1915. Wyoming’s earliest oil wells had produced quality, easily refined oil as early as 1890.
Drilled by the Midwest Refining Company, the wildcat well produced up to 150 barrels of oil a day of a high-grade, “light oil.” Credit for oil discovery is given to geologist George Ketchum, who first recognized the Elk Basin as a likely source of oil.
“Gusher coming in, south rim of the Elk Basin Field, 1917.” Photo courtesy American Heritage Center.Ketchum, a farmer from Cowly, Wyoming, in 1906 had explored the area with C.A. Fisher, who had been the first geologist to map a region within the Bighorn Basin southeast of Cody, Wyoming, where oil seeps were discovered in 1883.
The Elk Basin, which extends from Carbon County, Montana, into northeastern Park County, Wyoming, attracted further exploration after the 1915 well. More successful wells followed.
Once again, petroleum discoveries in unproved territory attracted speculators, investors, and new companies – including the Elk Basin United Oil Company.
Established petroleum companies like Midwest Refining — and the Ohio Oil Company, which would become Marathon Oil — came to the Elk Basin. These oil companies had the financial resources to survive a run of dry holes or other exploration hazards.
The exploration industry’s many smaller and under-capitalized companies would prove especially vulnerable.
Audacious advertising claims helped Elk Basin United Oil Company compete for investors.
Is My Old Oil Stock Worth Anything features several such small players in Wyoming’s petroleum history, including the notorious Dr. Frederick Albert Cook (Arctic Explorer turns Oil Promoter). Even Wyoming’s famous showman, Col. William F. Cody, got caught up in the state’s oil fever (Buffalo Bill Shoshone Oil Company).
Elk Basin United Oil Company
Elk Basin United Oil Company of Salt Lake City, Utah, incorporated on July 30, 1917, and acquired a lease of 120 acres in Wyoming’s Elk Basin oilfield. By February 1918, company stock sold for 12 cents a share.
Enthusiastic newspaper ads promoted its “6 properties in 3 different fields…A 6 to 1 shot!” Twenty producing wells were reputed to be within one mile of Elk Basin United Oil’s Wyoming well site.
Meanwhile, Elk Basin United Oil reported expansion plans underway in a growing Kansas Mid-Continent oilfield. The company secured leases near Garnett and completed four producing oil wells, yielding a total of about 500 barrels of oil a month. It added an additional 112 acres and planned a fifth well.
Prairie Pipe Line Company (later Sinclair Consolidated) completed pipelines into the Garnett field through which several companies looked to transport their oil production.
However, growing competition from better funded exploration ventures and low crude oil prices ranging between $1.10 and $1.98 per barrel of oil in 1917 and 1918 drove many small companies into consolidations, mergers or bankruptcy.
Elk Basin United Oil, exploring back in Wyoming by March 1919, sought a lease on the property of the First Ward Pasture Company bordering the Utah line, “with a view of prospecting the property declare the surface showing to be very favorable for an oil deposit.” But financial issues continued to burden the company.
In December 1919, Oil Distribution News reported Basin United Oil Company was negotiating mergers with the Anderson Oil Company and the Kansas-United Oil Company, with a proposed capitalization of $1 million. With no results of the planned combination documented, Elk Basin United Oil Company disappeared from financial records soon thereafter.
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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? Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2022 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Elk Basin United Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/elk-basin-united-oil-company. Last Updated: September 29, 2022. Original Published Date: October 1, 2021.
by Bruce Wells | Aug 2, 2022 | Petroleum Companies
Oil stock certificate from 1901 helps tell story of the Boulder oilfield and early Colorado discoveries.
Colorado oil history revealed from researching an old oil company stock certificate.
Dated March 1902, a stock certificate had been issued by a Wyoming venture — the Savannah Oil, Coal and Gas Company. The company president’s signature was too hard to make out, according to the guest post on the the American Oil and Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) Stock Certificate Q & A Forum — a popular section of Is My Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
The poster added: “I would appreciate any information available on this company. Researching for my 90-year-old Mom!” Like many others, the visitor to AOGHS website sought information about his family’s stock certificate.
Drilling for natural gas in 2005 in the Denver Basin’s Wattenberg gas field, discovered in 1970. Photo courtesy geologist and engineer Dan Plazak.
The story of Savannah Oil, Coal and Gas began just before its incorporation — when a headline-making oilfield discovery at Boulder, Colorado, inspired the founding of many exploration companies. Most of these ventures would not survive.
According to a 1902 biennial report from the Colorado Secretary of State, Savannah Oil, Coal and Gas Company had a principal office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for doing business in Colorado. The also report listed a T.F. Little as a sales agent with Boulder as a place of business.
Boulder Oilfield
Natural oil seeps first drew “bobbers” to the Boulder area, according to a 1905 Colorado Geological Survey report.
“The principle on which the use of a bobber rests is the same as that by which the proper site of a water well is determined by the involuntary turning of a witch-hazel sprout when held in the hand,” the survey noted.
In the Boulder field, bobbers fixed “the exact location off a large proportion of the wells, the geological survey added. One such oil well was on the McKenzie farm, about three miles northeast of town. It was the discovery well that opened the Boulder oilfield — the first of many in the Denver Basin.
The McKenzie well that launched drilling in Boulder field would pump oil until 2007.
Initially producing 70 barrels of oil a day, the 1901 McKenzie well spawned a scramble for nearby mineral leases as the local newspaper, The Daily Camera, reported a thousand companies formed in three months. Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas Company was among them.
Despite the disdain of petroleum geologists, modern bobbers and other dowsing tools are available from the American Society of Dowsers (ASD), established in 1961. For attempts of finding Texas oilfields using psychic readings, see Luling Oil Museum and Crudoleum.
Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas
Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas incorporated on February 11, 1902, with C.B. Younglove as president and its principal agent in Boulder. The vice president was T.F. Little.
Capitalized at only $15,000 with its main office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the company needed early success in the Boulder oilfield to survive. When Younglove learned the Otero Company had drilled and completed producing oil wells northeast of Boulder, he managed to secure leases close by.
Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas Company would drill in Boulder County’s Section 8 and Section 9, Township 1 North, Range 70 West (Public Land Survey System – PLLS). Today, the well sites are near the intersection of Valhalla Drive and Kelso Road.
By late 1902, a business journal reported Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas drilling for oil in the Boulder field.
“T.F. Little, the vice president says they have one well 2,600 feet deep with about 1,000 feet of oil in it, and have recently moved derrick to land adjoining the Otero well (which is now producing about 100 barrels per day), and the run hole is now about 300 feet deep, just over the fence from the Otero property,” noted the American Investor, adding Vice President Little, “also says they are not now offering any stock for sale.”
By 1905, the U. S. Geological Survey (Bulletin No. 265) published more detail on the Younglove and Savannah producing oil wells, depths, unsuccessful attempts or “dry holes,” and use of nitroglycerin for fracturing oil-producing geologic formations (learn more in Shooters – A Fracking History).
Citing earlier wells drilled by the Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas Company, Mining American magazine in 1918 noted, “Possibilities of Greater Production in Boulder Oil Fields,”
The first three wells of Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas produced enough oil to support more drilling in the booming Boulder field. After production peaked in 1909 at more about 85,000 barrels of oil, some people would claim Boulder made Colorado oil history as, “one of the wildest, crookedest, and most disastrous booms.”
Local historian Silvia Pettem summarized, “Although the oil under the land northeast of Boulder was real, no amount of drilling could keep up with inflated expectations. In just a few months, the bottom fell out of the market.”
Although C.B. Younglove and T.F. Little’s Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas Company would fade away, by World War I, Mining American magazine teased speculative investors with “Possibilities of Greater Production in Boulder Oil Fields” (January 5, 1918), citing the exploratory wells of Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas. The magazine proclaimed, “Recent Survey Encourages Deeper Drilling…Younglove Well Commended by Expert.”
But the Boulder boom was already part of U.S. petroleum history. So was Savannah Oil, Coal, and Gas Company.
First Colorado Oil Well
The first commercially successful Colorado oil well was drilled in January 1862 near the mining supply town of Cañon City, about 45 miles southwest of Colorado Springs. The well produced oil just three years after the first U.S. oil well, which was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin L. Drake for the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut.
In 1860, businessman Gabriel Bowen had established what many consider Colorado’s first oil venture, the G. Bowen & Company. Bowen claimed ownership of natural oil seeps at Oil Spring — above what would later prove to be the Florence oilfield.
However, Bowen’s claim, “apparently was jumped in the winter of 1860-61 by J.L. Dunn, who dug four pits at the spring,” according to Colorado Encyclopedia. “One of the pits produced a barrel per day, but the others yielded little. Dunn left the area in early 1861, after being charged with cattle rustling.”
Although Bowen regained control of Oil Spring, Alexander Cassidy bought the claim in January 1862 and formed the Colorado Oil Company, “the state’s first commercially productive oil enterprise,” the encyclopedia noted in 2021. Cassidy’s well produced “at most a few barrels per day, which the company sold in Cañon City, Denver, and Santa Fe.”
With wells reaching a depth of 1,445 feet by the 1890s, production in Colorado’s Florence oilfield would peak at more than 3,000 barrels of oil per day.
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Recommended Reading: Geology of the Boulder district, Colorado: USGS Bulletin 265 (2013); High Altitude Energy: A History of Fossil Fuels in Colorado (2002). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Join today as an AOGHS annual supporting member. Help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2023 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Exploring Boulder Oilfield History.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/oil-riches-of-merriman-baptist-church. Last Updated: August 6, 2022. Original Published Date: August 24, 2021, 2021.
