Wildcats Wanted

Significant figures bubbled up from oil-rich Texas to show how the independent oilmen are being frozen out of the oil industry, with the result that the number of new "wildcat" wells has power-dived to an alarming low. Example: Harold Ickes, petroleum arbiter, pleaded for 4,500 wildcats this year. So far Texas operators have sunk a mere 233, bringing in only 1 8 oil wells.

Independents and wildcats are corded together like Siamese twins. Normally the independents sink 75% of the wildcats, do most of the probing for new oil fields to replace those sucked dry by an oil-burning world. At least a dozen Texas independents have recently sold part or all of their holdings to major companies.

What the decline in wildcats and in dependents might mean in a long, dragged-out war is a disturbing possibility. When the American Army and Navy were only winding up last year, the nation was using 1,500,000,000 barrels a year. New discoveries in 1942 totaled only 317,000,000 barrels, less than one-fourth of the needed replacements. With the war burning oil ever faster the ratio of new wells to use probably means far more pessimistic figures in 1943. The U.S. will not find itself out of oil tomorrow or the next day. But when the war reaches its peak, the pinch may come. To avert that pinch, wildcat oil wells must be sunk this year.

No Wildcats. Under present conditions, independents say the wildcats cannot be, and will not be, sunk this year. For months the independents have waited for Washington to do something about the low ceiling price on crude oil ($1.17 per barrel), the high labor costs, an unfavorable tax situation, importation of low-cost foreign oil (258,000 barrels per day). Tired of waiting, they are going out of business.

Dan Harrison (Harrison Oil Co.) traded his troubles and his company to the Mag nolia Petroleum Co. for $28,000,000; E. J. Fair and Roy River sold a chunk of their holdings to the Stanolind Oil & Gas Co.; American Liberty Oil Co. sold 25 wells for $1,113,000; Broderick & Calvert sold their West Texas holdings to Phillips Petroleum and Sun Ray Oil for $4,500,000; Buffalo Oil sold Gulf a half interest in north Texas wells for $1,000,000. The list is long--and in an oil short world--depressing.

The major companies doing the purchasing are rocking along pleasantly under depressed prices. As operators of their own refineries, they want cheap oil be cause their big profit is from gasoline, lubricants, jellies and a hundred byproducts. Naturally they are letting the independents fight the price battle.

The Battle Is Too Big. Typical is the story of stocky, plain-talking Clifford Mooers, founder of Shasta Oil Co. As a young man, Mooers prospected for gold in the Yukon, ran an Alaskan trading post for three years, was a flyer in World War I. Fitted for the risky business of wildcatting, he formed his Shasta Co. in 1925. For 17 years he was glad to take the long odds. But last month he decided he could not buck the new war regulations. He sold Shasta Co. to Stanolind for $750,000. Said he bluntly: "The present trend of bureaucratic control will result in the elimination of the independent operator. A price increase would definitely help the independent operator carry on."

Petroleum Administrator Ickes recommended that "something be done" immediately, that prices be boosted 35-c- per barrel.

So far OPA Chief Prentiss Brown has demurred, has hinted only that something might be done if the independents made "the strongest kind of showing."

The independents feel that the strength of their case is there for anyone to see.

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