No. 1 Texas Trade

In 1913 a big, brusque Arkansan named M. Frank Yount and a florid West Virginian named Thomas Peter Lee started Yount-Lee Oil Co. at Beaumont, Tex. On an original capital of $50,000 they spent 13 years drilling in Texas and Louisiana without spectacular success. Then suddenly, in 1926, Yount-Lee made national news by rediscovering the famed Spindletop Field near Beaumont. Everybody supposed that Spindletop had been drained dry. Yount-Lee opened a rich new producing sand by drilling deeper than anybody had had the courage to go before. Later the company discovered and developed the High Island Field in Galveston County. Today Yount-Lee is the biggest independent oil producer in the South, with 283,000 acres of oil lands and leases and 250 wells producing 20,000 bbl. a day under proration. All of the original backers are still in the company except Founder Yount who died in 1933 leaving his Yount-Lee stock to his widow.

One day last week plump, dark-haired Widow Pansy Yount, Founder Lee and six other stockholders met in a private room at First National Bank of Houston. On hand to greet them was a Houston lawyer named Wright Morrow. In Lawyer Morrow's checking account at First National was a credit of approximately $46,000,000. Among the eight stockholders he distributed a handful of checks, also totaling $46,000,000, drawn on his account. In return he received all the stock of the Yount-Lee Oil Co. at a price of approximately $2,190 per share. Biggest check went to Pansy Yount, who owned 6,800 shares. Next biggest went to a Beaumont automobile dealer named Emerson F. Woodward, who had 5,000 shares. Founder Lee, now Republican State Chairman, owned 3,000 shares.

Lawyer Morrow was acting as agent for Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. of Tulsa, subsidiary of Standard Oil of Indiana. Standard of Indiana wanted Yount-Lee to assure an adequate supply of crude oil for the Texas refineries of another subsidiary, Pan American Petroleum & Transport. So Lawyer Morrow sold the physical assets of Yount-Lee Oil to Stanolind for $42,000,000, keeping real estate, notes and accounts receivable of approximately $4,000,000. He expects to make his profit on the largest cash deal in Texas history by liquidating these assets.

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