Millions from a Trillion

OIL & GAS

Harry Jay Mosser is a short, rumpled, publicity-shy Texan who has quietly piled up a fortune of $100 million by sniffing out oil on land that no one else wanted. This week he was preparing to pile up another fortune, based this time on his nose for natural gas. His Associated Oil & Gas Co. announced that it has proved up perhaps the largest untapped gas field in gas-rich South Texas. Estimated reserves: a trillion cubic feet. But that was only Harry Mosser's opening card; he also announced a contract to sell 800 billion cu. ft. of gas to Coastal States Gas Producing Co. at 16-c- per thousand cu. ft. (with escalator clause), biggest such deal in years. Coastal will build a ten-inch pipeline from the field in Duval and Jim Wells counties to Associated's recycling (i.e., processing) plant 25 miles away near Corpus Christi, hopes to get Federal Power Commission approval in three months. Texas Illinois Natural Gas Pipeline Co. already has an option to buy the gas for the Chicago area. Over the next 20 years, Associated will take in at least $250 million from its new discovery.

Mosser's find is one of the biggest in a widespread treasure hunt that is turning many an oilman into a gasman. Even after World War II, oilmen were burning off natural gas as a waste that came up with the oil. Now, so many cities are switching to natural gas--and oil is in such surplus--that the market has burgeoned, put a premium on gas discoveries. Mosser now has more than 18 oil and gas rigs drilling, brought in more than a dozen wells. He has two other promising fields that may well yield another trillion cubic feet of gas. Says Mosser: "We'll take the oil, but it's the gas we're really after."

Down to $29.30. In his search, white-maned, gruff Harry Mosser, 65, has the advantage of knowing South Texas as if it were his own backyard. He was born in San Antonio, brought up in Alice, Duval County, worked in his father's bank in Alice, and cotton farmed after leaving the University of Texas. He began buying up oil leases in the '20s all over South

Texas, piled up a modest fortune--and lost all but $29.30 in the 1929 market crash. (He and his wife spent what was left on a night out.)

Undeterred, he began all over again, eventually leased 1,200 acres about a mile south of Alice, despite warnings that every major oil company had turned them down. Result: his first big strike, a $25 million oil and gas field. From then on, he bought all the South Texas acreage he could get, regularly brought in new wells. Says Mosser: "Once I get my hands on a piece of property, I never let go. I still have every piece of ground I ever bought."

No New Stuff. In 1950 he got his hands on Trans-Tex Transmission Co., together with Houston oilman and Banker David C. Bintliff. They decided to switch to searching for natural gas instead of oil, changed the company's name to Associated Oil & Gas. But Associated did poorly until Mosser, who owned one-third of the company, decided to work some changes. He shucked off an unprofitable equipment-rental business, turned to picking up big tracts that major companies had failed to drill, persuaded a wealthy Stamford, Conn, lawyer, Walter L. Maguire, to come in as a partner. (Maguire bought Bintliff's 1,000,000 Associated shares, one-third interest, for $3,000,000 in cash.) Associated's search for gas has proved so successful, says Mosser, that "we now have so much proven acreage that for the immediate future we'll concentrate on developing it instead of finding new stuff."

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