The Eagle Has Landed

American companies seeking drilling territory in the energy-rich "Overthrust Belt" of the U.S. Rocky Mountains compete fiercely for oil- and gas-exploration leases on parcels of land no larger than 8,000 acres. The Denver-based Eagle Exploration Co. has bigger ambitions than that. It has won the drilling rights for the entire territory of Liechtenstein, the tiny principality that nestles in the Alps between Switzerland and Austria.

Raymond N. Joeckel, 55, Eagle's president, believes that since the terrain in mountainous Liechtenstein greatly resembles the sandy, uplifted formations of the Western Overthrust Belt in the Rockies, there may be oil and gas in those hills as well. Eagle had to put up a bond of $3 million against possible damages caused by its drilling and promise to pay 15% of the earnings of any successful wells to the Liechtenstein government. But for that, Eagle received exclusive rights to explore the nation's 39,500 acres.

Eagle, a small Denver firm whose stock has been publicly traded for just one year, has no track record for finding oil. It has obtained oil and gas leases for 750,000 acres in the Rockies, as well as for 46,000 acres in California's Imperial Valley. This month it will start drilling in North Dakota. But so far Eagle oilmen have never even sunk an oil or gas well.

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