with new oil. Another promise had bit the dust. The technology required a lot of horsepower, a squadron of pump trucks and mixing trucks, tons of sand, a number of command vans, company men, and engineers.
Randy Stewart remembered, “It didn’t work, but, Lord, it was quite a show.”
Ray Holifield drove away and turned his back on Pearsall for good. He was out searching for better prospects and new locations where Windsor/U.S. might at least have a fighting chance to drill and find oil. Holifield was young. He was ambitious. He was confident in his ability, and some even considered him arrogant. His reputation lay with his success in the great fields that had erupted from the sands of the Middle East. No one would be able to blame Holifield if the Pearsall chalk turned out bad. It always did. His advice to Irv Deal was: You need to stop this insane drilling. Pearsall is a place that has no winners. The ancient limestone formations had turned rich men into paupers before.
As Ray Holifield recalled, “Max and Irv tackled the Austin Chalk below Pearsall as though their money was running out and their lives depended on it. In reality, there wasn’t any kind of science involved. Just drill. Frac a well. And drill some more.”
Max Williams and Irv Deal were conservative. They did not make a decision unless they knew all the facts, and they were never afraid to face the bad news and figure out some way to make the problems work. Williams held on to his money. He wasn’t particularly tight-fisted. He simply tried to spend it wisely. Irv Deal, on the other hand, thought big. No. Irv Deal thought huge. He always had. The one lesson he taught Ray Holifield again and again was: Think big and don’t worry about the cost. If it’s any good, you can sell it.
The wells came in producing a hundred and fifty barrels of oil a day. Good wells. Lot of money. Could make a poor man rich and a rich man happy. After the first month, production dropped to ninety barrels a day. Still good wells. Not quite as much money. No one was complaining, but everyone held his breath. At the end of two months, only thirty-five barrels of oil a day were flowing from the wells, which, at times, looked as though they had a serious need for life support. Not bad wells, not really. The money was still promising. Oilmen, however, knew what the chalk usually meant. Don’t go out and buy anything you can’t afford, and you can’t afford nearly as much today as you could have bought yesterday.
The wells settled down and leveled off, making a mere six barrels a day. They were barely economical. And far-fetched dreams of immediate riches began to fade away. Irv Deal was concerned and had a right to be. He always thought big, and Pearsall might not be that big. At his request, John LaRue assigned engineer Dale Badgwell to prepare a study on the potential of the field, and the ultimate report indicated that oil and gas reserves were much lower than those previous projections developed by the industry.
His recommendation echoed Ray Holifield’s original warning. LaRue told Irv Deal that Windsor/U.S. should immediately cease all drilling operations in the Pearsall field. Good money had no reason to go in a hole that had already swallowed the bad.
Maybe the field was somewhat worse than Max Williams believed it was, and the economics of drilling had all the earmarks of a funeral. Many an oilman left the pipes in the ground for a salvage company, turned his back on the holes, and rolled out of town. The wells that he and Deal had gambled on in Pearsall had managed to give each of them back only thirty thousand barrels of oil. It was time to look somewhere else.
The dreaded Austin Chalk had struck back once more. Ray Holifield understood the insanity of it all. Irv Deal and Max Williams had fallen victim to the chalk, and he was quick to remind them that their venture in Pearsall had been against his advice and consent. The oil patch, even on good days, had always been a bitter gamble, but Holifield believed that, in the right field, he had the ability to greatly reduce the odds and raise their chances for success.
Now and again, Max Williams would hear someone mention the big chalk well that had been producing several hundred barrels of oil a day for the last several years. Never been one quite like it, the rumors said. In cafes, around rigs, on street corners, beneath the neon sign of a Saturday night bar and grill, across a plate of barbecue ribs, at the desks of service companies, on the nearest pay phone, somebody, it seemed, was always talking about the big chalk well.
Must be a phantom well, Williams thought. Everybody knew about it. Nobody knew exactly where it was located, had taken the time to find it, or thought it was the harbinger of a major field. Everybody knew how much oil it was producing. Nobody remembered who had drilled it. Then again, Max Williams realized that rumors, both fact and fiction, ran rampant in the oil patch, any oil patch.
He and Clayton Childress had sat in roadside cafes on the edge of the Fort Worth Basin and overheard roughnecks, roustabouts, and tool pushers talking about the shallow wells that Windsor/U.S. had in the basin. He found out whether they were good or bad before he ever finished drilling them. Somebody always had an opinion that he passed off for gospel. After awhile, Williams did not believe any of the wild rumors. And, yet, he could not forget about the big chalk well. It was of mythical proportions, growing bigger and better with each new story that crept its way across Pearsall.
It was vital to ferret out the facts, he knew. Rumors were generally always based on the undertow of outlandish exaggerations, and a man could get in serious trouble if he wasted too much of his money chasing rumors that did not exist. He turned to Holifield, who sat hunched over a plate of enchiladas one night, and said, “We need to find us that big chalk well. If it’s paying off as good as everybody around here claims it is, we should locate the well and see if we can figure out why it’s making such a good payday.”
Finding it should be no problem, Holifield said. Neither man would have to leave his office. All they had to do was start rummaging through those monthly reports sent out by the Texas Railroad Commission. It listed all of the wells in the state, their production, and their locations. The two men spread a map on the table and plotted all of the wells in the Austin Chalk trend. Ray Holifield agreed to start down south on the border in Maverick County and move northward. Williams chose to begin working his way back through East Texas and check the wells that edged down toward Pearsall. If the big chalk well had been drilled anywhere in the trend, they should be able to determine exactly where it had been positioned – city, county, hog pasture, farmland, dog run – wherever it might be.
The chalk remained an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Max Williams could keep on making nickel and dime wells, but suddenly mediocre wells weren’t good enough. Others might want to throw away their time just talking about the big chalk well. As if on a Quixotic quest, he and Ray Holifield were determined to find it. The windmills wouldn’t get in their way.
Terry Moore had worked with Max Williams as an agent for McClennahan, and when real estate fell into a deep slumber, he took his inordinate talent for salesmanship and moved into the oil game as a promoter and operator. Moore was no stranger to the risks and rewards of investing, and he considered himself a deal maker. He asked Williams, “Do you by any chance know Ted Clifford?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“Well, he knows about your leases down in Pearsall, and he’d like to talk to you.”
Max Williams grinned. “I’ll talk to anyone,” he said softly. “What does Ted have in mind?”
“Ted wants to make a deal on your Pearsall acreage.”
“What kind of deal?”
“That’s between you and Ted.”
Ted Clifford was a Schedule D operator, which meant that, legally, he had to register with the Securities Commission before he could send out mailings or make calls in an effort to raise money. By registering, however, he was allowed to call on as many investors
