The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1957-10-18
OIL. PROSPECTORS.
CONTINUE SEARCH.
I'M NORTH CAROLINA
Texas Firm Now Gets Drilling
Rights on Submerged State
Owned Lands
BY BOB BROOKS

his perceptive mind and colorful
speech, once wrote off the Tar
Heel State as an oil producer in
this fashion:
an drink every drop of oil
! they find in this State" said Pro-
fessor Collier Cobb.
The foremost North Carolina
| geologist of his day, Professor
Cobb went to his grave in 1884,
his demise in no way being con-
nected with the drinking of oil.
Twenty-three years later, oil
men, an optimistic breed, still come
occasionally to search hopefully for
black gold in North Cardinals
coastal country.
Since 1925, 81 holes of sufficient
dimensions to merit recording in
the State biologists office here
have been bored into the lowland
region by men willing to gamble
a good pile that oil could be To-
Gated there.
Total take to date: not enough
oil to dampen the lips of old Col
lier Cobb.
But the prospectors keep COM
ing.
Last week the State Board of
Conservation and Development ap-
proved a lease giving Texan ]. E.
Fitzpatrick of Fort Worth drill
ing rights on a million acres of
submerged State-owned lands in
Eastern Carolina.
Under terms of the 25-year
lease, Fitzpatrick must drill a
minimum of $4,000 feet every two
years. If he strikes oil, the State
will collect a royalty of one-eighth
of the proceeds.
And what makes Fitzpatrick
think he'll have any more luck
than those who drilled 81 dry holes
ahead of him?
Dir. J. L. Stuckey, State geolo-
gist, offered an answer the other
day.
I'm North Carolina we have
some of the same rock units,
down deep, that are found in oil
producing areas of Texas and
louisiana" DIR. Stuckey said.
"That's what Fitzpatrick is go
ing on"
It's the same thing that has
kept the wildcatters, and an oc-
casional big oil firm, digging off
and-on in this state for years.
The first serious drilling for oil
in North Carolina was done near
New Bern in 1925, DR.. Stuckey
recalled.
"a fellow named Banks, who
came down from Virginia." started
it all. Banks, it seems, got inter-
ested in the "Great Lakes" located
in Craven County.
He noticed that streams ran off
from the lakes in all directions.
He did a little surveying and found
that the Lakes-Lake Ellis, Great
Lake and Long Lake-were locat-
ed on ground higher than the sur
rounding area.
A Good Sign
The lakes, Banks concluded,
were on "dome"-the same kind
of dome prospectors in the Gulf
Coast region consider to be good
sign of oil.
Banks and a group of New Bern
people put their money together
and formed the Great Lakes Drill
ing Company. They drilled their
well on the shore of Lake Ellis,
at the old Camp Bryan hunting
lodge, near Havelock.
At 1900 feet, they hit crystal
line rock-the kind of solid stone
of which the Capitol building here
is made. At 2,404 feet, the New
Bern oil diggers gave up-with-
out trace of oil.
In 1915, a group around Kin
ston got the oil fever and formed
the Coastal Plain Company.
They brought in a Texan by
name of Floyd Karster to do the
drilling, and Karster went down
4,030 feet at Laughton Point north
of Morehead City. No oil.
Roderick A. Stamey, native
Tar Heel who moved out to Texas
and learned about oil and geology,
took up where Karster left off.
Two dry wells of more than 1000
feet each were drilled by Stamey
in 1916 on property owned by Gus
Carraway and Nita Carraway in
Carteret County.
Standard Oil Company got in
terested in 1916 and repeatedly
put over million dollars into
an operation which resulted in
10, 000-foot hole near the Hatteras
Light House and one of 6,400 feet
year later off the southern end
of Roanoke Island in Pamlico
Sound.
Though Standard Oil went deep
er, and spent more money, two
holes in the ground were all it
had to show for the effort.
Another 6,400-footer was drilled
in Camden County in 1868 by a
Texas firm, repeatedly with the