24-03-2017, 04:11 PM
Ajax Petroleum Ltd is a local business part of the Canpages oil company category website.The company was organized by members of the Sowell family in Dallas as a joint stock association on July 25, 1919. It was capitalized at $ 4,950,000 and Offered both Class AY and Class B Shares. Ajax Oil acquired leases in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana including some in the Ranger oil field and the Burkburnett oil field. The production of these North Texas fields were making headlines around the world. In 1917 McClesky No. 1 of Eastland County hit oil on October 17 near the small town of Ranger. The "Ranger Ranger" only reached a daily production of 1,700 barrels. Its international fame gained for Ranger as the city whose oil eliminated the critical shortage of oil during World War I, allowing allies to "float to victory in an oil wave." About 135 miles north, in Burkburnett, On the Farm SL Fowler launched another drill boom in North Texas along the Red River will make the town near Wichita Falls famous. He even inspired a popular 1940s movie with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. See "Boom Town" Burkburnett.
Investment capital and aspiring millionaires overwhelmed Burkburnett and Ranger, as well as near Cisco, where a young war veteran saw crownecks of roughnecks and bought his first motel. See Oil Boom brings First Hilton Hotel. The properties of Ajax Oil Company included 11 producing wells and more drilling equipment. Class A shares of the company "had a preference over assets and dividends" and from September 1919, shareholders were paid dividends of one month. The company's shares were sold for about $ 5 a share. It drilled several oil and natural gas wells, often in association with Hercules Petroleum Company and Halleck-Whales Company. No production figures can be found.
Dividends ended abruptly in March 1920 and shareholders were informed that the company was investing in new equipment to expand its operations. Typical of an oil boom, notes a historian, as increased production in the region lowered oil prices, drilling costs rose. In August, a B.A. Butterworth sued the Ajax Oil Company for debts. It is unclear what happened next, but by December of the following year, Ajax Oil Company was bankrupt and in receivership. Oil booms in Ranger and Burkburnett resulted in many newly formed companies rushing to North Texas. But as the local historian Bernadette Pruitt has pointed out, much of the land had already been leased.