Our History – T&F Oil Company
T&F Oil Company has been engaged in the exploration, development, acquisition, operation and brokerage of oil and gas properties since 1946. T&F Oil was formed through the partnership of four family members: Carl Fischer, John V. Turner, Jack Turner and Conrad Fischer.
Through their knowledge and relations with other oil operators in the brokerage business, they were able to acquire good producing oil wells in the Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach, Signal Hill, El Segundo and Wilmington oilfields.Oil discovery in the United States had been primarily in the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the early years.
The discovery at Spindletop in 1901, blowing out at a rate of 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) caused an Oil Rush not unlike the California Gold Rush of 1850, and Jack Turner had a keen vision of the future. With the discovery of Spindletop and the mass production of the automobile, a new era in the oil industry began. Oil resulted in an industrial revolution in the world like nothing had before.
In 1946, the history of oil and the business of oil were still in the infant stages. Being an independent in the oil business and operating wells in those days was a hands-on job most of the time, seven days a week, which Jack Turner and his family spent at the oil wells.
T&F Oil Company is a spin-off of Turner Petroleum Company, a crude oil brokerage firm that bought and sold crude oil to various small refineries on Signal Hill, California. Jack Turner and his son-in-law Conrad (Connie) Fischer joined together to independently purchase oil producing leases, including the famous Signal Hill, El Segundo, and Wilmington oilfields, and to explore for new oil discoveries.
T&F later entered into a working operation with Texaco and Mobile in two separate secondary recovery projects. The first with Mobile Oil Corporation was known as Fault Block V, Ranger Zone, and Wilmington Oil Field Water Flood. The second with Texaco was known as Signal Hill West Unit.
Years later, Connie, confidently appointed L.P. Brown, III president of T & F Oil Company in 1989 after having invested in Brown’s oil wells in the Gulf Coast States. At that time, oil was at an all-time low, yet Brown’s knowledge of the business and background still afforded the company to acquire and drill profitable wells.
In the early 1980s, T&F, among many California oil companies, found the state government unwilling to allow production or drilling without heavy costs in permits, among other things, and T&F ventured to the
Gulf Coast States, partnering with Brown and his prospects.
T&F sold the last well in El Segundo, which was drilled in 1919, and was still producing 40 BOPD in the mid 1990’s. Leases were acquired to drill in Los Angeles County from the United States Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management in the West Tapia oilfield. California’s strict conservation regulations made the prospect unfeasible to drill and T&F subsequently invested in different industries until recently, when a twist of fate forced Brown to spend a great deal of time in Louisiana. Brown investigated past oil properties formerly owned and operated in the Gulf States. Brown’s geologist’s analyzed previous held properties and the reports came back economically staggering in favor of revising many of the older oil properties and purchasing newly available oil production.
The goal of T&F Oil was to reactivate and explore for viable and economically profitable wells in the Gulf Coast States, primarily Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Oil investments are greatly encouraged through tax incentives, and the return on investment (ROI) on an oil producing property can be superior to the investment amount.
With the current turmoil in the Middle East, the growing dependency of foreign oil in both China and India, and the United States dependency on imported oil from countries that do not have America’s best interest at heart; we need more that ever to depend on our own resources. The T&F Family has a significant investment in all US. held properties, the same as our investors.
The Company’s objective was to enhance the principals’ and investors’ values through substantial growth in its reserve base, production levels, and resulting cash flows from operations. Over the past years, T&F investigated and acquired leases with millions of barrels of oil reserves both in developmental exploration and production with minimum amount of liability to anyone involved.
Through Brown or T&F, oil investors have ranged from celebrities such as Martina Navritolova to the largest company in the world, Exxon. Incidentally, a little known but proud fact, Brown’s mother, Kelly Crothers Brown, was instrumental in the renaming of Exxon from Humble or Esso. The executives of Humble Oil wanted a new name that did not have any meaning in any language on the planet. The team came up with the name Exxon.