Word: brownco
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...land was ever used for other than "park purposes," it would revert to the estate. To sidestep that restriction, the Governor's daughter, Ima Hogg, signed over the estate's drilling rights shortly before her death last year to an old friend, George R. Brown, president of Brownco Inc., a Houston-based drilling company...
Mental Difficulty. Brownco proposed to undertake the drilling under the ground rules that have made the oil industry, and Houston, for that matter, what it is today. The company would sink exploratory wells at its own risk and turn over a royalty payment of up to 35% of the value of any strike, to be divided equally between the city and the Hogg estate. If, as the city fathers hope, there is oil and gas in the ground worth $50-$60 million, Houston would thus benefit from a large windfall. As Brownco and the city saw it, the exploratory wells...
Presumably all would have been well except that the more he thought about it, the more strongly Mayor Hofheinz felt that the city was getting the short end of the spoils. As a result, Brownco withdrew its proposal last month, and Houston's city council flabbergasted the oil community by deciding to launch a court action to claim oil and gas rights in the park for the city. Fumed a lawyer for a major oil company: "It's a government takeover, pure and simple...
...public interest basis" and turn over all royalties to the city as a charitable contribution. So far he has had no takers, and many oilmen suspect that the whole incident is a bit of political grandstanding by the mayor, and that no drilling will ever be done. As a Brownco lawyer tartly puts it: "Anyone who turns down a 35% royalty offer is going to be suspect in the oil industry of having some mental difficulty...