The Empire Gas and Fuel Co. of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, leased all the land, 9,000 acres for two years at the rate of one dollar an acre. A year later, the company having other interests, decided not to drill and gave up the lease.

Clem S. Clarke of Shreveport signed a contract to explore the ground. He then resold it to the Empire Gas and Fuel company which decided to take another chance. It sank two wells and found a trace of oil but didn’t think the trace was sufficient to justify a continuation of drilling.

1928 was a great year for United Lands Company and the great news was a gas well that became an oil gusher, launching United Lands into the oil business. McElroy was the site of the former Ascension Red Cypress Company mill, which was located three miles east of the town of Sorrento. Gulf Refinery, which had leased United Lands property in 1926, drilled for oil in the McElroy area on three occasions, resulting in lost wells, one blowing up, costing the company more than $40,000 in machinery. However, in the first week of February 1928, McElroy well # 4, which had been flowing gas at 50,000,000 cubic feet, turned into an oil gusher blowing 25 feet over the derrick, hovering at the rate of about 8,000 barrels per day. The oil was stored in four 1,000-barrel oil storage tanks and one 1,500-barrel tank after the oil had filled the old 100,000-barrel former lumber mill pond out of which the mill secured water for its boilers. Gas from the site was soon piped to New Orleans for domestic and commercial use, which because of the additional supply, reduced gas rates in New Orleans. The officers of United Lands at the time of the gusher were Mr. E. E. Sykes, president, Mr. John T. McElroy, vice-president, and Mr. Clifford A. King, secretary-treasurer.

Shortly after discovering oil, Gulf Refinery was replaced by the Texas Oil Company as the primary lease holder for exploration.  They were the only oil company on United Lands property until approximately 1950, when Exxon and Shell began their lease tenancy.  From 1927-1990, 136 oil and gas wells were permitted on United Lands property, 3 of which were salt-water disposal wells. From 1929 through 1964, a cumulative total of 2,541,800 barrels of oil were extracted which represents 68,697 barrels of oil per year or, a daily average of 188 barrels of oil.

Around 1950, during Mr. Clifford King’s presidency, Exxon became interested in the Sorrento salt dome and developed ten caverns for underground natural gas storage. Later, Shell developed five caverns, and still later, Texaco developed three more caverns. Five caverns covering 65.723 acres are now leased to Shell. This distillate storage lease provided a broader income foundation for United Lands Company.

The Sorrento salt dome is one-half mile wide, the depth to rock cap is 1,568 feet, the depth to salt is 1,717 feet, and the deepest salt encountered is 11,955 feet. There are 21 active salt caverns and two abandoned cavern wells on the dome.

During the presidency of Mr. John B. Levert, Jr., United Lands expanded into real estate acquisitions. In 1997, 251 acres of property alongside the salt dome were sold to Exxon. Some of these proceeds were disbursed to shareholders as dividends and the remaining funds were used to unvest in various limited real estate partnerships.  Victory Real Estate, Nochaway Land, LLC, and Ponce Investments, LLC were among these.

As the 1997 real estate limited partnerships matured over the previous 20 + years, they can be described as follows:  Victory Real Estate has 50 grocery store-anchored shopping centers (Food Lion, Winn Dixie, and Piggly Wiggly) throughout United States.  Each property is maintained as a distinct entity for accounting purposes.  Supported by the long-term leases typically let to big box food stores, the remaining spaces in the strip malls are leased to a large variety of retail outlets. Victory Real Estate is based in Columbus, GA.

Nochaway Land, LLC is based in Florida.  This entity serves as a wetlands land bank, primarily to the Florida Department of Transportation, acting as a repository and wetlands offset for large highway construction projects within that state.  This business model has a defined life span, having committed to preservation of the off-setting wetlands for decades to come.  There is approximately 15 years remaining on the land bank’s available acreage.

Ponce Investments, LLC, located in St. Augustine, FL, has recently sold its primary land holding to a business developer.  A small parcel is also for sale and is the final holding of Ponce Investments.  Once this has been sold, the business will be wound down.  United lands has essentially cashed out its position in the limited partnership since the primary land sale has been completed.

Seismic has revealed that the geology under the acreage of United Lands is ideally suited to the sequestration of liquid carbon.  The physical location of the property is also near numerous large emitters of carbon and close to a major carbon pipeline.  There is also another acreage nearby which has similar geology.  The two combined have an estimated storage capacity of around 200,000,000 tons of Carbon.  In addition, Louisiana has recently been granted ‘Primacy’ from the EPA for the granting of Class VI sequestration permits.  This development will save prospective permitting applicants time in getting approval for their projects.