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IC===Xt===4 HEIDELBERG THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF REDNECK ROCK by Jan Reid Photographs by Melinda Wickman “I was hooked from the first page and read right on through. Jan Reid has written an informative and entertaining book.” Larry King “From Janis and Threadgill through the acid rockers and up to Willie Nelson’s succession of shit-kicker outdoor agoniesthe story is as energized and affecting as the music itself.” Bill Brammer “The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock . . . gives the first authoritative history of the unique music phenomenon that has sprung up during the past decade around Austin, Texas. . . . [It] is one of the finer documents of an integral music scene to be written lately.” Village Voice A CREATIVE APPROACH TO CONTROLLING PHOTOGRAPHY by Harry Boyd, Jr. . . . Boyd has channeled a lot of really solid ‘nuts ‘n bolts’ material into a form that acknowledges the personal preroga tives of a photographer. . . . I personally recommend A Creative Approach to Controlling Photography as an indispensable addition to the library of every serious photographer, amateur or pro.” Jim Cornfield, Petersen’s Photographic Magazine COMING SPRING 1975 iCARRASCO! by Wilson McKinney The story of the men and the organization inspired and guided by Fred Gomez Carrasco, the flamboyant Don who operated an illicit drug ring for years in both Texas and Mexico. Author Wilson McKinney, an investigative reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, speaks fluent Spanish and traveled extensively in Mexico during the more than three years he conducted research into the inner workings of the Carrasco organization in preparation for this book. Books may be purchased at your local bookstore. If ordering by mail include 500 1 for postage and handling. Texas residents add 5% for sales tax. HEIDELBERG PUBLISHERS, INC. 3707 Kerbey Lane Austin, Texas 78731 1.==>11.==41.===41=4 operators of the wells do not try to do away with the evidence by closing their wells with a concrete plug. There are four assistant attorneys general and eleven Railroad Commission engineers there, investigating the situation. The Rangers are also there to prevent physical violence on these state officials who are investigating the wells, which are believed to have been drilled at highly acute angles, to tap the oil supplies on neighboring leases. There has been no violence reported. SEVERAL men on the attorney general’s staff told the Observer that Roy Payne, district director for the Texas Railroad Commission and the man who has been most valuable in fingering the suspected wells, has been threatened. Payne verifies this, saying that when the investigation began, he received anonymous telephone calls telling him that if the investigation continued they [the callers] “would get rid” of him. How massive is the alleged piracy? Atty. Gen. Will Wilson told the Observer, “This will turn out to be one of the biggest thefts in Texas history.” He said it is conceivable that investigators will find 400 wells directionally drilled. Then; on the basis that a good producing well is worth at least $100,000, he added, “This is a possible $40 million theft. By comparison, Billie Sol will seem a piker.” Payne was more conservative. He agrees on the average worth of a producing well, but he thinks it will turn out that between 200 and 300 wells will prove crooked, which means a theft of only between $20 million and $30 million. All told, there are probably one thousand wells involved, but this number includes “dummy wells,” which are not really pumping oil, but are tied up by pipelines with the one pirating well on the lease, and it pumps oil out through them. In other words, such a driller may have five well-heads on his lease; one of these will be a real well, directionally drilled so as to suck from under a neighboring lease; and what it takes in, it shares, via hidden pipe connections, with the other four wells. This sharing is done for good reason. If the one pumping, well were credited with all it brought up, it would exceed ‘the 20-barrel-a-day ceiling by which a marginal well is classified; then it could pump only eight days a month. All the suspected wells are classified as marginal by the state Railroad Commission. Marginal wells, even if they pump 19.7 barrels a day, are permitted to pump 30 days a month. Wells that can produce more than 20 barrels are held to an eight-day-a-month allowable. The eight-day limit is standard over the state, but various fields are allowed different barrel amounts per well, depending on the depth of the well. Out in West Texas where they sometimes have to sink a well 15,000 feet to hit oil, at terrific expense, they are -allowed up to around 600 barrels a day. But in East Texas, the oil level is at an easy 3,500 level, so the daily allowable is pretty low. Actually, the 20-barrel-a-day maximum is good for the oil men too, because if they were allowed to pump to their heart’s content, the pressure in the field would drop so low the recovery would fall off drastically. If this,. as Wilson predicts, does turn out to be the biggest oil theft in Texas history, the East Texas field is an appropriate . place, for this is the field of superlatives. It has the largest reserves of any field in the nation about three billion barrels have been sucked from it since it opened in 1930, but almost as much remains to be tapped and it had the largest reserves of any field in the world until the Middle East knocked it out of the running. IT IS an area nursed on violence and greed. It was early in October [1930] when C. M. “Dad” Joiner brought in the discovery well in the East Texas field. It was sunk in the pine-covered hills of Rusk County. When this well opened the oil industry in East Texas, the roof fell in on the Railroad Commission and its efforts to regulate oil in Texas, a duty which had been passed on to it as early as 1919.