Titus County, Texas History - The Mt. Pleasant Refinery

The story of Mt. Pleasant's refinery is a story about four highly skilled and well-financed men with foresight joining forces to take a calculated risk in Texas' newest oil field. They were:

Captain J. F. Lucey

Before American participation in World War I, J. F. Lucey attracted attention as an executive and administrator. For that reason he was placed in charge of relieving war-torn Belgium at a time when England had only her hand full of "contemptibles to enforce respect on the German horde for a scrap of paper."

He was a man of immense personal energy. When the East Texas field came in, Captain Lucey began operations in the East Texas field and again demonstrated his organizing genius. He took a leading part in stabilizing conditions that once threatened to disrupt the entire world oil industry when he presided at the August 31, 1931 meeting in Tyler where Governor Ross Sterling was asked to declare martial law in the East Texas oil field. He served as the first chairman of the East Texas Chamber of Commerce Oil Committee where he devoted his energy and experience to resolving difficulties and helping bring orderly production into the world's largest oil field.

Captain Lucey was a prime mover in organizing the Associated Pipe Line Company to give East Texas the benefit of an independent outlet to the Gulf of Mexico. The line was laid in record time for a project of its kind and served many East Texas producers daily in the transportation of their allowable.

Jack Frost

Jack Frost was born in Greenville, Texas, in 1900 and spent most of his life in West Texas at Blackwell, Nolan County. He attended both Simpsons University of Abilene and Southern Methodist University of Dallas.

After majoring in geology and paleontology, he entered the oil business as an instrument technician for the Humble Oil & Refining Company at Cisco in 1919, and was associated with several companies in opening up various new oil fields over the country, with large holdings in the big East Texas field.

Mr. Frost was a partner in Byrd-Frost, Inc., a leading Talco oil operator. Mr. Frost was a very active and successful operator in East Texas and other areas. The two independents brought in a Ward County, Texas field, assembled the largest drilling block in Nebraska's oil industry's history, was very active in New Mexico, and owned some of the most valuable properties in the Talco field. He had the unusual distinction of having drilled only a dozen dry holes in his entire eighteen-year career.

David Harold Byrd

Once called "Dry Hole" Byrd, by 1937 D. Harold Byrd was called "Dead Hit Byrd." The D. Harold Byrd name was printed up, down and across Texas oil lease maps for years and it was painted on the derricks of ninety-six dusters. Of course, some others weren't dry holes, which kept him going.

Like the Lone Star Rangers rode patrol on the Mexican border, and South Plains cowpunchers rode herd on boldfaced cattle around the caprock, Harold Byrd drilled wells both directions out of his original operations around Mexia all up and down the Balcones fault, and as far south as the Rio Grande.

Byrd played the oil game for 560 miles along an area thirty miles wide, putting down fifty-six holes in one stretch without hitting a producer. That's the kind of bucking the game that Byrd had the first eight or nine years he was an independent oil operator.

Then in 1929-1930 Van became an oil field. East Texas operators began to test farther and farther along an old shore line, and eventually crossed from the west to the east side of the basin they had followed. They found production and then looked around to discover that Byrd had a lion's share of choice acreage leased up ahead of them. Byrd had pay sand at last . . . Plenty!

One of Byrd's favorite pass-times had been reading subsurface maps and correlating well logs. Now he chuckled at it.

Ralph E. Fair

Ralph E. Fair entered the oil business in 1904 with the Blackjack Oil Company in the Kern River Field, California. He worked as roughneck and continued working in that area until 1909.

He entered foreign service in Mexico in 1910, returning to the United States in 1911, when he drilled the discovery well in the Lost Hills Field, California.

Mr. Fair re-entered foreign service in 1912, going to Romania and continued working abroad in Russia, India, Africa and Romania until 1931, when he moved back to America. He kept extensive interests in Romania, although he was lived permanently in Dallas.

While Jack Frost and D. Harold Byrd were known in the oil industry as geologists and successful operators, and Captain J F. Lucey was primarily recognized for his organizational genius and personal energy in many successful enterprises, Ralph Fair had an unusual technical knowledge of machinery that served to round out the four-way partnership. With a background including first hand experience in the shop as well as actual use of equipment in the field, he was among the few men in the industry who were capable of both building machinery and using it.

The four Dallas operators who started The Talco Asphalt & Refining Company had faith in the Talco field when no one else did. They believed in it and saw the possibilities for the heavy crude found there. They bought large production interests, then purchased an additional 2,600 acres from Gulf Oil Corporation, giving them a total crude reserve that engineers estimated at 34,000,000 barrels.

Here's the story of how the above four men built the Talco Asphalt & Refining Company refinery in Mt. Pleasant, which later became the American Liberty, then Dorchester refinery. The refinery was a major factor in Titus County's economy for forty-seven years, but was closed in 1984 and has been declared a superfund site and is in the process of being completely dismantled in 2007. Soon there will be nothing left to indicate the jobs and progress that the Talco Asphalt & Refining Company refinery brought to Titus County.

From February, 1936, when oil was first discovered in the Talco field, Captain J.F. Lucey, was one of the most active oil men involved in the original development of the Talco oil field. Captain Lucey's company brought in what was at the time the best producing well in the Talco field at 106 barrels of crude per hour on May 18, 1936.

Because Talco was a new field, there were no cross-country pipelines or refineries in the area to transport or process the crude. The first oil produced from the Talco field had to be shipped by rail on the Paris and Mount Pleasant Railroad to Gulf coast refineries for processing into finished products. On May 19, 1936, Captain Lucey announced that he would build a pipeline from his well to the Paris & Mount Pleasant railroad spur a short distance southeast of Talco, where the Humble (now Exxon-Mobil) already had a pipeline.

The Talco Pipeline Company, consisting of Captain Lucey in partnership with Ralph Fair and the Byrd-Frost Company, was well financed. In addition to oil produced by their own wells, they soon became one of the largest purchasers of crude oil from other producers in the Talco field. With an ample crude oil supply assured, they began looking for a location to build a refinery to process the crude into finished products near the new Talco field.

Talco field produces what is known as "heavy crude" with an 18 to 25 specific gravity. Generally, lighter refined products (gasoline, propane, diesel fuel) are more valuable than heavy products (tar, asphalt). After pre-processing by other units in a refinery, the oil flows through the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit, also known as the cat cracker or cracker. The unit gets its name because it contains a catalyst that helps break down (crack) large oil molecules into the more valuable lighter products. The cracking unit is the very tall unit visible near the center of photo BI-0006 immediately left of the column of steam from other units.

Despite Talco crude's low gravity, when cracked it produces an excellent grade of gasoline with a high recovery percentage of several other products like roofing tar and asphalt used to pave roads. However, most U.S. refineries were constructed to handle "light sweet" crude and can't process heavy crude, which is still true today.

The proposed refinery was a very large project and was highly desired by every town in the area. The company said it planned to build a new $350,000 (approx $4,970,000 in 2006 dollars) cracking plant at either Mount Pleasant or Mount Vernon, or possibly between the two towns. They announced that the refinery would have about a 3,500 barrel daily capacity would be equipped with the latest type cracking equipment to process the heavy Talco crude.

Mount Pleasant, as the county seat and the largest town, had already benefited by the oil boom taking place just sixteen miles north of it. The oil reservoir stopped considerably north of Mount Pleasant, so it was unlikely to benefit from actual drilling and production operations. However, the Jefferson Hotel had become the unofficial headquarters of oil men and speculators working in the county. New houses were being constructed and rent houses and rooms for rent were expensive and hard to find due to the influx of oil people and oilfield workers.

Mount Pleasant businessmen didn't want to miss the opportunity to have the new refinery located in Mount Pleasant, because its presence meant lots of money would circulate through the local economy of the town that acquired it. Plant construction would provide hundreds of men with well-paying jobs, and continuing refinery operations would provide many other long-term, well paying jobs. The influx of new residents would mean more money spent at local businesses, new homes would be built to house the employees, and the local tax base would increase from the new houses and other businesses who might locate near the refinery.

The Chamber of Commerce, in an unusually forward-thinking move, offered to give the Lucey Refining Company land on which to build the new refinery if Lucey would locate the new plant here. A seventy acre track near the Cotton Belt railroad southwest of Mount Pleasant was selected, and a purchase agreement was worked out with the landowners. If the new refinery decided to locate in Mount Pleasant, local businessmen would finance the land and guarantee its payment through subscriptions (contributions). The Chamber decided how much each businessman could afford to contribute, and set out to seek the subscriptions needed. As a further inducement to insure the refinery was built here, the Chamber had surrounding landowners sign an agreement that they would vote against being incorporated into the Mount Pleasant City Limits if the city ever decided to annex the refinery and surrounding area. This helped insure that advalorem taxes on the plant would remain as low as possible after the refinery was built.

The Chamber presented their offer to Captain Lucey and waited for the location to be announced. Anxious anticipation was high during the selection process, and the local newspaper contained articles almost daily about prospects of the plant coming here. To insure success of the contribution drive, the Mt. Pleasant Daily Times printed the name of each person who contributed to the land purchase fund and the amount they contributed.

After inspecting this and other sites, Captain Lucey wrote the Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, October 29, 1936, to accept their offer. Unlike today's foot-thick contracts full of legaleeze, the simple acceptance letter read as follows:

"Mr. Claude McDonald

President Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce

Mt. Pleasant, Texas

My Dear Mr. McDonald:

We want to thank you for your letter of October 27, with its enclosure.

As you know, we have decided to accept your offer and we are going to build the refinery in Mt Pleasant.

Very Sincerely,

J.F. LUCEY

Pres. Lucey Refining Co."

On the same day, Captain Lucey announced that a contract to lay a 20-mile pipeline from the refinery site to Talco was awarded to the Dewey-Roth Company of Tyler and the contract for the construction of a 55,000 barrel storage tank on the refinery location was awarded to the John Tancred Company.

Once the site selection was announced, work started quickly. Clearing and grading of the refinery site was begun. The Dewey T. Boss Company of Tyler began construction on a 55,000 barrel storage tank in the middle of a corn field directly behind J.T. Leftwich's home, a mile from town on the Dallas Highway. A crew of about fifteen men worked on building the tank, four operating power-driven rivet hammers. The crew had its own power plant, blacksmith shop, rivet forge and other equipment. The pipeline being laid from Talco to Mt. Pleasant had reached several miles south of White Oak Creek.

On November 23, 1936, Captain Lucey announced that J. K. MacKinnon had been appointed as manger of the new refinery effective December 1. He also announced that plans for the refinery were complete and that a contract to construct it would be let soon.

By November 24, the floor of the 55,000 barrel tank was in place and about three-fourths of the first ring of wall plates had been riveted on.

On December 10, 1936, Captain Lucey made another stunning announcement. The refinery construction contract would be let and construction started soon. Not only would the refinery be built, but the proposed refinery's capacity had been increased from 3,000 barrels a day to 5,000.

Not only had the refinery contract been let, but the largest oil transaction in the Talco field to date was consummated the day before, in which Byrd-Frost, Incorporated of Dallas had purchased Gulf Oil Company's holdings of 2,620 acres of land in the Talco field for $3,000,000 (approximately $42,600,000 in 2006 dollars). With the consideration of $75,000 cash and $1,000 to be paid from oil for each productive lease, Byrd-Frost, Inc. announced with the Lucey Petroleum Company, the $3,000,000 Talco drilling program. With approximately $800,000 (approx $11,400,000 in 2006 dollars) already invested in pipe lines, their investment in the Talco field totaled almost four million dollars and made the Byrd-Frost-Lucey Petroleum Company the second largest operator in the field, second only to Humble Oil and Refining Company. At the time, the Talco Pipe Line Company which belonged to Byrd-Frost-Lucey already had an extensive gathering system in the Talco field and was buying about 3,000 barrels of Titus County crude daily, which was being stored in two 55,000 barrel storage tanks at Talco awaiting the Mt. Pleasant pipeline's completion.

On December 14, Lucey Refining Company announced that the million dollar refinery construction contract had been let to the Frick-Reid Supply Company. Universal Oil Products Company had received the contract to construct the Dubbs cracking unit. Mosher Steel Company had been contracted to erect a steel loading rack to accommodate fifty tank cars at once. Construction was scheduled to start about January 1 with a May 1 completion date. The St. Louis office of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company indicated that they estimated approximately three thousands cars of finished products to move from the plant yearly.

The office force moved from their temporary quarters into the refinery's office building on April 21, 1937. The new office was equipped with all the latest equipment, and was spacious enough for many employees. It had hardwood floors and other attractive decor.

A large number of skilled refinery workers from other areas who were to be permanently employed by the plant moved Mt. Pleasant. The key men are outstanding oil technicians with years of experience, and were considered among the top ranks.

As it goes with most building projects, construction took longer than expected. The last process units were installed in mid-October, 1937, and the cat cracker furnace was fired to prepare the unit for operation. The equipment still lacked a paint job and roads inside the refinery still had to be laid and paved.

Capt. J. F. Lucey, Jack Frost, D. Harold Byrd, and Ralph E. Fair, Dallas owners of the Talco Asphalt & Refining Company, attended a general refinery banquet in the Jefferson Hotel's private dining room on Tuesday, October 26. Local refinery sales, operating and engineering supervisors including J. K. MacKinnon, C. O. Garbrecht, Joe Garabruecht, J. M. Dom, E. E. Jackson, J. C. Reed, B. B. Hamilton, Don Lee, Stewart Morgan and John S. Williams also attended the banquet.

Refinery general manager J. K. MacKinnon stated that the refinery was now complete and was making 70 octane gasoline. Mr. MacKinnon said that ten Universal Oil Products Company technicians in the operating, chemical and other phases, who were licensed engineers for the Dubbs Company, arrived in Mt. Pleasant and will to remain until plant operation had progressed further. He said that refinery plant roads were being graded before letting a contract to apply asphalt toppings throughout the process area. He planned to speed the work along and if possible have the roads ready in time for the plant's opening celebration. The tanks and other equipment could not be painted by then, however, because the mill scale in the steel had not completely worn off and painting would be an unnecessary expense.