St Mary Operating Company Inc history

Brothers of the Society of Mary (Marianists) brought Catholic education to San Antonio when, in 1852, they opened St Mary’s Institute.

St Mary's Academy was founded in 1889 by the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet as a private high school for young women.

Oil was discovered on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1901 in an area known as the Spindletop salt dome.

In 1908 the venture was incorporated as the St Mary's Parish Land Company.

His partners in the Louisiana venture were also mining men, and although they planned to drain the land for agricultural development, they were wise enough to obtain the mineral rights in addition to the surface rights. It would be reincorporated in Delaware in 1915.

College classes were inaugurated in 1925 for the future Mount Saint Mary’s College, and a special building was built for them.

Some attempts were made to discover oil on the property, but no one had succeeded until the predecessor of Texaco, which took a lease on the land in 1933 and began exploration efforts.

1938: The first major oil find is made on company properties.

St Mary then leased some 4,000 acres to Atlantic Richfield, the predecessor to Vastar, which in 1941 discovered the Bayou Sale Field.

In 1955 the company completed its first well on the property.

Like Congdon, Anderson was an Ivy Leaguer, graduating from Princeton University in 1957 with a doctorate in geology.

In 1966, Thomas E. Congdon, the grandson of Chester Congdon and a Yale and Harvard graduate, was named president of St Mary.

In 1971 Congdon established a long-term relationship with George Anderson, a man who would one day be named "Wildcatter of the Year" by the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States.

1979 - Another benchmark hit, 2 million pounds of food were distributed through 35 partner agencies.

In 1983 Anderson and St Mary formalized their relationship to pursue drilling operations.

In 1992 St Mary went public, taking advantage of a period of time when Wall Street was interested in energy companies.

In 1994 the company completed four acquisitions at a total cost of $12.4 million.

In 1996 the company sold Wyoming gas properties that no longer fit with its strategy.

In addition, to support Gulf Coast operations, St Mary opened an exploration office in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1997.

In 2001 it branched into coalbed methane development by acquiring properties of Caribou Land & Livestock Montana, located in the Hanging Woman Basin of Montana and Wyoming.