Cat Creek

Elk Hills, Teapot Dome and Salt Creek are names written imperishably in oil. Attorney General Sargent was last week obliged to add Cat Creek to the list. Cat Creek is a U. S. oil field in Montana. In 1922, Albert Bacon Fall, defamed Secretary of the Interior, gave the Lewistown Oil and Refining Co. a contract to buy the Government's Cat Creek royalty oil. As in the case of Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair's contract for Salt Creek, Wyo., oil,* Fall gave the Lewistown people an option to renew their contract after five years, although no such option had been mentioned in the advertisements for bids. Dr. Hubert Work, Fall's successor, renewed the Cat Creek contract last year without getting the Department of Justice's opinion. Last week Attorney General Sargent advised Secretary of the Interior West that, in view of the secret option, the Cat Creek contract was illegal, void. This time, Dr. Work did not bother to say, as he said of the Salt Creek incident: "People are tired of hearing of these oil leases."

* TIME erroneously referred to Oilman Sinclair's Salt Creek contract, which was voided last fortnight, as "a contract to extract oil from U. S. property on a royalty basis" (TIME, Oct. 29). Such a contract would be an operation lease. The Salt Creek field was leased to other operators, not to Sinclair. Lessees extract oil and pay the U. S. royalties of oil or cash. Sinclair's contract was to buy royalty oil from the U. S. at certain prices, with an option to renew the contract if he found the prices profitable. The voiding of Sinclair's buying contract in no wise affected leases in the Salt Creek field. Sinclair's contract was voided because his option was, in effect, secretly obtained, i.e., not mentioned in Fall's advertisement for bids.