Unprintable Thought

When the Federal Government won title to the rich submerged oil lands off the California Coast, Texans feared their offshore oil properties would be the next target. They were right. Last week Attorney General Tom Clark, a Texan himself, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to give the Federal Government title to the Gulf of Mexico's offshore lands now being "illegally leased" by Louisiana and Texas to private oil companies. Estimated amount of oil in the 780-mile coastal strip: 10 billion barrels.

Texas' Governor Beauford Jester was so boiling mad he told newsmen, "You can't print what I think." The underwater lands are one of the juiciest holdings of the Texas General Land Office, which uses the proceeds to help finance the state's schools; 1947's royalties from submerged oil drilling were $14,800,000. Just before Tom Clark filed suit, the board had collected $2,055,709 from private drillers for leases on 79,000 underwater acres.

The Texans thought they had one good defense against the suit. In the 1845 treaty of annexation, the U.S. promised to let Texas keep all its undeveloped lands, including those extending offshore for three marine leagues (10 1/2 miles). But the present dispute involved a much larger area. Some of the oil lies as much as 140 miles out on the Continental Shelf. Texans hoped they had taken care of that too. Since the Justice Department first brought suit against California, the Texas legislature has passed a bill declaring the Gulf of Mexico, in effect, just a Texas lake.

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