About Cholla Petroleum Cholla is a private 
In addition to having a large established existing production presence in these areas, we continue to acquire large acreage positions in exploration and exploitation areas we have identified as having significant oil and gas reserve potential. We also focus on individual play concepts that are expandable within a basin or region.
Due to our management and geology expertise, we generate the majority of our exploration projects internally, and therefore are not dependent on outside parties for project or concept flow. We strive to control all the pre-drill exploration phases, including the acreage acquisition and the application of appropriate technology. With project control, we are in a position to fully manage the exploration, drilling, and development and production process.
Cholla has all the necessary field equipment and personnel, except drilling rigs, to complete, operate, and maintain the various leases scattered over a 250 mile stretch of North and West Central Texas.
Cholla is also involved in a number of other high potential exploration projects located in East Texas, onshore Gulf Coast Region, South Texas, Val Verde Basin(S.W. Texas), Eastern Colorado, and the San Joaquin Basin in California.
Company History
L.W. “Slim” Powell had not been born when Edwin Drake’s well stained the ground with “Black Gold” in 1859 ushering in the industrial age, but he was very much a part of the massive East Texas field discovery in 1930… so much so that the Powell name became synonymous with East Texas pioneer oil personalities.
L. W. .Powell was born in 1900, and, at the age of 16 with a 6th grade education, went to work on Caddo Lake in East Texas as a pumper, then went to Eldorado, Arkansas in the early ‘20’s with Gulf Oil Company. In 1926 he became drilling and production supervisor in Wink, Texas, for Southern Crude Oil running 12 cable tool rigs in the Hendrick’s pool. In the ‘30’s he made a fortune in the “East Texas” field and lost it in Louisiana drilling dryholes. He started over in 1944 with a broken down Cardwell drilling rig purchased for $30,000.00
, contracting in East Texas. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, he drilled in North Texas and southern Oklahoma after moving to Dallas in 1952. He passed away in 1975 at 75 years of age.“Slim” Powell had one son, Loyd, and the predestined youngster never knew any other existence but backroads and barbecue. While other boys were involved in school athletics, young Loyd was constantly by his father’s side going to the rigs, catching samples at the shale shaker, absorbing the doghouse lingo, learning firsthand the experiences of life in the Texas oil patch. The smell of oil and the blowing west Texas wind in his face developed a certain distinctive style of one of Texas’ truly colorful and talented oil personalities.
Loyd Powell is a true self-taught Texas oil explorer with a keen interest in the “history” of the oil business, and over the years has earned a dynamic reputation as a successful oil and gas entrepreneur. Originally operated as L & M Oil Company, but due to expanding exploration and enlarged drilling activities, with production in Oklahoma, North, West Central and West Texas, Cholla Petroleum, Inc. was selected as the company’s new name in 1989.
The Cholla
cactus is one of the most popular and colorful cactus plants indigenous to the Southwest. Its blossoms come in every conceivable shade of red, yellow, and gold. In addition to its beauty, the Cholla is known for its durable, vigorous, stubbornly tenacious life span … like the company itself … it can endure and overcome during challenging times … a tough, formidable competitor. The name is analogous with the company it serves.
For more than 60 years the Powell family has operated one of the more successful private oil and gas companies in the Southwest! See enclosed photo of the next generation of Powells standing next to the original well that started the family oil business … MCKINLEY #1 – GREGG COUNTY, TEXAS – EAST TEXAS OIL FIELD – taken May, 2002. The lease was sold to Getty Oil Company in 1976 after L. W. Powell’s death in 1975 and has been in continuous production since drilled by L. W. Powell in the early ‘40’s!
Luke "Landman" Powell
