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         TAHITI FIBER PULL



March 8, 1985

THE WALL STREET  JOURNAL

How Do Texans Ease a Drought?
With Lots of Oil Rigs, Of Course
        By ELLEN HUME
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


  
If there is one thing Texas oilman knows about, it is wheeling and dealing. 
   So it shouldn’t be any surprise that Bobby Vassallo is up to his usual tricks.  What may be surprising though, is the beneficiary of his latest brainstorm: the drought-stricken Ethiopians.

   His idea is to mix oil and water-equipment, that is.  Just about every oil company has a lot of idle rigs these days.  Mr. Vassallo figures that oil firms and banks with repossessed rigs can get a nice tax write-off for donating the equipment to drill fro water in Ethiopia.

Rigs in Parking Lot
   “I’ve passed banks in Midland, Texas where the president had to park at the meter out front because the drilling equipment was clogging up the parking lot, says Mr. Vassallo.” Although his firm, Texploration Oil and Gas Co., doesn’t have the right kind of rigs to donate, Mr. Vassallo is scrambling to find other firms to donate their rigs. 
   Mr. Vassallo got the idea on a recent mission to Addis Ababa with Operation California, a relief group on whose board he serves.  He ran into an oil company geologist who told him that potable water lies in relatively shallow aquifers there.  The water could be tapped, Mr. Vassallo believes, by drilling wells from shallow truck-mounted rigs normally used for oil.
   “Water is the lifeblood, he says, If you get them water, everything else will follow.”

Pestering Others
   No shrinking violet, Mr. Vassallo is out to wrest rigs from everyone he encounters.  Parks Pedrick, Jr., a vice president of InterFirst Bank, Dallas, found it impossible to read while sitting next to Mr. Vassallo on a recent New York flight.  Mr. Pedrick took the rig donation idea to higher-ups at InterFirst bank and they’re thinking it over.
   Anthony Iorio of Black Star Petroleum Corp., of Oceanside, N.Y., says he knows of 150 rigs that are idle and suitable to the Ethiopian task.  “Companies can get a full tax credit for a rig they donate, which because of the depressed market, they can’t sell right now,” he says.
   Mr. Iorio is offering his firm as the staging area for gathering the rigs and other equipment Mr. Vassallo rounds up.  Meanwhile, Operation California has other ideas up its sleeve:  “The rock group Alabama is donating 250,000 T-shirts to keep Ethiopians clothed,” Mr. Vassallo says.