The Isthmus of Sulphur

Across Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec swept a boom fever as intoxicating as tequila. In the tiny coastal towns of Minatitlan and Coatzacoalcos. Mexicans with bulging bankrolls were spending them on refrigerators, Mixmasters, and dozens of other items they could only dream about a few years ago. Slapdash buildings were going up everywhere; Minatitlan's newest hotel opened for business before it was even finished, a second bank went up, honky-tonk bars and gambling joints were busy 24 hours a day. Cause of it all: sulphur, an element far more valuable to industry than gold. Last week, after years of exploration, three newly formed U.S. companies started to work huge deposits hidden under the isthmus jungles, shipped off their first 30 tons to world markets.

Cheap & Easy. No one knows exactly how much sulphur lies under Mexico's narrow neck, but the deposits are estimated to be immense, second only to the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast deposits. So far, the three U.S. companies have spent $10 million on plants, roads, pipelines and port facilities to tap deposits on 30,000 acres, only a fraction of their leaseholds. Mexican Gulf Sulphur Co. has built a plant with a 200,000-ton annual capacity; Pan American Sulphur Co. has put up another worth $5,000,000 with a 500,000-ton capacity; Gulf Sulphur Corp. is building a plant with a capacity of 300,000 tons. By the end of 1955 the three hope to be pouring out sulphur at the rate of 1,000,000 tons a year. Estimated production for 1958 is 2,500,000 tons, nearly half the present U.S. production and some 40% of all world supplies.

What makes Mexico's sulphur doubly attractive is the fact that the deposits are located in gigantic salt domes, which can be mined by the Frasch process, the cheapest method known. (Superheated water is pumped into the ground to liquefy the sulphur, which is then pumped to the surface.) Costs range from $7 to $20 per ton, as low as one-tenth the cost of other methods, and far cheaper than the world market price of $32 per ton.

Into the Jungle. The men largely responsible for the boom are three genial, Louisiana-born brothers named Brady--Lawrence, 58, Ashton, 56, and William, 54--who have become wealthy by a combination of brainy prospecting and luck. They found the sulphur, and now own Gulf Sulphur Corp., plus an exploration outfit called Amican Sulphur Co., S.A., and have sizeable stock interests in both Pan American and Mexican Gulf Sulphur. Working as a team, brothers Lawrence and Bill run the administrative end; Ashton is the geologist.

The Brady brothers, who have worked on and off as contract drillers for oil companies, got their first hint of Mexican sulphur 15 years ago when Ashton picked up a 1904 Shell Oil Co. exploration report. It told of salt domes on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a geological formation that often indicates sulphur. It took six years before they could prove their hunch. Starting to drill near San Cristobal in 1942, they were slowed down by the war, by an unfriendly and suspicious local population, even by the malaria-filled jungle itself, where torrential rains turn everything into a quagmire six months of the year. The first two wells were dry holes, but the third brought in sulphur. By 1947 the Bradys had proven out 3,000,000 tons, and turned over their concession to the newly organized Mexican Gulf Sulphur Co. in return for two seats on the board of directors and a big block of stock. The San Cristobal find was only the start.

Moving northward, the Bradys soon struck it really rich; in the Jaltipan area they found a great dome that may be the world's biggest, surpassing even Texas' famed Boling Dome, which has yielded 40 million tons. This time the Bradys turned over production rights to a group of Texas oilmen who formed Pan American Sulphur Co.

Up to the Penthouse. Since then, the Bradys have found sulphur in still a third area, Salinas, and formed their own Gulf Sulphur Corp. They get the same profitable deal the Mexican government has made with the other companies: a 20-year agreement under which they pay production royalties of between 4% and 15%, plus an export tax ranging up to 8%.

Last week the Brady brothers moved into one of Mexico City's newest office buildings, where they could keep a radio check on their jungle drilling rigs from a carpeted, glass-walled penthouse. Reports came in of three new wells, two for Brady companies and one for their biggest rival, the huge Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., the world's biggest sulphur producer. Texas' well in Mexico was its first find after four discouraging years of drilling at a cost of $6,000,000, and even then it was not a large deposit. Says Bill Brady with a shrug: "You work like hell to find it. If you don't, you don't. [We had] the luck of the Irish."

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