Lewis

This is an action at law by the Mohawk Company to recover excise taxes levied and paid upon the transportation of crude oil by pipe line from certain of plaintiff’s leases’ flow tanks to .its Fruitvale refinery storage tanks. The amount contested originally was $1,621.11, but during the trial by mutual concessions it was reduced to approximately $875. This amount represents the tax upon oil produced at plaintiff’s Red Ribbon lease, and another lease immediately adjacent which for all purposes can be considered the same as the Red Ribbon lease.

At the time the tax was laid the Red Ribbon lease (of which plaintiff was lessee) was one-quarter of a mile wide by half a mile long. It contained half a dozen oil wells each of which had a flow tank situated next to it into which the oil from the well flowed, and was measured and tested so that the royalties due the lessor could be computed. Immediately adjoining the lease was the Mohawk’s refinery. Between the refinery and the wells, but closer to the former, were a group of oil storage tanks. From the flow tanks the oil was conveyed by pipe line, varying in length from one-quarter to one-half a mile, to the storage tanks where it was…