Community | July 17, 2009 | 32 comments

After Sabotaging Own Oil Wells, Exxon Faces $1 Billion in Fines

source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/exxon-sabotage-oil-fields.php

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O, those oil companies; they sure do love to play dirty. And the biggest US oil company, Exxon Mobil, has just got caught with its hand in the well--the oil well that it purposefully sabotaged so no other company could use, that is. The Texas General Land Office has just revealed that Exxon "maliciously" destroyed its own oil fields so that no one else would be able to tap them--and it's getting slapped with a $1 billion fine for the crime. And wait till you hear what they did to the wells--and what that fine will go towards cleaning up.

It's not pretty. In fact, it's pretty disgusting. According to Bloomberg:

Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the land office that oversees oil leases that help fund Texas schools, asked the Texas Railroad Commission to conduct hearings into an alleged 1990s program at Exxon Mobil of plugging abandoned wells with trash, sludge, explosives and cement plugs. The barriers made it impossible for other producers to revive the wells, Patterson said in a statement he gave to Bloomberg News yesterday.

So that's an environmentally offending twofer--it both further degrades the area around the wells, and wastes the ever more scarce natural resource that had already been drilled for exploitation. On the bright side, I guess it's a bit of petrol that won't get burned . . .
So why the spiteful rampage? It seems Exxon had a bit of a falling out with one of Texas's most prominent oil families, the O'Connors.

From the 1950s to the late 1980s, the O’Connors earned more than $40 million in royalties on crude and gas pumped from 121 wells that Exxon Corp., as the company was then known, and a predecessor, Humble Oil & Refining Co., drilled on the family’s land near Corpus Christi, according to court filings.

The relationship between Exxon and the family deteriorated in the late 1980s, when the company’s request for a reduction in the 50 percent royalty rate was rebuffed, court documents showed. Exxon said the field was no longer profitable and began shutting wells, a process that concluded in August 1991, the documents showed.

After Exxon packed up and left town, the O'Connors decided to tap the rest of the oil from the partially sapped fields.

Two years later, Emerald Oil . . . agreed to lease from the O’Connors one-third of the area formerly operated by Exxon. When Emerald drilled into the plugged wells to revive production, drill bits collided with cement, severed pipes and explosive charges normally used to perforate rock formations, Patterson said.

Bad form indeed.
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32 comments // After Sabotaging Own Oil Wells, Exxon Faces $1 Billion in Fines

  • msumonica
  • remanns
  • larrysnotes
  • maisry
  • TimothyF
  • artemis6
    • 0
      artemis6  

    • The only thing they cannot pass on to the consumer is jail time . To save taxpayers money , all executives should be doing time , when a company commits a criminal offense and is found guilty . Obviously this idea needs a little working out , fine tuning , it could be a balance for corporate corruption . Can you imagine the uproar against such a law ? My logic is like when somebody rear ends you , they are at fault ... It is the executives responsibility to keep themselves informed of company activities . Real accountability , is good .

    • 2 years ago
  • asherp
    • 0
      asherp  

    • They net 45.2 BILLION ANNUALLY IN PROFITS ALONE.

      They should be fined 80 billion. That would make them give a shit. Make only a couple thousand a year, and I can get slapped with several hundreds of dollars in fines for speeding, and speeding ain't shit compared to the wanton destruction this is.

      If it was a person that did this, 1 billion would be a meaningful fine.

      But that's pocket change to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

    • 2 years ago
  • maisry
    • 0
      maisry  

    • I only buy gas from Top Tier companies. Funny, Mobil/Exxon USED to be among them, but are no longer on the list. Fine with me!

      Before we get into an "All Gas Is the Same" war (been there done that), just let me have my preference, OK? (I drive a Prius, so the cost difference is insignificant to me.)

      OP TIER Gasoline Retailers:
      QuikTrip
      Chevron
      Texaco
      MFA Oil Co.
      Conoco
      Phillips 66
      76
      Entec Stations
      Shell
      The Somerset Refinery, Inc.
      Kwik Trip / Kwik Star
      Aloha Petroleum
      Tri-Par Oil Co.
      Turkey Hill Minit Markets
      Mileage Stations
      Chevron Canada
      Shell Canada
      Petro-Canada
      Sunoco Canada

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
  • cztheday
    • 0
      cztheday  

    • Of course, Exxon will find some way of passing the fine along to consumers in the form of higher prices on gasoline or some other product(s). And the proceeds of the fine will be used to purchase...?

      "fascist-tinged?" Ground control to Major Tom...Come in, Major Tom...

    • 2 years ago
  • pmcl59
    • 0
      pmcl59  

    • I like the idea of compensating the owners of the oil fields for the loss of there resource. Exxon has done many things malicious or plain stupid, How about hiring a drunk tanker captain ?

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • there are A dozen wells In my neiborhood all produce well head gas you can run in older model cars You know before fuel injection back when cars had carbs on them it's rough on them but they will run on it

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • I can think of a couple of holes that have over a million dollars worth of crap downhole. I'm talking drill collars mudmotors bits. pretty much the whole bottum hole assembley would be left down hole what a waste of money just so some other dumbass could not go in and frack it to get it to produce again

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • Yep I used to work for greywolf drilling we drilled a bunch of wells on the O'conner ranch that were good producers but where capped because the Company we where drilling for wanted it done There is enuff gas in south texas to power the USA for a long time Natural gas should be super cheap but It's not and I don't know why

    • 2 years ago
  • maisry
  • s0uthc0ast
    • 0
      s0uthc0ast  

    • Ok, Exxon eliminates access to the petroleum the moonbats do not want us to use, and that's an offense?
      What's it's gonna be? Do we or do we not want oil?
      I thought this would be welcomed so we would all have run out and by a Prius and put up solar panels and pin wheel generators.

      Dumb-asses ....

    • 2 years ago
  • D_Legendary1
    • 0
      D_Legendary1  
    • s0uthc0ast:

      Polluting the enviornment to shut down a well is like blowing yourself up in a crowded mall to commit suicide. Its something that you just don't do. It isn't about drilling for oil but rather the side effects of doing something that is both wrong and illegal.

      And the Saudis have the world by the balls so yes we need the oil!

    • 2 years ago
  • dkl165
    • 0
      dkl165  
    • s0uthc0ast:

      Its more about the environmental pollution that was caused in the manner in which they shut down the well rather than the actual fact that the well was shut down.

    • 2 years ago
  • telcod
    • 0
      telcod  

    • Ok, not enough this fine business (besides we end up paying for it at the pump). That's right, we pay the fine. We need to take their homes and cars and this needs to be coupled with jail time in a real prison (prison sex quid pro quo) or mandatory front line combat duty with minimal body armor. Want to see corporate reform, "execute a few executives." Sounds like a good slogan. The time is well past. Or, there is always the French Revolution example....and they never went "too far" again.

      Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,
      Captain B

    • 2 years ago
  • shanklinmike
    • 0
      shanklinmike  

    • Don't worry, the government will fix everything with bailouts.....just ignore the problems in the background and the oligopolization of the oil industry by the government.....just put your blinders on and ask the government to fix everything. Forget that we have had a fascist-tinged economic system for decades and just blame it on freedom.....it's obviously very easy to do....

    • 2 years ago
  • KCHARLES
  • Mob_Barley
  • diabolical44
    • 0
      diabolical44  

    • exxon is a cancer upon us. and to think. we had a president who represented them first and foremost. exxon is the reason our young men and women are dying in Iraq.

      heads should roll for this. more than just fines. someone should do a long long time in jail.

    • 2 years ago
  • VoyagerFilms
    • 0
      VoyagerFilms  

    • Criminal prosecutions I'd say. Exxon intentionally degraded another's property and should be sued and pay ten times the estimated value of the oil remaining.

      The person or people in Exxon should be incarcerated just as any other person for felony vandalism.

      What more has and is Exxon and other oil fat companies doing to Americans and innocent people around the world?

    • 2 years ago
  • chasingame
    • 0
      chasingame  

    • I am not surprised to see Exxon pulling something like this. Their name seems to come up quite often when this kind of malfunctioning corporate behavior is discovered. In all reality they should just be fined right out of existence.

    • 2 years ago
  • idealist
    • 0
      idealist  

    • there so corrupt and evil that they will sabotage themselves. not to forget the native people of differnt lands and there clean food and water, or the animals around the world who have all so lost food and water not to mention there habitat.
      only when our air taste like oil will u.s. people be really angry..

    • 2 years ago
  • Sam_the_Wizer
    • 0
      Sam_the_Wizer  
    • idealist:

      My air smells like oil (worse actually, wells are awful) and I'm angry, but the majority of the people are indifferent to all the wells around here. There was a nurse that nearly died after treating an oil worker after coming into contact with chemicals on his clothing. The hospital asked what chemicals were used to help treat the nurse, but the oil companies refused to divulge what chemicals were used because it's a "trade secret."

    • 2 years ago
  • regularrf
  • diabolical44
  • dkl165
  • 24French
    • 0
      24French  

    • Exxon's mean. But the $1 billion fine is nice to see. Usually it's more like a $20,000 fine for some "error" that they made a couple mil from.

    • 2 years ago
  • asherp
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