Exxon's Sabotage (of its decomissioned US wells) May Merit $1 Billion Fine

[elehhhhna]

Exxon Sabotage May Merit $1 Billion Fine, Agency Says (Update2)
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By Joe Carroll

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. oil company, may be fined more than $1 billion for “malicious” sabotage of wells to prevent other producers from tapping fields it no longer wanted, the Texas General Land Office said.

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.

Under Railroad Commission rules, Exxon Mobil could face fines of $10,000 a day per well, Patterson said in the statement, which he plans to release on July 20. He said those penalties could add up to more than $1 billion on wells the company abandoned in 1991 after a disagreement over royalties with the owners, the O’Connor family, a Texas oil dynasty.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aH4MoH2m4Z0w

[texastoast]

1. Oilfield tactics

Sounds like domestic terrorism. Those explosives and all.

To Gitmo with the lot.

[elehhhhna]

7. YEPPERS.

[crickets]

2. Explosives?

Fine the hell out of them, and then put them on trial. There's gotta be a broken law in there somewhere, especially when sabotaging energy resources with explosives.

[elehhhhna]

5. if the lease was up & you put that in a house you'd rented, you'd be in biiiiiig trouble, right?

hello? ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISM, anyone?

IMAGINE WHAT Exxon gets away with in, say, Nigeria!!!1!

[conspirator]

3. The oil industry is rotten to its core. NATIONALIZE! nt

[Selatius]

4. Isn't this the same company that makes north of 40 billion dollars each year in profit???

Exactly how will such a fine even deter Exxon-Mobil from doing it again to other oil fields, especially those overseas?

[elehhhhna]

6. 1 bil is less than 2% of their annual profits, iirc, per the article

[Raster]

8. Fine exxon...????

:rofl: Really? Why doesn't someone ask the good people of Alaska about fining exxon?

[elehhhhna]

9. yep. plus we gifted them with Iraq already. WTF?

[Vidar]

10. I'd love to see it.

[elehhhhna]

11. The TX bench, Lege., and Governor will be TORN, I tell you --

they LIVE to protect BIGOIL and its stakeholders.

The major Property owners (old families, mostly) who lease drilling rights to oilco's (for money upfront and hefty royalties) are TexasRoyalty.

So it's bigoil versus big-bucks bigoil beneficaries.

Oh - the humanity.

[RB TexLa]

12. No one is ever fined for doing that. It happens all the time.