Word: chevrons
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Oilmen are fast discovering that pollution cannot be dismissed as the price of progress. In the toughest federal action ever brought against a polluter, a grand jury in New Orleans last week indicted the Chevron Oil Co. on a 900-count criminal charge of having "knowingly and wilfully" failed to provide safety devices on 90 wells in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coastline...
Recent investigations by the U.S. Geological Survey of our oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico have produced evidence of many serious violations of Interior Department regulations. I believe these violations were knowingly and willfully committed. I believe criminal proceedings against Chevron are warranted and recommend that they be instituted. I believe that the strongest possible action should be taken against the violators...
Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel was justly outraged. The recent Gulf of Mexico oil fiasco, during which a cluster of twelve offshore wells owned by Chevron Oil Co. blazed for a month, has caused even greater repercussions than last year's Santa Barbara debacle. Beyond oil, Louisiana's largest industries are shrimp and oysters, and the rich Gulf of Mexico beds may have been irreparably damaged by the spill. Scientific tests conducted at Woods Hole, Mass., last week produced the first solid evidence that oil pollution can disrupt the life cycles of marine creatures...
Perplexing Negligence. Hickel got the kind of action he demanded. Despite strenuous opposition by Louisiana politicians and the oil industry's powerful lobby in Washington, a federal grand jury convened in New Orleans last week to investigate Chevron's offshore operations as well as those of several other prominent oil companies. Among other things, Interior officials charged that Chevron had failed to maintain "storm chokes" (required by the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Acts) on 137 of 178 wells in the Gulf area. Chevron was also cited by the Government for 210 violations of offshore drilling requirements...
Hickel, who has indefinitely suspended all offshore lease sales, is particularly incensed because, he claims, Chevron "willfully and knowingly" violated the various requirements. Chevron's alleged negligence is as perplexing as it is illegal: the storm chokes, which could have shut off the runaway oil, cost only $800 per well...