Word: oilmen
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Over lunch in Houston, a prominent lawyer voiced a highly unusual complaint. Business was so good, he said, that his firm was turning away many potential clients, sending them as far away as Washington and New York for counsel. The reason: so many oilmen are involved in the fast-widening scandal of illegally selling low-priced "old" oil as expensive "new" oil that Houston's attorneys cannot take on new clients without becoming involved in conflicts of interest. Says one Houston oil consultant: "It's such an interwoven web that I doubt there is anybody in town...
...oilmen have reason to worry. After months of slow, top-secret investigations by the Justice Department, the Department of Energy, a congressional subcommittee and several grand juries, a long list of allegations is about to be aired. So far, most of the charges are believed to center not on the big oil majors but on relatively smaller-independents. Criminal indictments are expected to be handed down for prosecution in coming months against both companies and individuals...
...Daisy chains." Justice Department and FBI oil-fraud "strike forces," working with at least one grand jury in Tampa, Fla., are also looking into pricing swindles carried out by fuel brokers and oil companies. Some oilmen and brokers conspired to sell and resell refined oil several times among themselves, each time at a higher price with large kickbacks, before finally passing it on to an end user, who was either part of the conspiracy or especially gullible...
...driving at 55 m.p.h. and turning off the air conditioning, a severe oil glut is building west of the Rockies. At times, as many as 20 bulging tankers have been backed up in California's Long Beach harbor. Nearly half a million barrels of Alaskan crude, which oilmen had originally figured would go to the West Coast, are rerouted daily through the Panama Canal to the Gulf or East Coast ports at additional costs of more than $1 million. And although independent California oilmen are protesting a surplus that has forced them to close, or "shut in," some wells...
...expect to strike another Spindletop or North Slope, the industry has known for years that substantial reserves were available off the East Coast. With the price of new oil virtually deregulated, those finds have become all the more desirable. Though the Supreme Court decision set no precedent, the oilmen hope it may move other courts to rule in their favor in a case involving those lease tracts in the Georges Bank area, 100 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Mass., that are still blocked...