The state of New Mexico is accusing three Texas oil executives of orchestrating “a fraudulent scheme” to pocket revenue from hundreds of oil and gas wells in New Mexico and offload the cost of plugging and cleaning up the wells onto the state’s taxpayers. The suit, filed in late December by the New Mexico attorney general’s office, is the latest salvo in the state’s fight against oil and gas executives accused of foisting old wells onto the public.
The 72-page complaint alleges a yearslong pattern of fraud and self-dealing in which the oil executives — Everett Willard Gray II, Robert Stitzel and Marquis Reed Gilmore Jr., all of Midland, Texas — repeatedly transferred wells among “a series of shell corporations, LLCs, and partnerships they created.” On multiple occasions, the men placed companies into bankruptcy protection, only to move their profitable wells to other companies they owned or managed outside the bankruptcy proceedings, the suit said.
New Mexico faces millions of dollars in costs to plug wells the companies shed through the bankruptcies. Unplugged oil and gas wells can emit climate-warming methane and carcinogenic gases and often leak briny, radioactive wastewater, as ProPublica and Capital & Main detailed in a 2024 investigation. The newsrooms uncovered Gray, Stitzel and Gilmore’s early business dealings and use of bankruptcy proceedings.
“I will not stand by while bad actors take advantage of the system — avoiding responsibility, burdening the state with costly remediation, and recklessly endangering the health of New Mexicans,” Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement.
Whenever there’s a problem, the Texans run.
They learned it from Alberta. The issues with thousands of derelict oil well toxic waste sites run by 98-100% American-owned drilling companies - not singling out, since that’s all the drillers in AB - are real.
And the region is not even enforcing rules on the books for cleanup and inspection, since regulators and inspectors aren’t really a Conservative ‘thing’ here, either.
I’m not some financial/legal genius and even i could have thought of this loophole.
We have the same problem in canada with companies leaving orphaned wells
Lawmakers should have foreseen this and adjusted the law accordingly… its either incomptence or deliberately leaving an escape hatch for their rich oil donors
Any operation that will require environmental cleanup should be required to pay a deposit or bond or insurance or something, before they’re allowed to start operating. Anyone who operates without one should be personally liable.
Even retail gas stations have to pay upfront before operating to have their underground tanks dug up and removed in case they go out of business. Why isn’t this standard for petroleum extraction? If nothing else, the public government would benefit from investing those prepayments until the oil company successfully completes their properly secured inactive well and that money is returned to them.
That sounds like it’ll cost the shareholders a dividend, so the board votes no to that and yes to a bonus.
You LIBTARDS are so STUPID! Those Oil companies are RICH! They can do Whatever they Want!
-Republicans on Food Stamps!
