Records Motherload: EOTT dig southwest of of Hobbs yields 190 sacks of documents
RICHARD TROUT
NEWS-SUN
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After digging for nearly 30 straight hours, about 20 contract workers and an excavator operator recovered the last of what had first been rumored to be only 40-50 boxes of documents from the bottom of a 45-foot hole, 2-1/2 miles south of the Linam Gas Plant.
Just before 5 p.m. Friday, the last few records had been fished out of the nearly 2-acre recovery site and placed in standard-size banker's boxes, which were then placed in a van and moved to a secure storage area in Hobbs. The decaying, dirt-encrusted documents had the sour stench of mold and mildew, caused by moisture contact and being stored for years underground.
The security guard noted she had still not become accustomed to the smell after being in the building for hours.
But most of the documents were in bad shape after the digging ended Friday. And state officials and EOTT employees, including at least one attorney, planned to pore over the material through the Memorial Day Weekend, preparing an inventory of just what survived.
And while there were no questions about the documents' aroma, there are still many questions about why they were buried in the first place. And unless the project manager of this document burial comes forward, it appears those questions won't be answered anytime soon.
But with the words Tex-New Mexico Pipeline Co. or Texaco printed on the top of almost every receipt, manual, letterhead and financial form in the boxes in the cluttered storage space, at least one thing was clear -- some people with one or both of these companies know why the burial took place.
Houston-based EOTT Energy L.L.C., a former Enron subsidiary, started the excavation on May 8. According to EOTT representatives, the recovery took place because the company does not have adequate information about the pipeline it bought from Tex-New Mexico Pipeline in addition to other Tex-New Mexico properties.
"We had a reliable witness who had seen the documents buried back when (the site) was owned by Tex-Mex," said EOTT spokesperson Gretchen Weis. "We're hoping to find environmental records that may have something to do with the pipeline."
Tex-New Mexico owned a pipeline near the Hobbs excavation site until 1999, when it sold the pipeline to EOTT. But the energy company's witness reportedly saw Tex-New Mexico workers bury the documents around about two years ago on the site before EOTT purchased the pipeline.
"We need those documents by law," Weis said Friday afternoon at the excavation.
Because EOTT did not notify the State Land Office that it would be digging on the remediation site, on May 14 it received a cease-and-desist order from the land office.
Both the State Land Office and the state Oil Conservation Division said EOTT had been negligent in not notifying them of the massive project, which involved seven heavy construction vehicles and lighting for night work.
"Our main concern is the land out there," said Patrick Lyons, commissioner of Public Lands with the State Land Office, after leaving the excavation site and viewing the documents in Hobbs.
The State Land Office said it should have been notified before the 2-acre excavation started because it was because it was located on State Trust Land. The OCD said it should have been notified because the excavation had disturbed a 1995-2001 remediation project by EOTT and Texaco.
After getting hit with a fine and wrangling over the terms of a right-of-entry permit, EOTT finally resumed digging early Thursday afternoon and found the first bag of documents at 4:57 p.m.
Workers spent the next two hours stabilizing and smoothing the ground around the nearly 50-foot-deep pit, to allow workers on foot easier access to the site, before several returned with shovels to finish off the work by hand. But this proved to be a hard task and workers dug for hours before reaching the second bag of documents late Thursday night.
EOTT is currently involved in litigation with Tex-New Mexico Pipeline over a $7 million remediation project northeast of Midland, though Weis said the documents near Hobbs may have no relation to this lawsuit.
"We don't even know if they're related to litigation," Weis continued, "but it does look like we have documentation related to the operations of the pipeline."
Because the documents might relate to the lawsuit, Shell spokesman Tim O'Leary said he could not discuss the excavation or the litigation.
Landowners sued Texas-New Mexico and EOTT in March 2001 after discovering well water contamination in the early 1990s by a pipeline spill. The pipeline was owned at the time by Texas-New Mexico.
EOTT filed a counterclaim against Texas-New Mexico arguing it was not responsible at that time because it did not buy the pipeline until 1999. The counterclaim contends the sales agreement says Texas-New Mexico agreed to hold EOTT harmless for liability prior to March 1, 1999.
The counterclaim also states that when EOTT bought the pipeline, the company was supposed to get all environmental documents pertaining to the pipeline's operation and maintenance. And this is what reportedly prompted EOTT's recovery efforts after they eyewitness report.
EOTT is talking with a document restoration specialist regarding the best method of storing the records, Weis said. Based on his suggestions, they will probably use refrigerated trucks to transfer the material to a freezer. Freezing moisture-tainted documents prior to restoration is the best way to avoid further destroying them, Weis said, adding that she doesn't yet know where the documents will be restored.
As he surveyed a rows and rows of boxes waiting to be hefted into a van, Mike Kelly, in-house attorney for EOTT, had a similar assessment.
"There's virtually every type of document associated with the pipeline," Weis said. "These documents should have been returned to us when the (1999 pipeline) purchase closed."
On close inspection, some of these documents appeared relatively innocent -- receipts, run tickets, training manuals, a payroll time report and a benefit plan booklet. Others seemed to have some importance: an auditing report, a guide to "Operating the Pipe Line Pump Station," several manuals from a 1996 Texaco environmental remediation management workshop held in Galveston, Texas -- and a site plan of the Hobbs Texas-New Mexico Pipeline Co reclamation project.
Some of the material included dozens of computer floppy disks in wet pastic bags. One box contained an overlapping supply of red-and-white warning tape for Tex-New Mexico Pipeline.
Many of the documents had the Texaco moniker emblazoned beneath the dirt that covered nearly every piece recovered at the site, but most had clearly been the property of Tex-New Mexico Pipeline.
While EOTT was never really sure documents would be found, only a few days earlier EOTT attorney Daniel Dolan was fairly accurate about what types of documents might be uncovered.
"Those would be the operational documents," he said Monday. "Pipeline operations consist of three things -- construction documents, environmental documents and operational documents, as in how much you pump through it, what it's constructed of and that kind of stuff."
News-Sun writer R.P. Engle and the Associated Press contributed to this report.