[Enchante]

FLASHBACK: IN 1997 the Clinton/Gore administration arranged to sell the immense oil & gas assets of the Elk Hills reserves to Occidental Petroleum (which just happens to be the Armand Hammer company so buddy-buddy with the Gore family for decades).

At only $50 per barrel (well under the current price) that oil production of 60,000 barrels per day grosses around $1.1 billion per year. Then there's the daily output of 400 million cubic feet of natural gas. Anyone here know the oil and gas industry well enough to judge what a reasonable market price would be to acquire such resources? Somehow I'm guessing it should have been a lot more than what Occidental paid, but I don't claim to know anything about that industry!! (However, I do stay in a Holiday Inn Express now and then)

[xcamel]

I always thought the proceeds went straight to AlGore's trust fund....

[Brilliant]

How much Occidental stock did the Gore family own at the time?

[the_Watchman]

Let's see now. Cheney receives a fixed stipend from an oil industry company where the stipend does not fluctuate based on the value of the company stock or its performance.

On the other hand, Gore and his family hold Occidental Petroleum stock whose value is directly linked to the value and performance of the company. Occidental enters into an extremely lucrative and unusual contract with the U.S. government.

Now, you be the judge. Which one should be reported as a possible "scandal" with the potential of conflict of interest?

[slowhandluke]

Elk Hills is one of the 11 largest oil and natural gas fields in the lower 48 States. Originally set aside in the early 1900s to ensure a future source of crude oil for the U.S. Navy, the field no longer serves a national security purpose. (The country's emergency oil supplies are now held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Wasn't this the oil field of the Teapot Dome Scandal?

So, BJ Clinton and Al Gore sell off oil already underground in order to buy other oil somebody pumped out to above ground and pay somebody else to pump it back underground?

Even if the MSM was trying to cover for BJC, there's just too much headline material here to not have printed it as a crime scandal at the time. You'd get to slam Big Oil, and make a fool out of Al Gore; both are great fun.

There is just something about this event that reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes line about the dog that didn't bark in the night. Not even the Republican dogs.

[thackney]

Been in the works since 1996 at least.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/npr_elkhills_sale.html

[Eva]

I thought that I would bump this article since the oil field that Occidental describes as the seventh largest in the country is burning and four people people have been injured in an explosion at Al Gore's inconvenient investment.