Abstract

Salt Creek: The Biggest Oil Scandal

There have been four great American oil scandals in recent years, all interrelated but all separate. This article is concerned with the fourth--a scandal which is potentially the greatest of them all. Involved in it is the title to one of the richest oil fields in the world. Let the reader take a deep breath and try to get these four scandals distinct in his mind. Sinclair and Doheny made fraudulent contracts with Albert B. Fall for the naval reserve oil of Teapot Dome and Elk Hills--that was the Teapot Dome scandal. Then the Senate, while tracing the sources of the bribes paid to Fall, discovered that Robert W. Stewart, Harry F. Sinclair, Harry Blackmer, and James O'Neil had created the dummy Continental Trading Company and used part of its "jack pot" to bribe Fall and to pay Will Hays $260,000 for the Republican Party--that was the Continental Trading Company scandal.