That’s the idea: extract the oil, pay out everything as dividends or share buybacks, and then sell the well to a doomed-to-fail company which can declare bankruptcy and leave the public responsible for cleaning up the mess. The oil industry has a long history of taking advantage of inadequate bond requirements for oil wells to do exactly that.
Those poor independent little oil wells. Totally disconnected from kajillion-dollar global industries.
That’s the idea: extract the oil, pay out everything as dividends or share buybacks, and then sell the well to a doomed-to-fail company which can declare bankruptcy and leave the public responsible for cleaning up the mess. The oil industry has a long history of taking advantage of inadequate bond requirements for oil wells to do exactly that.
Fuck the bond requirements, just find a judge who’ll call bullshit. Shell companies are not a new scam.
Sorry, but the judge is hoping for a gratuity