Teapot Dome scandal Teapot Dome scandal The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 19211923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison; no one was convicted of paying the bribes. Before the Watergate scandal,
History of the oil shale industry in the United States companies, among them Chevron and Texaco. The company based its plans on its proprietary Paraho process retorting technology, which achieved oil recoveries of greater than 90 percent. Besides the Anvil Points lease, Paraho leased some oil shale acreage in Utah, but did no work on the Utah properties. The company produced more than 100,000 barrels of shale oil at Anvil Points in the late 1970s. Sunoco and Phillips Petroleum jointly submitted the US$76 million winning bid on the 5,120-acre Federal Tract U-a in Utah, and formed the White River Shale Oil Corporation to run the project. SOHIO bought into the