Edward L. Doheny prices were high. The Mexican Petroleum Company was the largest in Mexico, and Mexico was the largest oil producer in the world. In 1922 Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased the oil field at Elk Hills, California, to the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company. Around the same time, the Teapot Dome Field in Wyoming was leased to Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation. Both oilfields were part of the US Navy's petroleum reserves. Neither lease was subject to competitive bidding. In 1924 rumors about corruption in the deals escalated into the Teapot Dome scandal. Doheny's reputation was somewhat
Salad Oil scandal De Angelis, a former commodities broker who had been in trouble previously for providing the federal school lunch program with poorly prepared meat. Despite this, he was able to obtain a contract with Food for Peace, a federal program which sold excess food stocks to poor countries. De Angelis discovered that he could obtain loans based upon the company's supposed inventory of salad oil. Ships apparently full of salad oil would arrive at the docks, and inspectors would confirm that the ships were indeed full of oil, allowing the company to obtain millions in loans. In reality, the ships were