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 the boom in 1915, oil and oil shale were still locateable minerals under the General Mining Act of 1872. Any US citizen could stake a placer claim to reserve the mineral rights over 160 acres of oil-shale land. Congress changed the situation when it passed the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, which declared that oil and oil shale were no longer locateable minerals, but instead the rights to mine them had to be leased from the federal government. In September 1920, of the many oil shale companies being promoted, none were yet in commercial-scale operation, although five were said to