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
Oil reserves in the United States four sites on the Gulf of Mexico, with a total capacity of of crude oil. The maximum total withdrawal capability from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is per day. This is roughly 32% of US oil imports, or 75% of imports from OPEC. Services under the U.S. Department of the Interior estimate the total volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in the United States to be roughly . Over 1 million exploratory and developmental crude oil wells have already been drilled in the US since 1949. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates undiscovered technically recoverable crude oil onshore