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 bidding, with a winning bid of US$210.3 million. Tract C-a covered 5,100 acres, about eight square miles. Rio Blanco had planned to mine oil shale from an open pit, but wanted the BLM to make additional land available for off-site disposal of the overburden, which the BLM declined. The company turned to in "situ mining". Underground combustion was started in 1980. Two more burns were started in 1981, and the company recovered about 25,000 barrels of oil until a water pump failed, and groundwater prematurely extinguished all three underground burns in 1984. in 1976, a consortium of TOSCO, Shell Oil,