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,
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