The state of New Mexico is accusing three Texas oil executives of orchestrating “a fraudulent scheme” to pocket revenue from hundreds of oil and gas wells in New Mexico and offload the cost of plugging and cleaning up the wells onto the state’s taxpayers. The suit, filed in late December by the New Mexico attorney general’s office, is the latest salvo in the state’s fight against oil and gas executives accused of foisting old wells onto the public.
The 72-page complaint alleges a yearslong pattern of fraud and self-dealing in which the oil executives — Everett Willard Gray II, Robert Stitzel, and Marquis Reed Gilmore Jr., all of Midland, Texas — repeatedly transferred wells among “a series of shell corporations, LLCs, and partnerships they created.” On multiple occasions, the men placed companies into bankruptcy protection, only to move their profitable wells to other companies they owned or managed outside the bankruptcy proceedings, the suit said.
New Mexico faces millions of dollars in costs to plug wells the companies shed through the bankruptcies. Unplugged o... Read more
