Blowout

by Rachel Maddow

  Especially helpful in understanding some of the concern about the various nonmilitary nuclear projects undertaken by the Atomic Energy Commission was a 1994 oral history of Seaborg’s longtime colleague John W. Gofman, conducted by staff of the Berkeley Lab and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Human Radiation Experiments, as well as Aileen Alfandary’s 1979 interview of Gofman for Pacifica Radio.

  I am hugely thankful for Chester McQueary’s rollicking 1994 essay in High Country News recalling his experiences on the day of the underground nuclear detonation.

  Excellent secondary sources on Project Rulison and similar undertakings include Scott Kaufman’s Project Plowshares: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America and Russell Gold’s Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World.

  George Mitchell’s life and his long quest for utile fracking technology and Nick Steinsberger’s breakthrough in slickwater are well covered in Gold’s Boom, Gregory Zuckerman’s Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, and Lawrence Wright’s 2017 New Yorker article “The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rise and his demise was well covered as it was happening, jumping from the business pages to the front pages. But Masha Gessen’s 2012 article in Vanity Fair “The Wrath of Putin” is an excellent primer. For his colorful rendering of Khodorkovsky, Yukos, and especially Joe Mach, I am indebted to Thane Gustafson for his book Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia and for the many excellent talks he gave in promoting the same. Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times did some of the best reporting about early twenty-first-century Russia, and her 2001 interview of Joe Mach is a treat. I was also greatly helped by “The Yukos Case: The New Dimension in Money Laundering Cases,” a 2008 doctoral thesis by the Russian corporate lawyer turned academic Dmitry Gololobov; it’s available online at the website of the University of London. While Boris Yeltsin’s tragic fumble in his attempt to reform the Russian economy and polity was also well covered in real time by journalists in Moscow, Gololobov’s thesis is an instructive guide from somebody who saw it happen from within.

  The U.S. senator Ben Cardin’s 2018 report for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security,” includes some very good backstory on the Yeltsin era and Putin’s ascension.

  Karen Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? provides, among many, many other things, insight and detail on Putin’s rise from KGB apparatchik to Russian Federation president. I am especially indebted to the translation of Reform of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation at the Miami (Ohio) University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, where Dawisha was the longtime director. Professor Dawisha died while I was working on this book. Her intellect and her insight about modern Russia are already missed.

  It is worth repeating here that the best reporting on the story of Morgan Stanley in Russia—and particularly its aid for Rosneft—is from Ian Katz, Jesse Drucker, Irina Reznik, and Ron Bousso in Bloomberg in the summer of 2014.

  It’s not always simple, but I was able to access transcripts, footage, and photographs of the 2009 International Investment Forum in Sochi at the “Archive of the Official Site of the 2008–2012 Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin,” which has exactly that awkward title and is (loosely) kept up by the Russian government.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Aubrey McClendon spent a lot of time and energy drawing attention to himself and his business. There were dozens of long newspaper and magazine profiles of him over a twenty-year period, each with gold to mine. The following were the most helpful to me: Terzah Ewing, “Chesapeake Energy Is a Gusher,” Wall Street Journal, February 27, 1997; Jerry Shottenkirk, “Hard Work, Luck Make Billions for Oklahoma Executive,” Oklahoma City Journal Record, August 13, 2007; David Whitford, “Meet Mr. Gas: Aubrey McClendon,” Fortune, May 12, 2008; Grant Slater, “Chesapeake’s Aubrey McClendon Aims to Cement Legacy with Sprawling Campus,” Oklahoma Gazette, August 6, 2009; Christopher Helman, “The Two Sides of Aubrey McClendon, America’s Most Reckless Billionaire,” Forbes, October 5, 2011; Christopher Helman, “In His Own Words: Chesapeake’s Aubrey McClendon Answers Our 25 Questions,” Forbes, October 5, 2011; Jeff Goodell, “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind Aubrey McClendon’s Gas Boom,” Rolling Stone, March 1, 2012; John Shiffman, Anna Driver, and Brian Grow, “The Lavish and Leveraged Life of Aubrey McClendon,” Reuters, June 7, 2012; Maureen Farrell, “Aubrey McClendon: Pioneer of the U.S. Shale Boom,” Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2016. These profiles and reportage were helpful in this and the later chapters about McClendon and Chesapeake.

  Chesapeake Energy’s annual reports and proxy statements are also a pretty good way to see just how McClendon and his team told the company story, as well as the state of its production, growth, and finances at any given time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Oklahoma City’s long, strange (and ultimately successful) quest for major-league status is a well-documented saga. But there are a few specific sources that stood out. Sara Rogers-Dewberry’s 2013 interview with author and politician David Holt, for SB Nation, had gems throughout. The occasion for the interview was the publication of Holt’s book, Big League City: Oklahoma City’s Rise to the NBA. The work of the local journalists Mary Jo Nelson and Steve Lackmeyer was a great help in understanding the history and material consequences of the Pei Plan. The Oklahoman, however one might feel about its sometimes astonishing editorial page, was and remains a great news organization full of able reporters who cover local business and politics with real savvy. The contemporaneous promotional film Growing with Pride, produced by the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority, is worth a watch—even if just for the theme song. You can find it on YouTube.

  Former Oklahoma City mayor Ron Norick’s wide-ranging and comprehensive 2009 interview with the Voices of Oklahoma oral history project added much behind-the-scenes color to the story of Oklahoma City’s capital improvement plan that began back in 1993 and continues today. The audio and transcript can be found at www.voicesofoklahoma.com.

  The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was among the most covered news events of 1995 and well documented by the FBI. But if you haven’t yet visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, you should. It’s crucial to understanding the weight of that tragedy on the city and its citizens; it’s also just something that every American should see and take in.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There was a slew of really good reportage on Rex Tillerson—both his biography and his tenure at ExxonMobil—that came out in the weeks and months after his more-than-surprising nomination to be U.S. secretary of state. Among the best was by the team at The New York Times, which included Clifford Krauss, John Schwartz, David E. Sanger, Ben Hubbard, Dionne Searcy, and Nicholas Casey. Also great was Dexter Filkins’s 2017 profile in The New Yorker, “Rex Tillerson at the Breaking Point.” The 2008 interview of Tillerson by Scouting, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, was surprisingly revealing. But the national treasure of a resource when it comes to understanding Tillerson, the ways he was shaped by Exxon, and the ways he helped shape ExxonMobil is Steve Coll’s Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. Coll’s book is also the best resource for understanding the standard operating procedures and the central mission of ExxonMobil. Anybody who has written about the company and its leaders in the years since the publication of Private Empire owes a big debt to Coll. And that now includes me.

  In terms of ranking annual net profits of international energy corporations, I have not included entities wholly owned by governments and not publicly traded, such as Saudi Aramco. It is worth noting that when Aramco, in 2019, divulged its net profits for the first time
, the stated figure was $110 billion. ExxonMobil’s net profits that year were about $21 billion. Something to be said for state-owned enterprises in a totalitarian state. Especially in that particular totalitarian state.

  A most excellent resource for statistics on how much ExxonMobil (and any other corporate entity) spend on lobbying is the database at OpenSecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics. CRP, founded in 1983 by two former U.S. senators, one Republican and one Democrat, is a bipartisan, not-for-profit research group that aims to shine a light on money in politics. It hits that mark. In my day job, and for this book, CRP and its OpenSecrets.org website are invaluable transparency resources.

  The full transcript of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing, “The ExxonMobil-XTO Merger: Impact on U.S. Energy Markets,” is available, among other places, at www.govinfo.gov/​content/​pkg/​CHRG-111hhrg76003/​pdf/​CHRG-111hhrg76003.pdf.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The background and specifics of the Jones Award come from the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston’s official website. The awards banquet honoring Tillerson was covered by publications such as Oil & Gas Journal, Offshore Engineer, and The Houston Chronicle. ExxonMobil’s various transgressions against the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as the underpayment of royalties from American Indian and federal lands, are spelled out in releases from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs.

  For the details of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, its lead-up, and its long, unhappy aftermath, I relied chiefly on the following sources: “Deepwater: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling,” which is the report to the president by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling; the Regional Oil Spill Response Plan—Gulf of Mexico, revised and filed by BP in June 2009; a review of the causes of the actual blowout by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board; the EPA Newsroom for information on the dispersants; and “The Ongoing Administration-Wide Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill” available at obamawhitehouse.archives.gov.

  The full transcript of the June 15, 2010, U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce is available at www.govinfo.gov/​content/​pkg/​CHRG-111hhrg77911/​html/​CHRG-111hhrg77911.htm. The hearing is also available to watch at C-SPAN.org.

  The May 1, 2010, rupture of the ExxonMobil pipeline in Akwa Ibom (and the weeks-long uninterrupted leak that followed) were first reported in the West by John Vidal, the environmental editor of The Guardian.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Like the rest of the world, I am indebted to Ken Silverstein for his dogged reporting on Teodorin Obiang and Equatorial Guinea. A number of congressional investigations added detail to the story of the Obiang family and its plunder of Equatorial Guinea. These include “Keeping Foreign Corruption Out of the United States: Four Case Histories,” a majority and minority staff report of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released in conjunction with its 2010 hearing on the same subject, and “The Petroleum and Poverty Paradox: Assessing U.S. and International Community Efforts to Fight the Resource Curse,” a 2008 report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by its ranking member, Richard Lugar.

  Peter Maass was once again in the right place at the right time, doing excellent reporting in Equatorial Guinea, this time for Mother Jones. Thanks also to Global Witness, which has been uncovering the debacle in Equatorial Guinea for nearly two decades now. Human Rights Watch’s July 2009 report “Well Oiled: Oil and Human Rights in Equatorial Guinea” was another great resource. And the forty-four-page 2011 affidavit filed by the U.S. Attorney in the federal district court in California in the forfeiture case against Teodorin is an astonishing read, right down to the details and pricing of his auction house shopping spree in late 2010 and early 2011.

  Details of Qorvis’s contract work for Equatorial Guinea and the Obiang family are searchable at the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act website (www.justice.gov/​nsd-fara).

  CHAPTER NINE

  There are plenty of general sources like the CIA’s World Factbook, Human Rights Watch, and Global Witness for the postcolonial history of Equatorial Guinea, but I am particularly indebted to reporting by Silverstein and Maass, as well as Sunday Dare’s 2012 report for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Making a Killing: The Curious Bonds of Oil Diplomacy.” Alexander Smoltczyk’s 2006 series in Spiegel, “Torture and Poverty in Equatorial Guinea,” also has excellent detail about the recent history of Equatorial Guinea, as well President Obiang and his corporate suitors from the West. The 1991 interview of the former ambassador Frank S. Ruddy for the Oral History Project at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training was also very interesting.

  “Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption: Enforcement and Effectiveness of the Patriot Act, Case Study Involving Riggs Bank,” the 2004 report of the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (as well as the transcript of the committee hearings into same) is a fascinating look into the way U.S. oil companies and banks have operated in Equatorial Guinea. And of course, Steve Coll added to the understanding of ExxonMobil in Equatorial Guinea in Private Empire.

  I was particularly helped in understanding the history, the benefits, and the difficulties of Section 1504 by a transcript of the Brookings Institution’s 2014 symposium “Transparency and Natural Resources: How the U.S. Can Regain Its Leadership.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The story of the Russian “Illegals” and their arrest and aftermath was reported with an eye to detail by Philip Read and Judy Peet for the Newark Star-Ledger, Toby Harnden in The Telegraph (London), and Manny Fernandez and Fernanda Santos for The New York Times. The New York Post and the New York Daily News each brought their own notable styles to the coverage. Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev provides a nice primer on the history and methods of the Illegals program (Vassiliev is a former KGB man himself). Brett Forrest’s career through Moscow in his 2012 Politico story “The Big Russian Life of Anna Chapman, Ex-spy” is both fun and informative. Anna Chapman’s online presence is still there for all to see. But the best sources for the Illegals in early twenty-first-century America (including the fruits of the fine FBI counterintelligence work, thank you, Peter Strzok and others) are the two criminal complaints filed against them in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

  CHAPTERS ELEVEN AND TWELVE

  The Oklahoma Geological Survey is the record keeper for all seismic activity in that state and I have relied on its data. Thanks also to Oklahoma’s current state seismologist, Jake Walter, who provided slides and data from the OGS’s 2018 presentation, “The Past and Future Seismic Hazard in Oklahoma,” as well as his professional insight into the geology of Oklahoma.

  Walter’s predecessor at OGS, Austin Holland, is really the centerpiece of this and later chapters about induced seismicity in Oklahoma. Holland, as a matter of popular demand, made many public statements concerning the “earthquake swarm” that plagued Oklahoma throughout his tenure at OGS. But for what he was seeing and thinking and feeling at a given time, there is one indispensable source—a deposition he gave, under oath, on October 11, 2017, in the case of Jennifer Lin Cooper v. New Dominion LLC, Spess Oil Company, and John Does 1–25. This was six and a half hours of sworn testimony in a case concerning the earthquake in Prague, Oklahoma, in 2011. Holland’s deposition that day was both wide-ranging and deep. He spoke not just to the science of seismicity but to his own personal history and motivations and to his own experiences and feelings about his work in Oklahoma—all under oath. It reveals a true public servant wrestling with big issues, an excellent and devout scientist throw
n into the lion’s den of politics. This testimony forms the basis of my portrait of Holland. The entire document is worth a read if you have the time. It can be accessed, among other places, at www.news9.com/​story/​36778039/​new-details-revealed-in-state-earthquake-hearings.

  The information about Aubrey McClendon’s travel, salary, bonuses, perks, and so on comes from his employment agreement, detailed in Chesapeake Energy’s Definitive Proxy Statement from 2010, from legal filings in a 2012 lawsuit filed by former employee Debra Boggs, “individually on behalf of all other similarly situated persons” against Chesapeake Energy and McClendon, and from reporting for Reuters by John Schiff, Anna Driver, and Brian Grow.

  For the deleterious effects of the fracking process, as you can tell by the text of this book, I am much indebted to Michelle Bamberger (a veterinarian) and Robert E. Oswald (a professor of molecular medicine) for their study “Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health” and for their follow-up book, The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food.

  The unfolding story of the fatally poisoned cows was best covered by Vickie Welborn and Kelsey McKinney at the Shreveport Times. DeSmogBlog is another energetic string gatherer in the ongoing safety lapses in fracking all over the country, including the 2010 ExxonMobil/XTO water-fouling spill in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. Specifics of that Lycoming spill are also laid out in the settlement with XTO Energy announced by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice on July 18, 2013.