What do you think it’s actually going to take to put the company formerly know as Greka Oil and Gas out of business?
Being sued by the United States of America, the state of California, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for a series of oil spills that occurred between 2005 and 2010? The government claims that Greka (now known as HVI Cat Canyon) violated the Clean Water Act, the California water code, the California Fish and Game code, and failed to implement any sort of spill prevention and control plan as required by the state. Nope. That lawsuit was filed in 2011 and is still ongoing.
Want to solve something in a timely manner? Don’t file a lawsuit.
How about a stop-injection order from State Oil and Gas Supervisor Kenneth A. Harris Jr. for failing to basically do anything correctly in more than 1,500 instances? Harris is the same dude that Gov. Gavin Newsom just fired because his agency (the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, aka DOGGR, which has been in the dog house since 2013) was accused of handing out an increasing number of fracking permits. That’s the dude who was overseeing DOGGR officials who environmental activists allege actually hold stock in the very same companies they oversee. Dog. House.
If that guy is telling you that you’re shady, then you’re definitely shady.
That stop-injection order was filed in 2017—and Greka, err, HVI, still managed to continue injecting, outjecting, and rejecting environmental regulations.
A $12 million fine from the very same department in April 2018? Negative, Ghost Rider. How about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency serving search warrants on the company in December 2018? Nope, nope.
In fact, the shadiest of the shady oil companies might actually be unkillable if it’s only violating environmental regulations. Who cares about that? The thing that might actually get HVI/Greka, aka The Suckiest Oil Company in California, is all of the money that it owes people and fails to pay back. It’s all spelled out in the little bankruptcy petition HVI filed in a U.S. District Court in New York! At least 15 actions have been levied against the company for breach of contract, loan defaults, property tax liens, and other legal type things.
Basically, get it line, people! We ain’t doin’ nothin’ right!
This includes the impending auction of mineral rights in Orcutt, which the company supposedly used as collateral to secure a loan from the international bank UBS AG. A loan that it, of course, defaulted on.
Actually, now that I think about it, HVI might actually get out of its payment obligations too. ERG Resources filed for bankruptcy in 2015 and is currently in the middle of a project that could increase the number of wells on its property in Cat Canyon and cost millions of dollars. So really, what does bankruptcy even mean in the grand scheme of things?
Companies that can’t keep their assets together still get to play in the oil field—so maybe HVI really is untouchable. Nothing will bring it down. Nothing!
The Canary is convinced that the system is rigged. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 1-8, 2019.