page_title: Edward L. Doheny
section_title: Big Business and Teapot Dome Scandal
hierarchical_section_title: Edward L. Doheny / Big Business and Teapot Dome Scandal
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Edward L. Doheny and his granddaughter, Lucy Estelle circa 1928 Publication:Los Angeles Times Publication date:1928 Notes:Handwriting on negative states "Edward L Doheny &amp; granddaughter"
context_page_description: Edward Laurence Doheny was an American oil tycoon who, in 1892, drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field. His success set off a petroleum boom in Southern California, and made him a fortune when, in 1902, he sold his properties.
  He then began highly profitable oil operations in Tampico, Mexico's "golden belt", drilling the first well in the nation in 1901. He expanded operations during the Mexican Revolution, and opened large new oil fields in Lake Maracaibo. His holdings developed as the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company, one of the largest oil companies in the world in the 1920s.
  In the 1920s, Doheny was implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal and accused of offering a $100,000 bribe to United States Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. Doheny was twice acquitted of offering the bribe, but Fall was convicted of accepting it. Doheny and his second wife and widow, Carrie Estelle, were noted philanthropists in Los Angeles, especially regarding Catholic schools, churches and charities. The character J. Arnold Ross in Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! is loosely based on Doheny.
context_section_description: Doheny formed the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company (P.A.T.)—part of which later became the Mexican Petroleum Company (Pemex)—to hold his two Mexican companies (Mexican Petroleum and Huasteca), his Atlantic and Gulf Coasts facilities in the United States, and his California holdings. The company owned 600,000 acres (2400 km²) of land worth about $50,000,000 and secured an additional 800,000 acres (3200 km²) in Mexico in October 1919.
  In 1919 the Colombian Petroleum Company, a P.A.T. subsidiary, bought a 75% interest in the Barco oil concession in Colombia. Doheny was also interested in plans to develop the oil industry in Venezuela, and in building a pipeline from Colombia to Venezuela to make it more economical to export the Barco oil from the west coast of Lake Maracaibo. In 1920 Pan American was the largest oil company in the United States, ahead of Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation and Standard Oil Company of Indiana. Automobile production was booming and oil prices were high. The Mexican Petroleum Company was the largest in Mexico, and Mexico was the largest oil producer in the world. By 1925, Doheny's net worth was $100 million ($1.45 billion in 2019 dollars), more at the time than John D. Rockefeller.
  In 1922 Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased the oil field at Elk Hills, California, to the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company.
  Around the same time, the Teapot Dome Field in Wyoming was leased to Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation.
  Both oilfields were part of the US Navy's petroleum reserves. Neither lease was subject to competitive bidding. 
  In 1924 rumors about corruption in the deals escalated into the Teapot Dome scandal.
  Doheny's reputation was somewhat tainted by a bribe paid to the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall in 1921. He made the "gift" of $100,000 in connection with obtaining a lease of 32,000 acres (130 km²) of government-owned land used for the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve near Taft, California. The resulting scandal broke soon after that, over similar bribes Fall accepted for leasing Teapot Dome in Wyoming. Doheny (his son Ned, who had delivered the money, and his assistant Hugh Plunkett, were also indicted) was charged with bribing Fall but, in 1930, was acquitted. Nevertheless, Fall was convicted of accepting the bribe.
  Doheny sold a majority of the family's shares in Pan American Petroleum & Transport to Standard Oil of Indiana, in April 1925, but retained all California assets, which he formed into a new company, Pan American Western Petroleum Company. Pan American Eastern Petroleum (the Mexico holdings, the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts holdings in the U.S., refineries, pipelines, and thirty-one tankers), which held the non-California assets, was sold to Standard. Pan American Western returned to its roots as an "upstream" exploration and production company.
  At the end of 1925, in order to exploit the oilfields in Lake Maracaibo Pan American Western gained control of Lago Petroleum Corporation from C. Ledyard Blair's Blair & Co. The transaction became the subject of a stockholder action in 1933, which alleged that the bankers, who were represented on the Pan American board, conspired to make excessive profits. In 1926, Venezuelan Eastern Petroleum Corporation reorganized as a subsidiary of Pan American Eastern to buy and develop Venezuelan oil properties.
  In the midst of the Teapot Dome scandal, Doheny gave Greystone Mansion (designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann after a design competition) to his son, Edward (Ned) L. Doheny, Jr., and his wife Lucy Marceline Smith (the couple married on June 10, 1914).  He built the 46,000-square-foot (4,300 m²) house in 1928, at a cost of $3,188,000, and sold the property and accompanying 400-acre (1.6 km²) ranch to his son for $10.
  When a second criminal trial for bribery began to loom for Doheny and Fall in 1929, the pressure on all parties reached a breaking point. The Dohenys tried to persuade Hugh Plunkett to be committed to a mental institute so that he could not then be made to testify against them.  On Febru
caption: Edward L. Doheny and his granddaughter, Lucy Estelle, c. 1928
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