See news link here:
If you read that article you'll learn about Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah economics student that 'bought' the rights for oil drilling on 13 plots of land that is spread about 149,000 acres. After sitting back during the first 30 minutes of the auction process DeChristopher made himself an active participant in the auction process and started driving up prices for rights to several of the plots, and finally bid enough to win the rights to 13 plots that total 22,000 of the 149,000 acres that were up for auction. Acres that are in the scenic southeast corner of Utah.
Eventually the feds escorted him out of the auction after he made a mockery of the complete process.
In the end the actions of this environmental terrorist will have an effect at the gas pump as the legitimate bidders in the process were forced to over pay for rights to plots they won, and of course there's now 13 plots that will have to be reauctioned unless DeChristopher comes up with $1.8 million. Thanks to 'help' from friends and others that support DeChristopher's cause $45,000 has been raised to pay the Bureau of Land Management so that DeChristopher can avoid jail and perhaps improve the odds of keeping DeChristopher out of jail.
What potential crimes DeChristopher can be charged with, and the potential fines that he could face still remain in question.
Here's what I would do: immediately void any and all rights to the plots for DeChristopher and anyone associated with him, including his 'friends' that have helped raise that $45,000. After that, schedule and emergency auction to sell the rights to those plots. Finally, take the difference between DeChristopher's fraudulent bids and the legitimate bids and add that to the compensatory damages that DeChristopher will owe the government. On top of all of that, add the costs of running both auctions to the tab, and finally charge the eco-terrorist a fine of $100,000.00 for each winning fraudulent bid. Enough to leave the idiot in debt for the next 2,000 years if necessary, and enough to send the message to others that might try a similarly stupid approach in the future that it is absoloutely not worth the effort.
No more classes at the University of Utah, no more freedom, no more chances.
No. Let it stand. And go after his assets and the assets of his organizations to pay for the costs of the lease. If insufficient, then auction them off to help pay the deal. ANd still make him pay the difference.
ONce you bankrupt the source, you will not have many more episodes like this. But going easy on him, or even voiding the auction will only embolden them to try it again.
And paying too much for a piece of land is not a stupid act?
That is the really interesting part of the story. The possibility that he may not have actually broken any laws.
I'm with Dr Guy; make him pay for the leases.
I find it veeeery interesting that this article has popped up now, AFTER oil has dropped from 147.00 dollars a barrel to the 40-ish range almost overnight.
Yes, the economics student in question did commit fraud, no question.
But the bigger question folks should be asking is why, oh why, has oil dropped in price so precipitously recently? The answer is related to this article in that the price was artificially inflated, thanks to traders and hedge funds buying and selling oil futures like hotcakes.
One fraudulent fellow making a mockery of the system, okay fine. He did a bad thing. But the smartest guys in the room were laughing their asses off when we were paying $ 147.00 for a barrel that today costs $ 40. That's a 70% drop in price folks, which has no direct correlation to the supply and demand curve. Yes, supply has increased a little bit and demand has fallen off a little bit. But nowhere near enough to explain a 70% drop in price.
The truth? The price of oil has been over-inflated for years and now it's going back down... will it stay there? Probably not. It's not nearly profitable enough for the big boys you know. They will, undoubtedly find a way to game the price back up to well over the 100 dollar mark. Let's look at a quick little time line-
2003 before the war in Iraq started-
price of oil was in the whopping 30-something dollar per barrel range
2008- price of oil peaked at 147 dollars a barrel (a mild 490 % increase in price from 2003), surpassing the inflation adjusted record set during the late 70's and early 80's. This does mean that no matter which way you cut it, Americans have at this point paid the most for gas and oil under Bush then any other president to date.
Now, I'm not saying the war in Iraq was the cause for oil to jump from 30 to 147 dollars a barrel. Not by a long shot. But clearly, we've been had folks, someone made a ton of money in commodities that were massively overvalued. So, if anything we should be going after the real crooks, who are also very intimately tied to the not so little economic meltdown we're seeing transpire today!
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