George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

a bond of $11 billion. On April 13, 1987, the press announced that Texaco had filed for
chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. The Justice Department created two committees to
represent the interests of Texaco's unsecured creditors, and Pennzoil was made the
chairman of one of these committees. Texaco operations were subjected to severe
disruptions.
During the closing weeks of 1987, Texaco was haggling with Chairman Mao about the
sum of money that the bankrupt firm would pay to Pennzoil. At this point Bushman
Lawrence Gibbs was the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, one of the
principal targetting agencies of the totalitarian police state. Gibbs was always looking for
new and better ways to serve the Bush power cartel, and now he found one: he slammed
bankrupt and wounded Texaco with a demand for $6.5 billion in back taxes. This move
was in the works behind the scenes during the Texaco-Pennzoil talks, and it certainly
made clear to Texaco which side the government was on. The implication was that
Texaco had better settle with Chairman Mao in a hurry, or face the prospect of being
broken up by the various Wall Street sharks - Holmes a Court, T. Boone Pickens,
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Carl Icahn- who had begun to circle the wounded company.
In case Texaco had not gotten the message, the Department of Energy also launched an
attack on Texaco, alleging that the bankrupt firm had overcharged its customers by $1.25
billion during the time before 1981 when oil price controls had been in effect.
Chairman Mao Liedkte finally got his pound of flesh: he would eventually receive $3
billion from Texaco. Texaco in late 1987 announced an asset write-down of $4.9 billion
as a result of staggering losses, and began to sell assets to try to avoid liquidation.
Texaco's Canadian operations, its German operations were sold off, as were 600 oil
properties in various locations. Later Texaco also sold off a 50% interest in its refining
and marketing system to Saudi Arabia. A number of Texaco refineries were simply shut
down. A total of $7 billion in assets were sold off during 1988-89 alone.
By early 1989, Texaco had been reduced to two-thirds of its former size, and from its
former number three position had become the "runt of the litter" among the US majors.
Texaco revenue fell from 47.9 billion in 1984 to $35.1 billion in 1988. Assets declined
from $37.7 billion to $26.1 billion. In order to ward off the raiding attacks of Carl Icahn,
Texaco was obliged to worsen its situation furthger by payment of $330 million in
greenmail in the form a special $8 distribution to shareholders designed mainly to placate
Icahn. [fn 4]
The entire affair represented a monstrous miscarriage of justice, a declaration that the
entire US legal system was bankrupt. At the heart of the matter was the pervasive
influence of the Bush networks, which gave Liedkte the support he needed to fight all the
way to the final settlement. The real losers in this affair were the Texaco and Getty
workers whose jobs were destroyed, and the families of those workers. Estimates of the
numbers of these victims are hard to come by, but the count must reach into the tens of
thousands. In addition, the entire economy suffered from a transaction that increased the
debt claims on current production while reducing the physical scale of that production.