Another reason why this industry needs to be directly regulated, and NOT by entities like RubberStamp Texas Railroad Commissions.

A Santa Maria oil company, two employees and a former employee have agreed to plead guilty to federal charges stemming from the illegal disposal of wastewater, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles announced Thursday.

Santa Maria Refining Co., a subsidiary of Greka Energy, accepted the plea agreement along with Roger Thompson and Edward Stotler, both of Santa Maria, and Brent Stromberg of Nipomo, according to court documents.The company is charged with knowingly injecting wastewater, generated during the oil refining process, back into the ground and then lying about it to the Environmental Protection Agency. Thompson, Stotler and Stromberg are each charged with making 0 statements to the same federal agency regarding the wastewater.

The illegal disposal risks the contamination of groundwater and violates the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, federal officials said.

This one's pretty interesting. Jimmy McAllen of yes, that McAllen ranch fame, believes that Forest Oil Company deliberately contaminated some pipe they gave him (which houses a couple of rhinoceroses) as payback for his suing them for accounting problems.

A member of one of Texas' oldest ranching families has locked horns with an oil company in a bizarre dispute involving pet rhinos, steel pipe and allegations of radiation poisoning and a corporate vendetta.

Rancher Jimmy McAllen, the 10th generation of his family to work the 70,000-acre ranch in South Texas, says that the old pipe he used to build a corral for two African black rhinoceroses in the mid-1990s proved to be loaded with radioactive material.

He blames the radiation for the mysterious 1995 death of one of his rhinos. And he says he suspects it caused the rare form of cancer that cost him his lower right leg in 2005.

Moreover, he says the Forest Oil Co. - which holds a lease to drill for gas on his property and gave him the old pipe for the corral and other projects around the ranch - deliberately poisoned his land in retaliation for a dispute the two sides had over gas payments.

And, who wins in this one? Our government versus the oil and gas companies over royalty payments.