{"id":1519,"date":"2026-05-23T18:04:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T18:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1519"},"modified":"2026-05-23T18:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T18:04:26","slug":"a-mysterious-company-abandoned-603-oil-wells-costing-illinois-millions-heres-how-they-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1519","title":{"rendered":"A mysterious company abandoned 603 oil wells, costing Illinois millions. Here\u2019s how they did it."},"content":{"rendered":"

CUMBERLAND COUNTY, ILLINOIS \u2014 There seems to be few people around these days who know much, if anything, about Fireball Production Inc. Not the oil industry leaders. Not the state regulators. Not the residents of this downstate county littered with hundreds of holes in the ground.<\/p>

Read more By changing women\u2019s lives, the pill changed the nation<\/a><\/p>\n

They apparently hadn\u2019t heard, or couldn\u2019t remember, that 36 years ago, with global oil prices in a free fall, the oddly named company made an odd business decision: It purchased hundreds of aging wells in a depleted oil field.<\/p>\n

The company claimed the wells would be sold for parts and then plugged. But staff at the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals \u2014 then the agency tasked with overseeing oil production \u2014 suspected something was amiss with the sale. They asked the state attorney general\u2019s office for help collecting unpaid fees that, by the spring of 1991, had reached $45,500.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly,\u201d a department attorney wrote to the AG\u2019s office, \u201cthere is a sense that this may have been a fraudulent conveyance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither agency, though, could save Illinois from the far steeper financial burden that lay ahead, or the environmental hazards those abandoned wells would pose.<\/p>\n

A four-month Chicago Tribune investigation, drawing on hundreds of pages of previously unreleased public records and interviews with former state officials and oil operators, has revealed the startling ease with which Fireball was able to evade its legal responsibility for plugging wells that have stopped producing, exposing downstate communities to a host of contaminants \u2014 above and below ground \u2014 while saddling the state with millions in cleanup costs.<\/p>\n

In Fireball\u2019s case, state data show, the company ultimately abandoned 603 wells.<\/p>\n

Its sudden and short-lived foray into Illinois\u2019 oil business is estimated to cost the state around $24 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is exactly what we\u2019re talking about in our report,\u201d said Ben Segal, an attorney with the California-based environmental nonprofit ClientEarth USA, which in January released a \u2014 co-created by the Environmental Advocacy Center at Northwestern University\u2019s Pritzker School of Law \u2014 that detailed what its authors called \u201ccritical flaws\u201d in the state\u2019s oil regulation that have allowed operators to abandon oil wells.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what happened here is evidence of how important it is for agencies to really scrutinize transfers,\u201d Segal said, \u201cand how important it is for agencies to block transfers when they\u2019re inappropriate, or (to) put conditions on transfers like increased bonding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man identified in state records as Fireball\u2019s president died in 2007, according to public records and his son-in-law.<\/p>\n

Fireball\u2019s wells are among the thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells strewn across southern Illinois, remnants of a distant past when the state was one of the nation\u2019s top oil producers.<\/p>

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Many are called \u201corphans\u201d by the state, their owners dead or unidentified, their companies bankrupted by a notoriously volatile global industry punctuated with booms and busts.<\/p>\n

As the Tribune reported in January, years of mismanaged fees and inadequate record keeping have hobbled the state\u2019s efforts to plug orphan wells, which, as of May data from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, reached nearly 3,900 in number.<\/p>\n

The agency calculates the cost to plug them is around $155 million.<\/p>\n

Fireball, unraveled<\/h4>\n

Richard Lacey and his brother own close to 50 acres of land in eastern Cumberland County that have been in his family, he said, since the 1850s. Scattered about the fields and trees are 14 abandoned oil wells, each one named after their great-grandfather, L.C. Lacey, who once owned the land.<\/p>\n

Most of the wells were drilled between 1948 and 1950; all of them stopped producing long before the brothers bought the property from their aunt about a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really just a nuisance to farm around,\u201d Lacey said.<\/p>\n

Though he once worked in the oil industry in Kansas, Lacey said he was unfamiliar with the company that, state records show, last operated the wells before they were abandoned to the state: Fireball Production Inc.<\/p>\n

The Tribune spoke with a dozen people who, like Lacey, own land pocked with Fireball\u2019s unplugged wells. Most said they, too, had never heard the company\u2019s name until a reporter asked about it.<\/p>\n

Some didn\u2019t even know they had abandoned wells on their property. In several cases, state records show, the wells are practically undetectable to the naked eye, having previously been cut off below ground and capped with a plate \u2014 still, the state considers those wells to be unplugged and capable of causing environmental damage, which can include leaking toxic chemicals into groundwater, spitting climate-warming methane gas into the atmosphere and spilling crop-killing fluids onto fertile farmlands.<\/p>\n

The few people who were aware of the company\u2019s existence could only repeat stories shared by others. One landowner gave a reporter the name of a man he claimed was \u201cone of the few who is still alive who could answer your questions.\u201d When reached by phone, that man said he would like to help, but he did not want to get involved. A woman could be heard in the background warning a reporter not to pursue this story.<\/p>\n

A Google search proved fruitless. The planet\u2019s largest search engine returned one result for Fireball Production Inc.: the PDF list of orphan wells published on the IDNR website.<\/p>\n

Department records obtained by the Tribune through Freedom of Information Act requests, though, contained crucial puzzle pieces.<\/p>\n

Those records suggest that Fireball did not drill any of the wells it eventually abandoned. Nearly 90% had been first drilled in the 1940s and 1950s, two decades when Illinois was still one of the nation\u2019s top oil-producing states. Several were designed for a tactic meant to reenergize depleted oil reservoirs.<\/p>\n

The company that drilled many of them, Forest Oil Corp., was considered a pioneer in the technique, having used it decades earlier at oil fields in its home state of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Forest Oil eventually left Illinois for oil fields elsewhere, and a succession of companies took over operating the Cumberland County wells.<\/p>\n

By 1986, state records show, a new operator surfaced. Three Star Drilling and Producing Corp. was founded six years earlier and based in Vincennes, Indiana, along the Wabash River opposite the Illinois border.<\/p>\n

At one time, Illinois was a top oil producer. Today, that legacy is a $160M problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n