In the U.S. Justice Department’s largest environmental enforcement recovery ever, Kerr-McGee Corp. and its parent Anadarko Petroleum Corp. today agreed to pay $5.15 billion to settle charges that they fraudulently tried to duck responsibility to pay for environmental cleanup after decades of contamination.
“Kerr-McGee’s businesses all over this country left significant, lasting environmental damage in their wake,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a written statement. “It tried to shed its responsibility for this environmental damage and stick the United States taxpayers with the huge cleanup bill.”
Between 2002 and 2005, Kerr-McGee—famous in part as the employer of whistleblower Karen Silkwood—split itself up. It created a holding company known as the “new” Kerr-McGee, and transferred its valuable oil and gas exploration assets to it. The new company was bought by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for $18 billion in 2006.
