'It gave oil companies a large and automatic deduction, regardless of their actual costs, as compensation for dwindling assets in the ground.

Robert Kennedy instructed the FBI to issue questionnaires, asking the oil companies for specific production and sales data. “The oil industry—in particular, the more financially vulnerable Dallas-based independents—did not welcome this intrusion. The trade publication Oil and Gas Journal charged that RFK was setting up a “battleground [on which] business and government will collide.”'