Good morning, Chicago.
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.
They apparently hadn’t heard, or couldn’t 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.
The company claimed the wells would be sold for parts and then plugged. But staff at the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals — then the agency tasked with overseeing oil production — suspected something was amiss with the sale. They asked the state attorney general’s office for help collecting unpaid fees that, by the spring of 1991, had reached $45,500.
“Certainly,” a department attorney wrote to the AG’s office, “there is a sense that this may have been a fraudulent conveyance.”
Neither agency, though, could save Illinois from the far steeper financial burden that lay ahead, or the environmental hazards those abandoned wells would pose.
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 — above and below ground — while saddling the state with millions in cleanup costs.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Jonathan Bullington and Adriana Pérez.
Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including: what to know about an Illinois law meant to expose diversity gaps at top nonprofits, why Aurora residents are pushing for way to recall a sitting mayor and what happened in the first City Series.
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ICE detains Chicago Public Schools senior and his mother: ‘We had done everything by the rules’
By this time in May, Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete expected to be preparing for his high school prom and training to play soccer in the fall at a local community college.But the 18-year old Chicago Public Schools student’s plans are in jeopardy after he and his mother, Liliana, were arrested in mid-March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a routine check-in for the family’s asylum case.
Illinois passed a law to expose diversity gaps at top nonprofits. Almost none are complying.
As June 2024 came to a close, Gov. JB Pritzker was characteristically bullish while he marked the end of Pride Month by signing into law a requirement that Illinois’ largest nonprofit foundations disclose the demographic makeup of their boards of directors and officers.
But nearly two years later, the measure has shed little light on who actually runs these organizations — and may never do so.
As data centers seek more power, Constellation launches nuclear plant upgrades to meet rising demand
Inside Illinois’ largest nuclear power plant, massive turbines pull 100,000 gallons of water a minute from Braidwood Lake.On a recent tour of the Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station, a sprawling facility the size of two football fields and anchored by dual reactors, Constellation operators and technicians worked around the clock. Every 18 months, the plant shuts down one of its nuclear reactors and brings in over a thousand specialized contractors to replace fuel and perform maintenance.
This latest refueling sets the stage as the plant prepares for its biggest upgrade yet, said Dwayne Pickett, Constellation vice president of government affairs and regulatory advocacy.
Chicago restaurants, bars become spaces for political protesting through postcard campaigns, Anti-ICE Supper Club
With a glass of white wine in one hand and a printed spreadsheet of names and addresses of around 50 lawmakers in the other, Allyssa Bujdoso was setting up for a crowd at Deep Red Wine Merchant in Avondale. A guy with a sign reading “(Expletive) Trump” rushed through the door, handed over a sheet of stamps and then hurried away.The stamps are for the stacks of postcards on the table in the middle of the bar that are central to the Chicago Postcard Protest series. The cards have a photo of President Donald Trump screaming into a mic, with three bold, uppercase words to the right: Unfit, unwell, unhinged. “The constitution says you can, the people say you can remove him,” printed on the bottom, as a nod to section four of the 25th Amendment.
Aurora residents push for way to recall a sitting mayor and at-large aldermen from office
Some Aurora residents are pushing for a way to boot a sitting mayor or alderman at-large from office before their term is up.
While those formally leading the push say the initiative is non-partisan and not aimed at any specific elected official, others promoting the effort have specifically called for Aurora Mayor John Laesch to be removed from office.
At 15, Romeoville teen makes Lewis University history as youngest student ever to receive master’s degree
When Benyamin Bamburac got into the car Friday to graduate from Lewis University, he didn’t get behind the wheel. Because he’s not old enough to drive.
At 15, Benyamin, of Romeoville, crossed the graduation stage as the university’s youngest student ever to receive his master’s degree from the school in its nearly 100-year tenure. His master’s in computer science with a specialization in artificial intelligence became the fourth higher education degree he has earned in the past five years.
DraftKings closing its 2-year-old retail sportsbook at Wrigley Field
Blaming increased Illinois wagering taxes, DraftKings is shutting down its two-year-old retail sportsbook at Wrigley Field, a high-profile but small part of its business.DraftKings, one of the leading sportsbooks in the state, will continue to operate online across Illinois, but the last day to place your bets in-person at the Friendly Confines will be May 31.
Column: Magic wand and ‘magical’ season propel the red-hot Chicago White Sox past the Chicago Cubs
Can the Cubs and White Sox reprise the magical summer of 1977? We’re still a week away from Memorial Day, the first real mile-marker of the marathon baseball season, writes Paul Sullivan.
But both teams are early contenders, and Cubs and Sox fans who packed Rate Field for the opening round of the City Series seem poised for a summerlong party, at least if the endless vaping in the parking lot and bleachers is any indication.
- ‘He’s got a presence’: Fresh off 1st City Series, adjustments continue for White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami
- Game 3 photos: White Sox beat the Cubs 9-8 in City Series at Rate Field
Talking late into the night: After-dark TV gabfests display Chicago’s creativity
As Stephen Colbert exits his eponymous late-night talk show this week, the time is right to review Chicago’s contributions to television’s evening talk-show genre.
Local and national evening talk shows here, some airing quite late at night, date to TV’s broad postwar adoption. But though later daytime TV talk shows called Chicago home few nationally syndicated, evening chat fests have premiered from Chicago in the last half-century.
