The problem was obvious: many wildcatters were staying in business by openly flouting the proration limits. This illegal oil, much of it piped into tanker trucks that made nightly smuggling runs into Louisiana and Oklahoma, quickly became known as “hot oil,” and the fall of 1931 marked the beginning of a four-year struggle between feisty independents and state and federal regulators known as the “hot oil wars.” All through the Depression the Railroad Commission and its allies sued, seized, arrested, and prosecuted hot oil operators, who fought back with bribes, secret pipelines, and a blizzard
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