Johnson
Wright performed a phased engineering evaluation and financial
audit of the environmental costs claimed by one of the top four
U.S. oil companies. The claim included costs for nine refineries,
three Superfund sites, and approximately 3,000 service stations.
The total costs associated with the claim were approximately $390
million in past costs, and $490 million in future costs. Phase I
of the project involved a review of the technical information
documenting the environmental activities at the sites, an
accounting evaluation of the claim, interviews with key corporate
financial and technical project personnel, and a critical
evaluation of the methodologies used to document the claimed past
and future costs. Phase I also included the development of
site-specific future cost models to independently assess the
claimed future costs. The second phase of the project involved
the application of a defensible sampling protocol such that the
findings could be extrapolated to all sites within the claim. As
a result of the evaluation, Johnson Wright determined that over
75% of the claimed costs were questionable.