In early October, an oil pipeline owned by Amplify Energy spilled into the ocean in Southern California. Roughly 25,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into the ocean off the coast of Orange County, according to the US Coast Guard, prompting local, state, and federal criminal investigations. The pipeline may have been damaged by a ship dragging its anchor in January.

Complicating matters is that Amplify, the product of a merger and vulture capital restructuring of another bankrupt oil company, may not have enough cash to pay for cleanup or decommission the pipeline. That means taxpayers could end up bearing the costs.

This ecological and financial nightmare was in part funded by the retirement savings of schoolteachers in Pennsylvania.