BATON ROUGE — A report released Monday by the Legislative Auditor's Office details alleged corruption at the state's Office of Conservation concerning a pilot program that was part of an effort to reduce the number of abandoned oil wells, centered around the actions of the OC's Assistant Commissioner Johnny Adams, himself the subject of several WBRZ reports. 

WBRZ previously reported that Adams was under investigation for malfeasance in office charges connected to his work with the state agency.

The charges alleged that Adams, the husband of Baton Rouge Metro Council member Laurie Adams, used his influence at OC to select the Louisiana Oilfield Restoration Association for the project in a way that financially benefited LORA's owners in return for hiring his adult children as employees and later contractors through two companies that shared ownership with LORA. 

The Legislative Auditor's Office report says that LORA was registered as a for-profit corporation in September 2019 under the ownership of Van Mayhall III, Jacob Dickinson, Chad Lott Sr., Phillip Marchiafava and Andrew Berthelot.

In November of that same year, the OC entered a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with LORA.

The five owners of LORA are also the owners of Arkus Management Services, which itself owns Willow Lake Well Services. January 2021 documents cited in the report say that the same five owners also owned equal parts of Chromos Wealth Solutions. 

LORA increased its administrative fees paid to Arkus from 20% to 36% in July 2022, violating the CEA arrangement that limited LORA to no more than 20% of financial security fees for administrative and day-to-day operating expenses. This, the report says, resulted in $1.85 million in administrative fees in excess of the contractual limit. 

LORA also loaned Arkus and Chromos nearly $2.4 million between January 2021 and April 2023. These funds, the report adds, were used to make below-market-rate loans to Adams, two members of his family and three owners of LORA. The report also says that LORA paid more than $600,000 for investment fees to Chromos and Arkus. 

The report also details that the OC released $2.4 million in trust account funds to LORA in exchange for a LORA-penned letter of credit. The auditor added that five wells covered under the site-specific trust account remain unplugged and are now classified as orphaned.

The state Department of Conservation and Energy is currently involved in active litigation over the trust account, with state officials telling LORA in May 2025 that the OC was terminating the CEA after nearly six years.

In a statement issued Monday, the Department of Conservation and Energy thanked the auditor's office for helping figure out "what went wrong within LORA and what went wrong within the agency prior to this administration."

"The lack of accountability and oversight that the LLA reported was frankly shocking,” Secretary Dustin Davidson said. “The work of Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack and his team has been invaluable to us as we work to repair the damage done to the agency and to the operators who trusted LORA. The department will continue to build out a financial security framework for the future that is reliable and protective of the interests of our people and the environment.”

The department added that it dissolved its association with LORA in 2025 after a 2024 audit report called into question its potential solvency and its ability to meet its plugging obligations.

"C&E has agreed with each of the LLA report’s findings and has made changes to avoid similar issues with any future third-party agreements of that kind. The agency’s current leadership has no plans to entertain such an agreement in the future," the department added.