Board member thrown out in oil & gas dispute

By Bill Donovan
Special to the Times

WINDOW ROCK, July 17, 2014

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The confusion and chaos surrounding the Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Company for the past several months continued this week.

On Saturday, the board of directors that received the Navajo Nation Supreme Court vote of approval met in Albuquerque. During the meeting they threw out a board member because she questioned the validity of the meeting.

Also this week, copies of documents were released which showed details on how the company lost millions of dollars for bad decisions under previous directors such as Louis Denetsosie, who is now back in control of the company.

In the center of this dispute was the establishment of an office in Denver that auditors found to have been mismanaged resulting in tens of millions of dollars in losses to the company.

The center of the dispute at the board meeting this past Saturday was Frances Totsoni, who was first appointed to the NNOGC board in 2006. She was re-appointed to the board in January 2014 by both the Resources and NABI committees of the Navajo Nation Council.

In an email to Dennis Ickes, the attorney for the shareholder representatives who are in federal court trying to get the board approved by the Supreme Court ousted, Totsoni talked about her experiences at the board meeting.

She said she received a phone call from Lennard Eltsosie, president of the board now in power, saying she had to attend the board meeting "in person" rather than by telephone.

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