Great Oil Sniffer Hoax

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2024-07-07 07:00:05

The Great Oil Sniffer Hoax was a 1979 scandal involving French oil company Elf Aquitaine. The company spent millions of dollars developing a new gravity wave-based oil detection system, which was later revealed to be a scam. Elf lost over $150 million in the hoax. In France, the scandal is known as the "Avions Renifleurs" ("Sniffer Planes").[1]

Aldo Bonassoli, a telephone-company electrician in Ventimiglia in Italy, invented a new type of desalination system. In 1965, Belgian Count Alain de Villegas became interested in the idea and later said that "We can live without oil, but not without water."[2] When the device did not work as expected, the team turned its attention to a related concept, a "water sniffer" that would find water.

De Villegas was also a member of the Pan-European Union, an anti-communist group headquartered in Brussels. Through contacts in this group, in 1969 he met Jean Violet, a lawyer who worked for the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), the French intelligence agency. Violet, who was an influential behind-the-scenes player in the European anti-communist world, had formed the Pinay Circle in the 1950s around its titular leader, Antoine Pinay.