He probably used a known password, there is no skill involved here, there is no laborious hours spent analysing a system for weakness inherent to the code, and then constructing a hack to exploit that weakness.

If he used a key, it is not even breaking and entering. It is just unauthorised entry.

He hacked, why doesn't he face stiff penalties? Who does he know...? Oh, it's oil. Probably a friend of Dubya, then. My bad.

Extraordinarily light sentence in this case... and him being directly involved in the oil industry. If I believed in coincidences this would be one whopper or a coincidence. However since I don't and given the weak slap on the wrist this is, I'll have to say grumpy above me is spot on. Shocked? No. Astonished that those in power still think that no one will notice the huge discrepancy here? Yeah. But thus is life in what is still dubya's 'merica.

He should have just remained shtum about it. He could have then used the knowledge to his companies advantage by strangely and accurately "predicting" what the other company was up to.

Mind you, if a company are silly enough to put sensitive info on a web server, then they are partly to blame if its accessed. Isn't a web server designed to make data available?

..completely incorrect, improper and unfair use of the term "hacking" :(