Oil execs met Cheney task force: WP Wed Nov 16, 6:44 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051116...tLbIatg.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE- A White House document shows oil executives met with Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force which critics say secretly formed energy policy favorable to the industry, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The document, obtained this week by the newspaper, shows that officials from four major oil companies met in the White House complex with Cheney aides who were formulating the Bush administration's energy policy, the report said. The newspaper said the document shows that officials from Exxon MobilCorp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met with the Cheney aides. The White House refused to divulge information about the task force. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment on the document but told the newspaper that the courts have upheld "the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality." The Sierra Club environmental group and the watchdog group Judicial Watch sued unsuccessfully to find out the names and positions of the task force members and to learn about their contacts with industry executives. They claimed that Cheney, the former chief executive of energy and construction company Halliburton Co., drafted a policy that favored the industry by consulting oil industry executives. The task force produced a policy paper calling for more oil and gas drilling and a revived nuclear power program. According to The Washington Post, a person familiar with the task force's work said the document obtained by the paper was based on records kept by the Secret Service. The source requested anonymity out of concern about retribution, the Post said. During a Senate hearing last week, chief executives of the major oil companies either denied that their firms participated in the task force or that they did not know, the newspaper said. Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that gave recommendations to the task force, the Post reported. According to the person familiar with the task force's work, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive. That meeting is not noted in the document, the newspaper said.
Involving the stakeholders when formulating policy??? What a nutty idea. (the other stakeholders should have been involved too, of course)...
I'm not surprised. The administrations goal seems from day one is to make George and Dick's friends money.
Yeah, my problem is more that this was done in secret (and apparently the execs all lied about it) - the other stakeholders never got a chance to comment or involve themselves in the process. Oil companies being involved with energy policies isn't a bad thing in and of itself.
I'd also like to know why the energy task force was looking at Oil maps of Iraq in 2001. ----------- Documents to Cheney's 2001 energy task force include details on Iraqi oil industry H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Friday, July 18, 2003 Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group. Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries. The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda. Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush's energy plan. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/07/18/national1810EDT0716.DTL
I'm still not following you Jim Mulva is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ConocoPhillips Jim Mulva said that Conoco had no meetings with Cheney in 2001 Documents have surfaced saying Conoco did have those meetings therefore, Jim Mulva lied to Congress
Lautenberg's question: "Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001? Direct text from the article without your editing: "We did not, no," Mulva said Jim Mulva was CEO of Phillips Petroleum until August 30, 2002. You came to the conclusion that Mulva was a liar, without even knowing what company he was employed by in 2001. Follow me?
Just a couple of things.... Lets not be so naive to think that its just the Bush administration getting bought off by lobbyists. Nobody seemed to mind it when Bill Clinton did this exact same thing or was renting the white house rooms out for campaign contributions. The average profit from a tank of gas that the oil companies make is somewhere around $0.10 per gallon while the government taxes your silly butts for over $0.40 but yet I hear no outcry on this at all.... Many of the reasons that it costs so much for gas is that the federal government (i.e. screaming liberals) have lobbied against domestic drilling in areas where they know oil is and lots of it. They also have passed EPA laws that make it virtually cost prohibitive to build any new refineries due to the laws past and the cost involved...
Seems as though most people agree that every administration does these things its just the secrecy and lies about it that bother us. Costs of gas is a separate thread...
Actually no other administration in the past hundred years has had oil energy business owners in secret meetings where they were consulted to form the energy policy for a whole nation. It wasn't done during the Clinton administration. To claim that it was is false. Big business lobbyists have had influence no doubt, but not held secret meetings.
I don't know what the point of the secrecy of these meetings was. I should hope every administration consulted with the execs of the major energy companies when forming their energy policy though. They lied, they lied, why did they lie? There's no shame in meeting with Cheney. What are they trying to keep secret? There's no story until they report that.
