Way back in the spring of 2001, the president gave Dick Cheney the job of heading up a special Energy Task Force to develop an administration energy policy - the policy which ultimately led to the recently passed Energy Bill. The vice president was a natural choice for the job because of his background in the energy industry.
At the time, Cheney and his staff met with all sorts of people in more or less private meetings to get input. These included executives of several oil companies - Shell, Chevron, Conoco, ExxonMobil and British Petroleum. The White House chose not to make public the content of those meetings, but at hearings held this past week by the Senate Energy Committee, representatives of several oil companies were asked if they had attended the meetings. At the hearing, representatives of all the companies said that they had not been involved in the meetings, except the BP representative, who said that his firm had been in at least some contact with the White House, and Shell's president, who didn't know whether his company had or not.
Subsequently the Washington Post revealed that Secret Service visit logs (perhaps someone at the Post ought to investigate how Secret Service logs are getting leaked at the White House) showed that in fact representatives from all of the companies had been to the White House to meet with Cheney or his staff, either individually or in groups. In all of these cases, the company spokesmen who went to the White House in 2001 were not the same ones who testified at the Senate hearings, so their incorrect answers could quite well be the result of not having first-hand knowledge of what other company employees were doing four years ago.
After being told of this inconsistency, all of the companies looked into the situation by contacting current or former employees who had worked with the White House. Conoco, Shell and Chevron all confirmed some sort of contact with the White House regarding energy policy. British Petroleum was not sure if they had met with the task force, and ExxonMobil continued to deny participation.
Democrats on the Senate committee, particularly Frank Lautenberg, are trying to make an issue of this and calling for the Justice Department to investigate. Since the company representatives interviewed by the Energy C ommittee last week were not sworn in, there's not much real culpability, but now they hope to call the representatives back and interview them again, under oath, to try to determine exactly what went on in the meetings and what their level of input was in forming the energy policy.
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Article comments
1 - Maurice
Great job as usual, Dave.
As a side note: Most gas companies are making an average of 7 to 14 cents per gallon. Taxes on gas are at an average of 42 cpg.
Maybe we need a task force to find out why the ones taking all the risks are only making billions and the ones doing nothing (but carping!) are making TRILLIONS!
2 - Upright Simian
Damned fine article and I love the links. Who knew these oil companies were so heavily invested in renewable energy. I did have a clue about Chevron. Both of the biodiesel depots I know of are Chevron stations.
3 - Dave Nalle
Good point, Maurice. If gas prices go up again I may write something on how the 'rapacious' profits the gas companies made this summer resulted from nothing but mathematical inevitability.
But I can't agree with you on the tax. I think it needs to be increased enormously. To a total of as much as $2 a gallon.
Dave
4 - Upright Simian
Wouldn't a big gas tax have pretty regressive effect on the economy, especially food prices?
5 - Maurice
I agree with the vertical monkey and am puzzled as to why you think gas needs to be taxed more.
On another topic you should read the latest article by Thomas Sowell. He explains why the minimum wage is so destructive. I would be interested in your comments.
6 - Dave Nalle
Do you have a link for the Sowell article? I'd be interested in what he has in mind. I see the minimum wage as basically meaningless, but I could see how raising it enough to make it meaningful could be a problem.
As for the whopping big gas tax, it would indeed be regressive, but mostly for wealthier consumers who can afford it, and the side benefits fro public transportation, in potential tax reduction, in cutting the deficit and even in helping out locally-based agriculture would be more than worth the negatives.
I'm working on an article on it, but am still doing some of the research.
Dave
7 - Dave Nalle
I notice that David Mark has finally decided to propagandize this issue with his usual spin in another article here on blogcritics. Pity he didn't stop here first for some of the actual facts.
Dave
8 - Maurice
here
I have a bunch of questions about the benefits but since you are going to write a full article about it I will hold off.
9 - Upright Simian
BTW weren't the oil execs called before the congressional committee to explain price gouging, not this old news?
10 - Dave Nalle
Yes, as I understand it they were sent to the hearings with the expectation that they would be talking about company profits and current gas price issues - in other words they were prepared to be accused of price gouging. I doubt that any of them expected Frank Lautenberg to start grilling them on meetings 4 years ago involving company employees who in two cases had left or retired. No wonder they didn't know what to answer. And in fact, they didn't all say 'no' when asked if their companies had been at meetings with the Task Force. Most of them said they didn't know.
And as far as it goes, I think there are only two companies involved in all of this who are real bad guys - Conoco and Exxon. They've repeatedly shown themselves to be uncooperative, inflexible and defensive. They're the real dinosaurs here. They're the ones who don't have alternative energy or alternative fuel programs and they have other issues in play as well, such as Exxon's wretched environmental history and Conoco's problems with workers rights issues.
Dave