Government and Big Oil sitting in a tree
Posted by Yankee on November 16, 2005 - 11:07pm
Well, I'm shocked.
As some political bloggers have been saying, no wonder the executives weren't sworn in for last week's congressional hearings.
Today, the Washington Post reported that representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco, Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met with Dick Cheney's energy task force in 2001 to provide "detailed energy policy recommendations". Even more strangely (right), the Big Oil executives who met with Congress last week either denied being part of the task force meetings, or said they didn't know whether any of their officials had participated.
According to the article, environmentalists had suspected that the oil companies had been invited to the White House, but there was no proof until now.
The task force's activities attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants. The task force was made up primarily of Cabinet-level officials. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club unsuccessfully sued to obtain the records.
As some political bloggers have been saying, no wonder the executives weren't sworn in for last week's congressional hearings.
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—Eleanor Roosevelt
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I work for BP, I have to say its cool Mr. Pillari told the truth. Granted, he said 'I don't know', then baicly said I did know and yes. But, atleast it was the most honest.
There is also some maps floating around from that meeting.
And let's not leave out the "Who gets what list"
I'm guessing this is why some congresscritters want the big-oil guys to come back and testify again, this time under-oath. Now that they admitted they were there, they can ask them about what was discussed about Iraq.
I can understand the environmentalists being upset over being ignored, but I wouldn't have thought they'd be too surprised that a conservative Republican government was going to ignore them.
Now that's probably reactionary on my part but at this point, the Bush administration deserves that reaction based on the inept handling of the entire thing.
No, we cannot get the billions spent on Iraq back, they are gone, wasted, but think of the wake up call to the American public if it were shown that this is what it was all about, as I believe. Would there be much argument left that the coming oil crisis was real? If the public knew that the Iraq war was really a premeditated attempt to secure ME oil because of impending decline, it MIGHT make people more willing to accept a serious national program, and therefore politicians more willing to propose it.
Far from being typical fat-cat business as usual, there is no more important political issue.
Democracy and markets both work best with informed players, and both are subverted when the powerful control information.
What I see as absurd (not here, but generally) is that people with a big belief in markets (current oil prices are purely supply/demand) get turned around, and defend what are clearly non-market and non-democratic events.
To me, it makes a great deal of sense for a market democracy to investigate things in open congressional hearings. Not only does the goevernment learn, but each of us citizens learn right along with them.
(and of course if Iraq was discussed in early 2001, it takes this concern for democracy to a whole other level!)
To fashion an energy policy, in secret, with only the players whose interest is profit in the room is stupid. This problem is everyone's problem. As some bloggers have pointed out, we presumably live in a democracy.
The very premise of TOD is public awareness and support to do what we must do.
I am surprised at your position, Stuart.
It seems oil companies are kind of psychotic about alternative energy. On one hand there is all this data that says nothing can replace oil, NG & coal for EROEI. At the same time it seems that oil wants no competition in the energy arena by helping craft policy that allows it to keep a lock on profitability over all other options.
To me that is the heart of the matter. If oil really is the cheapest energy why are they so worried about a level playing field with respect to taxes and environmental regulations? Just a question.
It doesn't matter whether or not they were sworn in before they testified, as its still a crime to lie to congress regardless!! Now its time to make then testify under oath to see how their stories change!
The one thing that should be patently obvious from this is that the current administration is well aware of Peak Oil, and their response is to control what is left using our military presence to guarantee we are never embargoed again. Bush, Koizumi, Blair and others have made it plain we are willing to bleed to control oil supplies. This is not lost on the exporting countries - they know we will take what we want when we have to, so selling it is a much better alternative.
Isn't this self-evident, even if it is distasteful, repugnant and unAmerican in the traditional sense?
The fact that the meeting was totally secret, that the Bush people went to extraordinary lengths to hide even such basic information as the identities of the parties who attended the meeting makes the whole thing look rather sinister to me.
I also understand that some of the executives who testified stated that they couldn't recall whether any of their representatives were at the Task Force
meeting. You mean to say that an oil company CEO would not remember if any of their people went to this extremely important top level White House meeting. Give me a break!
Furthermore, while oil men could give valuable insight on the oil situation, do they not have an inherent conflict of interest regarding such issues as conservation and alternative energy? How is it in an oil company's financial interest to promote conservation of alternative energy?
Quite frankly, I don't like the way this whole thing smells.
Nobody likes this - it is repellant. It is unAmerican except in the strictest sense of survival. But as a government leader, you have to call on the experts when out of your depth. Bush is no oil man - he's a complete failure in that arena. He is at least smart enough to realize that, and knows the tentacles that the majors have into all these areas, and that they know what is going on.
I don't agree with the Iraq thing - it was reactionary, and ill-conceived. But we are stuck with it now, as our first Peak Oil move on the chessboard. At least it was a strong move...
How long is it going to take the American people to realize what a debacle we have embarked upon?
Why is it that the private sector worries if a project is several million over budget, while the federal government spends billions like they're nickels?
It almost seems as though we are dealing in two totally different currencies - one for the private sector, and another for the federal government. Unfortunately, we all get to pay for both.
Regime change in Iraq became overt policy late in 1998 (Iraq Liberation Act). I also get the impression that before 9/11, Rumsfeld et al hoped to achieve this through a combination of INC forces and US special forces (a little like what happened in Afghanistan), not through invasion and occupation by the regular US Army.
I say this because some people (more so elsewhere than here) are evidently entertaining scenarios like: Cheney saw peak oil was coming, said we'd better establish control of the world supply by occupying Iraq, and sat down with the oil majors to plan the administration of the new Middle East.
What is really missing, in such an attempt to guess the deep politics of the situation, is a sense of history. Great-power politics in the Middle East have involved oil at least since the 1920s, long before there was a world economy based on the substance; it seems that Churchill intended for Iraqi oil to power the imperial British navy, and British access to it was therefore a factor in the design of the post-WWI settlement. One may assume that from that time until the present day, oil has constantly been a factor in the strategic deliberations of the great powers, first as a militarily useful resource, and now as the lifeblood of all modern industrial societies.
Looking at the USA's three big wars since WWII - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq - I am struck by their location relative to the sea-lanes around the Eurasian perimeter, by means of which the East Asian economic miracle was supplied with the Middle Eastern oil that powered it. First there's a war in East Asia itself, then in South-east Asia (a chokepoint on the sea-lanes), and now in the Middle East. The locus of conflict has slowly moved up the 'supply line', and since 1973 has been centered at its source. I doubt that one can really understand the geopolitics of oil without first understanding this history.