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Bp money { April 5 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/04/04052002/s_46818.asphttp://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/04/04052002/s_46818.asp
Big Oil still lubes energy policy
Friday, April 05, 2002
By Justin Gerdes
Secretary Abraham digitally signs a recommendation letter to the president
On Feb. 27 Sir John Browne, chief executive officer of BP (formerly British Petroleum), stood before a crowd at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and announced that the world's third-largest oil company would no longer make "political contributions from corporate funds anywhere in the world." Through its American subsidiaries ARCO and AMOCO, BP, a London-based company, had dispersed a total of $1,692,740 to candidates and parties in the United States since 1999.
Although many large British companies have long-standing policies against giving political contributions, these policies are virtually unheard of in the United States. BP is the first company to forsake political giving since the spectacular collapse of the Enron Corporation. That company's precipitous decline and the scandal it begat may have been on Browne's mind as he explained his company's decision. Browne told the audience that corporations "must be particularly careful about the political process
because the legitimacy of that process is crucial both for society and for us a company working in that society."
It may have taken the largest bankruptcy in this nation's history and the withdrawal of campaign handouts from a global energy giant to grab our attention, but the lesson gleaned seems clear: Energy companies exert considerable influence in the political process in this country and have paid handsomely for the privilege. As Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program put it, "The energy companies are one of the most skilled industries at buying public policy."
Figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks the flow of money in politics, document the scope of the companies' largess. Since 1999, the oil and gas industry has parted with $42,621,517 in campaign contributions. Nearly half $20,192,154 have come in the form of soft money, the huge sums that until Nov. 6, 2002 (the date campaign finance reform, signed into law by President Bush in March 2002, takes effect), can be given in limitless quantities to political parties. Particularly generous benefactors during this time are some of this country's highest-grossing companies: ChevronTexaco gave $2,251,639, of which $1,513,877 was soft money, while ExxonMobil donated $1,899,720, of which $610, 325 was soft money.
The return on this investment came in the spring of last year as the Bush administration moved to craft a new national energy policy. On Jan. 29, 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) was born. Chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, the group's mission was to oversee the first significant review of the nation's energy policy in a decade.
The energy task force, as it is more commonly known, met throughout spring 2001 drafting the National Energy Plan. In May the task force released its report. The plan's recommendations long on support for the fossil fuel and nuclear industry and short on promotion of renewable energy and energy efficiency elicited an immediate negative response from environmental and consumer groups as well as from members of Congress.
Representative Henry Waxman asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the individuals Cheney and the task force members consulted in shaping the plan. In a bureaucratic back-and-forth that lasted the entire summer, Cheney's office repeatedly denied the GAO's request for the names of meeting participants. The vice president, citing the need to protect the executive branch's ability to deliberate on policy matters in private, questioned the GAO's statutory authority to obtain the information.
In January 2002, the GAO gave the administration a final chance to avoid court. In a letter to Cheney and President Bush, David Walker, head of the GAO, wrote, "Failure to provide the information we are seeking serves to undercut the important principles of transparency and accountability in government" and "could erode public confidence in the respect for the institutions of government." The administration didn't budge. On Feb. 22, the GAO filed suit to obtain the energy task force records the first time in the 81-year history of the agency it has had to go to court to acquire information.
While the GAO suit is still pending, on March 25 the public got its first glimpse of the behind-the-scenes deliberations that shaped the Bush energy plan. On that date, in response to a court order, the Department of Energy released 11,000 pages of documents. The records requested by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) through the Freedom of Information Act though incomplete (the Energy Department is holding on to an additional 15,000 pages), depict an energy policy constructed with the participation and advice of energy companies.
In a press release announcing the disclosure of the 11,000 pages, the Energy Department boasts that the "documents show open process with both environmental and industry views represented." Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham agreed, telling the press that "the information released today will only further confirm that it was indeed a balanced plan that not only sought but included all viewpoints."
What the documents actually confirm, however, is a deliberative process that included the voice of energy industry officials and virtually ignored input from environmental and consumer groups. According to the NRDC, 103 executives and lobbyists met with Secretary Abraham as the energy task force report was being written; the same records show no meetings with environmental and consumer groups. Taken together, the business interests who met with Abraham contributed $29.1 million to federal candidates since 1999, with 75 percent of that money finding its way to Republicans, according to numbers compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Representatives of environmental groups contend that administration officials made little or no effort to engage them in the discussions shaping the new energy policy. They further assert that the overtures that were made by the White House were perfunctory, and more important, late. For example, environmental groups were asked to attend a meeting with Vice President Cheney a month after the National Energy Plan had been released.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who attended the June 2001 meeting with Cheney, finds dubious the administration's claim that the task force report was balanced and involved the participation of environmental groups. "There is no real debate, and the administration doesn't even seriously contend that there is a debate," said Pope. For him, it is simple: "We [environmental groups] didn't get access; industry groups that didn't give money got access but not policy; and industry groups that gave money got access and got policy."
Wenonah Hauter of Public Citizen shares those sentiments. "We never expected to be on the inside," she said. "All of the environmental community could have had dozens of meetings, and I'm not sure it would have had any impact." Alden Meyer, the director of governmental relations at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said that there was an air of desperation surrounding the belated meetings with public interest groups. On April 4 he attended one of the rare energy task force meetings to which environmental groups were invited before the National Energy Plan was released on May 17. Meyer dismissed the meeting as the work of an administration official who "realized that they better have at least a few meetings with the environmental and consumer group community before the report was released."
For their part, energy industry officials downplay their access to members of the energy task force. Susan Hahn, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute (API) an organization representing 400 oil and gas producers said their "communication with the energy task force as well as with Congress and others has been providing information on the issue at the staff level." But according to the Energy Department documents provided to the NRDC, API President Red Caveny and the CEOs of five oil companies, including those of ChevronTexaco and Shell Oil, met with Secretary Abraham on Feb 21. Caveny later told the Washington Post that the group was "pleased" with the meeting and that "on 11 out of 12 key areas, we're covered."
While it is impossible to know for certain whether the influence of energy companies compelled energy task force members to include oil-industry-friendly provisions in their report, the fact remains that the Bush energy plan abounds with these accommodations. The recommendations of the energy task force include support for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in offshore areas, a reduction in royalties for offshore drilling, opposition to a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, and a reduction in the budget for research and development of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The energy lobby's good fortune continued this year as the Senate debated a comprehensive energy bill. On March 14 by a margin of 62-38, the Senate rejected an amendment sponsored by John Kerry which would have raised corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) requirements to 36 mpg for passenger vehicles by 2015. These have stood unchanged since 1985 at 27.5 miles per gallon for passenger vehicles and 20.7 mpg for light trucks.
The very next day, the Senate again voted overwhelmingly, 70-29, to reject an amendment by Jim Jeffords that would have required 20 percent of the country's electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and biomass by 2020. Currently, less than 2 percent of the electricity in the United States is provided by renewable sources, according to the Energy Information Administration.
If the money wielded by the energy industry has distorted the political debate, as even John Browne of BP alluded, then what is the solution? Should companies in the oil and gas industry follow BP's example and renounce political donations? The answer, as it turns out, may have been provided for them.
On March 27, President Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. The legislation which will become active on Nov. 6, 2002 (the day after national elections, it just so happens) marks the first significant alteration of U.S. campaign finance law in a generation. The bill prohibits unions and corporations from broadcasting issue ads within 60 day of an election and 30 days of a primary; doubles the amount of hard money individuals can contribute to candidates per election to $2,000; and most important, bans soft money, the unlimited contributions that unions, corporations, and individuals donated to political parties.
Steve Weiss, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, said that under the new rules, "the question is whether companies are going to see campaign contributions as a worthwhile investment." Although "businesses may want certain candidates elected and others defeated, what they generally want most is access to elected officials regardless of party affiliation. That's what soft money got them."
Alden Meyer at the UCS argues that in the post-campaign-finance-reform world, public interest groups will still not be able to compete because, "There's going to be a premium on people that can bundle large numbers of $2,000 donations together. People who have Rolodexes or industry connections, employees (whom they can get) to write checks to particular candidates will be highly prized." He said this practice will place environmental groups at a disadvantage because, "If you compare the corporate side of the ledger to environmental and consumer groups, the corporations have access to a much larger base of people who can write multiple numbers of $2,000 checks."
Carl Pope at the Sierra Club feels similarly that under the new system a search to unload the funds previously earmarked for soft money donations will not necessarily lead to a windfall for advocacy groups. Like Steve Weiss, he feels that the salient point is access. "The overwhelming majority of soft money was not ideologically motivated; it was shakedown money," Pope said. "I unfortunately don't have anything that your average oil company values very highly, so they're not going to be looking to meet with me."
For environmental groups looking for a reprieve, hoping that perhaps campaign finance reform may soon deflate the power of the oil and gas industry, Weiss sends a reminder: "Both parties have been pretty unabashed in their efforts to collect as much soft money as possible before the deadline. Its kind of the last call to the bar. They are undoubtedly presenting this to donors as, 'This is your last chance. Do it this time and it won't go unacknowledged.'"
Justin Gerdes is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones magazine in San Fransico. He was formerly an intern with the Grand Canyon Trust, a Flagstaff, Ariz., environmental advocacy group whose mission is to protect and restore the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau.
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