You probably know that Halliburton, the contractor BP hired to cement the well, is under investigation for its role in this disaster.
You may also know that Dick Cheney has ended his seclusion in a secure, though disclosed, location.
But do you know just how much of this disaster could be attributed, both directly and indirectly, to Dick Cheney? Viewed as a whole, his actions while in office make him look at least as culpable in the Gulf oil disaster as Tony Hayward. Please bear with me - this will take a while to explain...
The failure of the MMS to regulate the oil and gas industries is now legendary (to the extent that it was regulated at all). It could be argued that the American Petroleum Institute regulated the MMS, apparently, and despite its inquiries, with Congress' permission. How this came about was a long-term strategy.
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It seems that Wyoming, Cheney's home state, has been a breeding ground for fossil fuel enthusiasts. And those enthusiasts found employment working for and with the Bush Administration:
The Wyoming connection was especially evident from 2000 to 2008, during the two administrations of President George W. Bush and his vice president, Wyoming native Dick Cheney. A former chief executive of Halliburton, Cheney took an early and very active interest in energy policy and placed several Wyoming political friends in key positions in the Department of Interior.
Among those friends and the key positions they occupied:
-- David J. Gribbin III, a high school and college friend from Wyoming, was Cheney's transitional liaison with Congress. Gribbin previously worked for Cheney as Halliburton’s chief lobbyist in the capital.
-- Thomas Sansonetti, a prominent Cheyenne lawyer, GOP activist, and member of the conservative Federalist Society, who headed the team choosing top personnel for the Department of Interior, which oversees Minerals Management Service.
-- Gayle Norton, who, though not from Wyoming, was picked by Sansonetti to head Interior. Native Coloradan Norton was a longtime protégée of James Watt in the Mountain States Legal Foundation, of which Watt was the founding director. Norton was also a member of the Federalist Society.
-- Rebecca W. Watson, a former Sheridan, Wyoming, lawyer, who Norton named as assistant Interior Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Watson was responsible for the Bureau of Land Management, the Office of Surface Mining and the Minerals Management Service.
-- Rejane "Johnnie" Burton of Casper had managed the Wyoming Department of Revenue under former Gov. Jim Geringer. In 2007, Burton resigned under fire from her $168,000-a-year Minerals Management director’s job after the Department of Interior Inspector General found widespread corruption in the agency’s Colorado-based royalty collection office. In addition, questions were raised in Congress about Burton’s handling of offshore leases. Burton now works as a $49,000-a-year aide for longtime friend and former legislative colleague Wyoming U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis.
-- Randall Luthi, of Freedom, is a former speaker of the Wyoming House and a former aide to U.S. Sen. Alan K. Simpson. He succeeded Burton as MMS director. Luthi left his Minerals Management position when President Obama took office in January 2009. A little over a year later, Luthi was named president of the National Ocean Industries Association, the main industry trade group for the offshore oil and gas industry. (Luthi testified May 27 before the House Natural Resources committee investigating the Gulf of Mexico disaster. (Complete hearing transcript - PDF.) Several of the companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster are members of Luthi’s association. One of the National Ocean Industries’ stated missions: reduce federal regulatory controls. More about Luthi here (be sure to click through the links; the Daily Beast article is a doozy!)
-- Former Wyoming U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, as chairman of the House Resources Energy and Minerals subcommittee, was Congress’ most strident champion of the now-abandoned "Royalty-in-Kind" program that had allowed energy producers to pay Mineral Management Services royalties with gas or oil instead of cash. Where was the protest by the deficit hawks?
-- Current U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis pushed a proposal through the state Board of Land Commissioners to commit Wyoming’s 50 percent share of federal natural gas royalties to the Minerals Management Royalty-in-Kind program While serving as state treasurer in 2005. In 2008, Royalty in Kind accounted for more than half of the $543 million in federal gas royalties dispersed to the state. Deficit hawks, are you reading this?
Got the picture? The Department of Interior in general, and the MMS in particular, were oozing with Cheney devotees. This ensured that the primary regulatory body for the fossil fuel industry would be "industry friendly." But that's just part of the story.
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Another part of the story is the "National Energy Policy Development Group," aka the Cheney Energy Task Force. Offered without comment from Sourcewatch:
The National Energy Policy Development Group was a group, created by Executive Order on January 29, 2001, that was chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney. The group, commonly referred to as the "Cheney Energy Task Force," produced a National Energy Policy report in May 2001. In a cover note to George W. Bush, Cheney wrote that "we have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future." The composition of the task force, according to the report, was confined to government officials.
However, according to media reports at the time, energy industry executives participated in the Task Force. In particular, those identified as having been involved included then-Enron President and Chairman Kenneth Lay and lobbyists Haley Barbour and Marc Racicot.
The National Resources Defense Council filed a FOIA request for the records of the meetings. As they state:
In early 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney presided over a task force charged with setting a new national energy policy. For months high-ranking Bush administration officials met in secret with lobbyists and executives from utility companies and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries. In May 2001 the task force released its recommendations: more subsidies to polluting industries, more reliance on oil, more nuclear power. Despite NRDC's repeated requests for information, the Bush administration refused to disclose the names of industry participants in the task force or what they discussed with Bush policymakers.
In April 2001 NRDC filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for access to the task force's records; the Bush administration refused to comply. NRDC filed suit, and a federal judge ordered the administration to turn over the documents. On March 25, 2002, nearly a year after first requesting them, NRDC received roughly 10,000 pages relating to the task force from the Department of Energy. Subsequently the department provided another 3,500 pages, but withheld more than 16,000 others.
You can peruse the documents here. As they clarify further:
Even though the government heavily censored the documents before supplying them to NRDC, they reveal that Bush administration officials sought extensive advice from utility companies and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, and incorporated their recommendations, often word for word, into the energy plan.
The Guardian reported on a piece by the WSJ:
The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.
The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week...
... regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, in effect require them. Norway has had acoustic triggers on almost every offshore rig since 1993.
The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.
The U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn't require the use of acoustic triggers.
The Journal's report doesn't come out and say this, but the environmental lawyer, Mike Papantonio, said on the Schultz show in an interview you can watch here that it was Cheney's energy task force - the secretive one that he wouldn't say much about publicly - that decided that the switches, which cost $500,000, were too much a burden on the industry. The Papantonio segment starts at around 5:00 in and lasts three minutes or so.
So Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, that was supposed to "promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future," consulted with wolves on how best to guard the sheep
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
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 detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.
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Separately, the conservative Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request of their own and found that
on the grounds that the administration was not "in compliance with the Federal Advisory Commission Act (FACA), which mandates that certain documents, task force members, meetings, and decision-making activities be open to the public." Judicial Watch argued that the acting as energy lobbyists -- "regularly attended and fully participated" in the group's meetings held behind closed doors, and were in fact members of the group. The Sierra Club also filed suit. (The two actions were later merged.) "At issue is whether Cheney allowed private energy lobbyists and big-name campaign contributors to participate in the work of the group, and if so, whether that information should be made public," UPI reported.
They also found:
that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.
The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country’s oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.
You can view the documents here.
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When you tie the whole thing together, you end up with a compelling case for the following points, none of which is original and all of which are familiar to you, but taken as whole, detail an abuse of executive power that has resulted in preventable disasters:
-- Cheney appointed cronies to positions within the Bush Administration where they could be the most helpful to the fossil fuel industry, rubber-stamping the industry's every wish;
-- The Cheney Energy Task Force recommended rules and guidelines that allowed the fossil fuel industry to be self-"regulating;"
-- The Cheney Energy Task Force may have specifically recommended against a safety device that might have averted the loss of 11 lives;
-- The Cheney Energy Task Force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there
Does anyone besides me think Dick Cheney ought to rear his orange-jumpsuit-clad head over a prison yard for the rest of his life? If so, can you contact an elected official to suggest that an investigation into Cheney's role in the abomination in the Gulf that he helped create (in addition to pulling us into a war of aggression) is at least as worthy of investigation as Tony Hayward?
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Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership!
Post-coffee update: Thanks to those who've clicked through many of the links. In the semi-cold light of morning, I feel even more strongly that no matter how culpable Tony Hayward is, Dick Cheney played a pivotal role in enabling the cost-cutting measures that cost 11 lives on Deepwater Horizon, not to mention the thousands of lives lost or shattered in two wars of aggression.