Oil soaked bird gets cleaning
*The Gulf of Mexico oil spill seeped miles deeper into Louisiana’s fragile marshes, making it tougher to clean up or to rescue wildlife like the brown pelican, as the federal government questioned whether BP will be able plug its blown-out well on the seabed.
With frustration mounting at the global oil giant and at the government, the Obama administration pressured BP PLC to fix the gusher finally after several failed ventures in the weeks since an April 20 oil rig explosion.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Sunday he was “not completely” confident that BP knows what it’s doing.
“If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately,” Salazar said.
The White House said the Justice Department has been gathering information about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs didn’t say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation. He would only tell CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that department representatives have been to the Gulf as part of the response to the BP oil leak.
Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region Monday to fly over affected areas.
BP is getting barges and other equipment ready to prepare for a risky procedure midweek that the company hopes will finally halt the gusher.
For MORE of this AP story click HERE.
It is becoming a damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t scenario for the President. And he doesn’t deserve this. Let’s not forget it all leads back to the bush/cheney cabal. Yet another example of the long tail damage that administration has done to this country. We cannot lose sight of this. As frustrated as I am with the President of late. This should not be on his shoulders. But it quickly is becoming. He has to stop saying that he will approve limited oil drilling. He has to start filling the lower courts with liberal/progressives to undue yet more of the damage the bush/cheney cabal has done. bush made 122 appts to the courts. The President has only done 19 to date. Stop the warm and fuzziness leading. Stand on the liberal progressive principles his constituency voted him in for.
Not sure what Bush and Cheney have to do w/this oil spill. This is and should be on his shoulders because he is the president of the united states. As you point out, he did lift the motarium on oil drilling only to have this land in his lap. He lifted w/Bush did not.
You’re not serious? The alliance between the previous administration and the oil and energy companies are undeniable. Do you recall that energy meeting cheney had with major heads of corporations within weeks of them being in office, and cheney refused to submit a list of who was in attendance. Significant policy regarding energy was created, oil is obvious a part of energy means. The two are intertwined. How about the relationship both bushes have had with the oil companies including w being CEO of one and one time? Your response is what is most troubling since I don’t believe you stand alone in not seeing a connection between the two. I think most Americans are not thinking that expansively. But it was the bush.cheney administration that lowered regulations so much so, it is fairly well known that the agency in charge of this in Washington and the oil companies, is considered unfathomably “cozy”.
So the Bush adminstration (as opposed to the Obama adminstration) is responsible for this disaster? Really? So is Clinton responsible for 9-11 since Bush was only in office roughly 9mos before those terroist attacks? Should we go back and look at what Clinton “didn’t do?” Of course not and most people I know bristled at the notion that Bush was NOT responsible since it was on his watch.
As for the relationship w/Bush and the oil companies, MMS regulates offshore oil and gas. They have, at least up until 4/30/10 have been issuing similar drilling permits..something being done under THIS administration. Now whose to blame for that?
Is Bush still to blame for the Obama administration’s refusal to suspend all similar permits until further notice? So it’s not that I don’t see a connection but at some point, responsibility has to fall on the person IN office..not who once was and that is what’s most troubling with your post–the tendancy to blame Bush for what Obama has continued.
President Obama has done himself no favors by extending several of the bush/cheney crime family cabal’s policies. So at this point, they are both complicit. But it is all degrees in my interpretation, President Obama has just been confronted with this and the verdict is out on how he has handled it.Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
Testifying at a Senate hearing last week were, from left, Lee R. Raymond of Exxon Mobil, David J. O’Reilly of Chevron, James J. Mulva of ConocoPhillips, Ross Pillari of BP America and John Hofmeister of Shell Oil. (By Chip Somodevilla — Getty Images)
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By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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.
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.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force,” Lautenberg said.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld “the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality.”
The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making “any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation” to Congress.
Alan Huffman, who was a Conoco manager until the 2002 merger with Phillips, confirmed meeting with the task force staff. “We met in the Executive Office Building, if I remember correctly,” he said.
A spokesman for ConocoPhillips said the chief executive, James J. Mulva, had been unaware that Conoco officials met with task force staff when he testified at the hearing. The spokesman said that Mulva was chief executive of Phillips in 2001 before the merger and that nobody from Phillips met with the task force.
Exxon spokesman Russ Roberts said the company stood by chief executive Lee R. Raymond’s statement in the hearing. In a brief phone interview, former Exxon vice president James Rouse, the official named in the White House document, denied the meeting took place. “That must be inaccurate and I don’t have any comment beyond that,” said Rouse, now retired.
Ronnie Chappell, a spokesman for BP, declined to comment on the task force meetings. Darci Sinclair, a spokeswoman for Shell, said she did not know whether Shell officials met with the task force, but they often meet members of the administration. Chevron said its executives did not meet with the task force but confirmed that it sent President Bush recommendations in a letter.
The person familiar with the task force’s work, who requested anonymity out of concern about retribution, said the document was based on records kept by the Secret Service of people admitted to the White House complex. This person said most meetings were with Andrew Lundquist, the task force’s executive director, and Cheney aide Karen Y. Knutson.
According to the White House document, Rouse met with task force staff members on Feb. 14, 2001. On March 21, they met with Archie Dunham, who was chairman of Conoco. On April 12, according to the document, task force staff members met with Conoco official Huffman and two officials from the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, Wayne Gibbens and Alby Modiano.
On April 17, task force staff members met with Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s chairman, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Shell Oil chairman Steven Miller and two others. On March 22, staff members met with BP regional president Bob Malone, chief economist Peter Davies and company employees Graham Barr and Deb Beaubien.
Toward the end of the hearing, Lautenberg asked the five executives: “Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001?” When there was no response, Lautenberg added: “The meeting . . . ”
“No,” said Raymond.
“No,” said Chevron Chairman David J. O’Reilly.
“We did not, no,” Mulva said.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” said BP America chief executive Ross Pillari, who came to the job in August 2001. “I wasn’t here then.”
“But your company was here,” Lautenberg replied.
“Yes,” Pillari said.
Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has held his job since earlier this year, answered last. “Not to my knowledge,” he said.
Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.