Loren Steffy

A business blog

Were they or weren’t they?


A White House document shows executives from major oil companies met with Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force in 2001, according to today’s Washington Post. Last week, top executives from those same five companies told members of Congress that they didn’t.



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.

It’s really not a surprise that Cheney’s group would have met with these guys. Politics aside, any administration crafting a proposal as sweeping as an energy bill ought to determine the impact on the industries most affected.

But by denying it in front of Congress, the oil executives are simply raising suspicions about what went on in those meetings. First, the administration refuses to make its records of the meetings public, now the oil companies say they never happened.

And the fact that the executives weren’t sworn in before Congress now only adds to the intrigue. If the oil companies have nothing to hide, they should stop acting like they do.

It’s public policy. The public has a right to know.

Categories: Energy

4 Responses

  1. ttyler5 says:

    I just read the transcripts and the Washpost article, and the oil officials at the hearings where not involved in any 2001 meetings with the white house.

    Not a word in the Washpost though about the fact that the Senators doing all the hostile questioning of the oil execs have been big supporters of the idiotic policies that have run the consruction of new refineries out of the United States and added huge costs to the production of oil, natural gas and gasoline here in the US.

    We’ll all be out of gasoline and stranded on the side of the road before the “news” media will expose people like Senator Boxer and Senator Lautenberg for what they really are: political parasites who have never produced a drop of gasoline or anything else for that matter, and whose voting records clearly demonstrate that they have no business overseeing our national energy policies.

  2. Dan Harris says:

    Why should oil execs worry about lying to reporters? I would do it as a matter of sport since the media won’t tell the truth anyway.

  3. ttyler5 says:

    Btw, Loren, my negative comments on the proverbial “Big Media” distortions were not directed at you. :^D

    But mega-media’s mega-distortions of important issues like world oil production make me angry. And I hardly think I’m alone.

    In fact, coverage of the hearings last week has been skewed almost as badly as it has been skewed in the Valerie Plame/Libby case.

    For example, as I mentioned earlier, after reading the transcripts and the WashPost story I realized that none of the oil execs present had been involved in the meetings with the white house.

    Now, how do you write a NEWS a story about it that says anything else?

    Well, read the WashPost story. They managed it.

    There were any number of major policy issues raised at that hearing, yet what we got from the “Big Media” guys as the lead story out of the hearing was the politically-motivated issue of meetings between the white house and industry people.

    That’s a fringe issue. Most of us who for example watched the hearing on TV, and/or saw the video at the CSPAN online archives, and.or read transcripts such as you have provided above, and/or kept up with news stories about these hearings did so because we wanted to hear the oil industry’s explanation of the high prices for oil and gas.

    And I would say most people reading the news and/or watching the network news broadcasts wanted to hear this explanation as well.

    What we got instead was a thinly-veiled conspiracy theory based, of all things, on the fact that the people testifying at the hearing weren’t witnesses of the conspiratorial event.

    “Aha! They weren’t there! What more proof do you need of a conspiracy between the white house and Big Oil to raise oil prices and gouge consumers!” :^D :^D :^D :^D :^D :^D

    X-Files reruns! The late Jim Garrison on steroids!

    At best, when it comes to issues like this, our Big Media news agencies remind me of the Red Queen, at worst of the Salem witch trials, and at very worst, of Robespierre during the Terror.

  4. fred says:

    ExxonMobil has posted the following response on their website.