Former vice president Dick Cheney was never very popular with the people. This was proven even more evident from a poll conducted right before Cheney’s retirement, which put the former VP’s approval rate at an all time low, at just 13%.
There have been very few political figures who have been so continuously loathed throughout their career. For anyone who slept through the heart of the Iraq war or spent an entire decade with a slow internet connection, here’s a reminder of just why Dick Cheney is such a despised figure.
What is Halliburton? Halliburton is the worlds single largest oilfield service company currently operating in over 80 different countries. The company itself was created in 1919 but wasn’t named the Halliburton Company until 1961. In the early 1990’s Dick Cheney served as the Pentagons defense secretary until 1995, when he became CEO of Halliburton.
Halliburton absorbed Dresser Industries in 1998. At the time, Dresser Industries was under the control of Prescott Bush. Even George H.W. Bush worked under Dresser Industries for several years until he founded the Zapata Corporation, which is also an oil company. And for anyone who needs reminding of how malevolent Prescott Bush can be, he was accused of doing finances for Nazi’s in New York City just after the end of the second world war. So all of this tells us two things: The Cheney and the Bush family really loved oil, and the only thing that could make their oil empire larger and more profitable would be: Access to more oil.
Cheney, Halliburton and A Lot of Money While former president George W. Bush and Congress may take most of the overall blame for the War in Iraq, Cheney played a critical role in keeping it going for so long, and should be seen just as irresponsible and as greedy.
At the turn of the 21st century, Cheney stepped down as CEO of Halliburton to run as vice president during the presidential campaign of 2000. Stepping down from the position brought Cheney a severance package worth over $36 million. This doesn’t include the stock options that Cheney owned of Halliburton. And this doesn’t even cover the millions more in revenue that Halliburton picked up since Cheney was elected as Vice President of the United States.
Facts About the Halliburton and Cheney Connection - At the end of 2003, the Associated Press reported that Iraq contractors Halliburton, Bechtel and DynCorp donated over 2.2$ million to Republican parties, specifically to the Bush campaign between 1999 and 2002.
- While Cheney was in office, taxpayers were unknowingly paying Halliburton an average of $2.65 a gallon to bring oil in from Iraq while the company would later resell that gallon for 4 to 15 cents to Iraq locals.
While the factual connections between Cheney and his former company Halliburton are ridiculously obvious, it’s even more ridiculous that both were able to get away virtually unscathed. The good news is that Cheney is out of the picture, for the most part, but the lingering question remains: Who will be the next political patsy for the giant oil corporations, that will help higher-up’s profit from war?
Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
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.
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.
Cheney’s Culture of Deregulation and Corruption
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| SOURCE: AP/Cliff Owen |
A look at the culture of deregulation, self-regulation, and corruption ushered in on Cheney’s underscores why the BP oil catastrophe should forever be remembered as Cheney’s Katrina.
By Joshua Dorner | June 9, 2010
Big Oil spent millions of dollars to sweep—and keep—George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. And it got its money’s worth.
The new administration and its staunchly pro-oil congressional allies returned the favor by enacting one of the most pro-oil, anti-environment pieces of legislation in history: the Energy Policy Act of 2005—itself based on the recommendations of Cheney’s secret energy policy task force. The Bush-Cheney administration’s cozy relationship with Big Oil, however, goes much deeper than one law.
A closer look at the culture of deregulation, self-regulation, and corruption ushered in on Cheney’s watch further underscores why the BP oil catastrophe should forever be remembered as Cheney’s Katrina.
The poster child for Bush-Cheney crony capitalism
The mention of Halliburton likely summons for most Americans memories of the Bush administration’s infamous no-bid Iraq war contracts—and Halliburton’s subsequent efforts to defraud taxpayers and its fatal negligence in facilities it constructed for our troops. Halliburton’s main business, however, is providing services to major oil companies such as its potentially faulty cementing job on BP’s blown out well.
The company had an unprecedented opportunity to engage in self-dealing and create a regulatory climate favorable to its business interests when Cheney, Halliburton’s former CEO, was ensconced in the White House and still effectively on its payroll.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has come to be known as the “Dick Cheney energy bill,” but there’s one provision that is so closely identified with the former vice president that it has become known as the “Cheney loophole.” The provision in question, Section 322, exempted hydraulic fracturing, a drilling process invented by Halliburton commonly known as “fracking,” from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The use of hydraulic fracturing has opened up vast new reserves of domestic natural gas from Texas to Wyoming to Pennsylvania, but serious environmental concerns about the process have been raised following numerous cases of groundwater contamination after nearby drilling. The exemption has placed the burden to rein in drillers largely on state regulators that are often unable or simply unwilling to police the thousands of wells that have been drilled in recent years.
Cheney not only offered permanent regulatory relief and rolled back existing environmental laws to help the oil industry. This particular example also demonstrates the administration’s willingness to distort science to benefit Big Oil and others. A 2004 Environmental Protection Agency study declared that fracking posed no significant threat to drinking water, thus paving the way for Congress to pass the Cheney loophole. The integrity of the 2004 study has been called into serious question, and a broad new Obama EPA study on the practice is raising the ire of the oil and gas industry.
The one exception to the Cheney loophole was a ban on injecting diesel fuel into wells. Yet a recent House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation revealed that the drilling companies violated this single restriction with impunity during the Bush-Cheney years. And oil and gas interests have launched a public relations and lobbying campaign to prevent Congress from closing the Cheney loophole or imposing other regulations.
There have been two serious accidents involving onshore natural gas wells in the past week alone. A Pennsylvania well had a blowout and one in West Virginia exploded.
Categorically excluding oversight
One of the 2005 Energy Policy Act provisions that is most directly related to the BP oil catastrophe is Section 390, which dramatically expanded the circumstances under which new drilling permits could be approved without further environmental reviews or assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act. Many appear to have been approved based almost completely on responses to yes or no questions on pro forma checklists.
The Minerals Management Service approved BP’s blown out Mississippi Canyon 252 well using just such a “categorical exclusion.” BP was even lobbying to further expand use of such exemptions just 11 days before Deepwater Horizon exploded.
And expanding the use of such exclusions for onshore drilling is potentially devastating for some areas of the Intermountain West. A 2009 investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that the Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for issuing drilling permits on federal lands, engaged in widespread abuse of categorical exclusions during the final two years of the Bush-Cheney administration. The report stated that the use of so-called “Section 390 categorical exclusions” created by the 2005 energy bill was “frequently out of compliance with both the law and BLM’s guidance.”
The GAO report found that the BLM approved nearly 6,100 permits from 2006 to 2008 using the new exemptions carved out by Cheney and his congressional allies. Field offices in Wyoming approved 2,462 such permits. In fact, the Pinedale, Wyoming BLM office alone granted an extraordinary 1,498 permits using Section 390 exclusions. This is more drilling permits than there were residents of the town in 2000—1412. Ground level ozone levels, largely related to the drilling boom in the area, measured in the tiny central Wyoming town have at times exceeded those of downtown Los Angeles. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar luckily announced onshore drilling reforms in January 2010 designed to end the abuse of Cheney exclusions on public lands.
But dramatic budget cuts and a lack of resources meanwhile prompted the BLM to briefly impose a moratorium on all new solar energy permits in 2008. The moratorium, which some argued would’ve killed the nascent solar industry, was eventually lifted after a massive outcry by industry officials, congressional leaders, and environmentalists.
A mile high at the Minerals Management Service
The culture of corruption and ethical lapses across the entire Bush-Cheney Department of the Interior is well documented. But the Minerals Management Service appears to have experienced a particularly stunning depth and breadth of corruption and simple incompetence. GAO reports have documented almost unbelievable allegations of drug use and improper relationships, payments, and gifts between Bush-Cheney-era MMS employees and the oil and gas industry that they were charged with overseeing.
The most recent GAO report, detailing problems in the Lake Charles, Louisiana office of the MMS, notes that the report’s findings were turned over the U.S. attorney for the western district of Louisiana in October 2009 and that the office declined to prosecute any of those involved in what would plainly appear to be numerous violations of the law.
The U.S. attorney for the western district of Louisiana from October 2001 to January 2010 was Donald Washington. His official Department of Justice biography noted that he had practiced “toxic tort litigation,” “held a variety of positions with Conoco Inc from 1982-1996,” and “served as Chief Counsel for Conoco’s Gulf of Mexico Division until his departure from Conoco in 1996.”
Washington has since returned to private practice in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he may again find himself involved in the ongoing catastrophe. The press release touting his hire at the firm Jones & Walker notes that he “will focus on complex civil litigation, federal and state criminal investigations, regulatory enforcement actions, and internal investigations and compliance programs in such industries as health care, maritime, and energy.”
Catastrophic cronyism
The so-called environmental assessments that laid the foundation for approving permits without further review were fatally flawed under the Bush-Cheney years—in addition to violating both the spirit and the letter of the law.
The last meaningful environmental review of any kind standing between BP and drilling at the Mississippi Canyon 252 site should have been the October 2007 Minerals Management Service environmental assessment of the “Proposed Gulf of Mexico OCS Oil and Gas Lease Sale 206.” But just six words—splashed in bold capital letters across the top of the report’s first page—paved the way for what is now the worst environmental calamity in the history of the United States: FINDING OF NO NEW SIGNIFICANT IMPACT.
The assessment points out that Hurricanes Rita and Katrina rendered beaches and marshes more vulnerable to spills, but it still concluded that the potential for a damaging spill as a result of leasing the 5,569 drilling blocks contained in proposed sale 206 was basically nil:
Concerns were raised related to…the potential effects of oil spills on tourism, emergency response capabilities, spill prevention…accidental discharges from both deepwater blowouts and pipeline ruptures…The fate and behavior of oil spills, availability and adequacy of oil-spill containment and cleanup technologies, oil-spill cleanup strategies, impacts of various oil-spill cleanup methods, effects of weathering on oil spills, toxicological effects of fresh and weathered oil, air pollution associated with spilled oil, and short-term and long-term impacts of oil on wetlands…Offshore oil spills resulting from proposed Lease Sale 206 are not expected to damage significantly any wetlands along the Gulf Coast.
The assessment also includes one passage that reads like something of a death certificate for the gulf’s coastal communities:
Accidental events associated with proposed Lease Sale 206 such as oil or chemical spills, blowouts, and vessel collisions would have no effects on the demographic characteristics of the Gulf coastal communities…As inland marshes and barrier islands erode or subside, without effective restoration efforts, the population in coastal communities in southern Louisiana is expected to shift to the more northern portions of the parishes and cause increasing populations in urban and suburban areas and declining populations in rural coastal areas.
Given that they appear to have considered the decline of the Gulf Coast’s communities a foregone conclusion, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Bush-Cheney administration officials exercised so little care in attempting to prevent an accident like the catastrophe now unfolding.
Cheney’s direct role in this situation of regulatory capture and failure could not be clearer. Randall Luthi signed the so-called environmental review for the proposed lease sale 206. He is a longtime Cheney insider who was installed as director of the Minerals Management Service in 2007. Luthi, who was once Cheney’s intern, went on to hold various positions in several Republican administrations before returning to his native Wyoming.
Luthi is currently the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, whose stated mission is “to secure reliable access and a fair regulatory and economic environment for the companies that develop the nation’s valuable offshore energy resources in an environmentally responsible manner.” Just yesterday, he called on the Obama administration to lift new restrictions on drilling in the gulf, even in face of the ever-growing economic and environmental disaster that he had a direct role in allowing to happen.
The Bush-Cheney administration made an unprecedented effort from beginning to end to rewrite our nation’s laws and rules to benefit their allies in the oil industry. They installed incompetent or corrupt cronies in important regulatory and oversight positions. And what they could not achieve legally, the administration pursued by other means.
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