Securing Oil Corporations CEO’s Future, Not Ours

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. (Washington Post, May 2005)

Almost everyone else except Congress has tried to get this information out of the Administration. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) filed suit in April 2002 seeking access to the records of Cheney’s energy task force. But one of those “liberal activist federal judges” dismissed the suit. The Sierra Club carried its fight for those records all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 2004 voted 7-2 to uphold “a paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation.”
They did not have any problem with a “vexatious litigation”, (Paula Jones), when it came to President Clinton. This is old news. But don’t you wonder, in light of today’s gas prices, what was decided?
I certainly have wanted to know what Mr. Cheney and all those other oil people were discussing. Now, I demand that we know. What deals did Mr. Cheney make in 2001 with energy company CEO’s?

“Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department as a result of the Sierra Club’s and Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.’ The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates 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 project’s costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.” {Source}

We were told that the meetings were super secret. That they involved “securing America’s energy future”. Was the war with Iraq, all about keeping the flow of oil from getting to us? So that the oil companies could receive record profits? With the gas prices going up, and no end in sight, it makes me wonder. Wasn’t this the same man who told us that by going to war with Iraq, the money from the Iraqi oil, would be flowing freely? By disrupting oil supplies from Iraq, the world’s third largest producer, and destabilizing the entire oil producing region, and now by threatening Iran, oil companies with oil assets in the Gulf, Alaska and other regions, have seen the price of their oil skyrocket. That it would pay for the war? Instead, it has cost us over $300 Billion, ($130 Billion, per year) for the Iraq war. With no end in the war even predicted. And when you add in the extra cost of buying gas for every American, where are we at? Billions and billions more.
Americans are finding it harder to afford to drive to their jobs. Some Americans have been forced to pawn personal items just to fill their tank.

I live in the boondocks. An area of California where there is no electricity from the “grid”. Although I live near a highway, there is no power lines for 45 miles here. The only electricity that I have, is what I produce with a generator. A gas generator. I feel sorry for those who are having trouble affording to put gas into their cars, but not as sorry as I do for myself, as I sit here in the dark. When the price of gasoline goes up this high, I have to either give up power for much of the day or cut back on other spending options, like food.
Stephen Pizzo said it truthfully, “Clearly a seat at those energy task force meetings was a seat worth having — worth billions”.
Isn’t it time that we demand that Mr. Cheney has to answer for this? These meetings certainly did not have anything to do with securing our energy future. Just the big oil corporations profits. At your and my expense!