Global Warming

"Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill

Zachary Roth | August 14, 2009, 11:21AM

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

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Topics: Global Warming, Lobbyists, Oil

Interior Department

Interior Disciplines Staffers For Partying With Oil Workers

Zachary Roth | November 21, 2008, 2:08PM

Looks like having sex with employees of oil companies you're supposed to be regulating -- not to mention doing drugs in the office -- isn't such a great career move after all.

An internal Interior Department report issued in September found that a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" had existed from 2002 to 2006 in the department Denver office. Staffers had been getting drunk and having sex with oil company personnel, as well as doing coke and smoking pot in the office.

And today, reports the Associated Press, Interior took disciplinary action against those involved -- ranging from a warning letter to termination. The department wouldn't provide further details on the punishments.

Workers in the office were also found to have accepted golf and ski trips, snowboarding lessons and concert tickets from oil companies.

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Topics: Interior Department, Oil, Sex

Oil

Top NeoCon Richard Perle Seeks Oil Deal With Iraqi Kurds

Andrew Tilghman | July 29, 2008, 9:32AM

Richard Perle has almost always gone along with the Bush administration's policies.

But now the longtime neoconservative policy wonk is trying to get in on an oil-drilling deal with Iraqi Kurds despite the administration's public opposition to such deals there.

Perle, one of the most influential proponents of 2003 invasion of Iraq, is in talks to join a consortium of investors with the Kurdish Regional Government, today's Wall Street Journal reports.

The Bush administration has publicly discouraged energy firms from making unilateral deals with Iraqi Kurds until after Iraq's federal government in Baghdad agrees to a law for sharing future revenues. Disagreements over oil money have inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and undermined political unity.

But investigators are looking into whether the Bush administration privately gave the go-ahead to energy firms seeking the lucrative deals with the Kurds.

The Journal reports that Perle is talking with a Turkish firm, AK Group International, and also a representative from the government of Kazakhstan. They are targeting the co-called "K18 concession" which is near the city of Erbil and is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil.

Houston-based Endeavour International would conduct the exploration and drilling, according to the Journal.

During the run-up to the Iraq war, Perle was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon. He is currently a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington.

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Topics: Iraq, Oil, Richard Perle

Oil

State IG to Probe Deals Between Texas Oil Firm and Iraqi Kurds

Andrew Tilghman | July 25, 2008, 9:24AM

Publicly, the U.S. State Department said it was discouraging U.S. oil companies from forging deals with Iraqi Kurds last year.

But privately, Bush administration officials may have sent different signals.

Now the State Department's Inspector General has launched an investigation into what exactly was said to whom.

The New York Times reports:

The State Department's internal watchdog division will investigate allegations that department officials did nothing to prevent a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush from concluding an oil deal with the Kurdistan regional government that undermined both American policy and the Iraqi central government.

The Kurds' deal last year with Hunt Oil Company of Dallas -- and similar contracts between the Kurds and other energy companies -- have infuriated the Iraqi government, which has called them "illegal" attempts to usurp Baghdad's authority.

American officials have also stated publicly that the contracts undermine Baghdad's fragile central government and that they have discouraged such deals until the Iraqi government passes a national oil law.

But earlier this month a Congressional committee released internal e-mail messages and documents from the State Department and Hunt Oil that suggested that State Department officials did not try to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the deal with the Kurds.

This week, the acting inspector general of the State Department, Harold W. Geisel, disclosed in a letter to lawmakers, which was also provided to The New York Times, that he had "initiated a review of the responses provided to the Congress recently on the issues surrounding oil contracts, oil field development and U.S. policy in Iraq."

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Topics: Oil

Oil

Lawmakers Call On State Department To Investigate Oil Deals

Andrew Tilghman | July 16, 2008, 2:01PM

First we heard about how Texas-based Hunt Oil might have gotten a behind-the-scenes thumbs up to forge an oil deal with the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq.

We say behind-the-scenes because officially the White House and State Department opposed all oil deals with the Kurds until the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad reached a deal on oil-revenue sharing. (which they haven't yet)

Last week we told you about how Bob Schaffer, the Republican candidate for Senate from Colorado, helped forge a deal between Aspect Energy, where he worked, and the Kurds at about the same time last fall.

Now several lawmakers want the State Department's Inspector General to investigate the matter.

From the AP:

Any behind-the-scenes meddling would have violated administration policy, which was to discourage the business dealings until Baghdad passed a law that would fairly divide the nation's oil resources among the various provinces. The hydrocarbon law is widely seen as necessary to prevent sectarian tensions once Iraq boosts its oil production.

"We are concerned that U.S. policy regarding these oil contracts has not been clearly defined, communicated, or consistently implemented by the Iraqi government, the Kurdistan Regional Government and international oil companies seeking to do business in Iraq," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Harold Geisel, the State Department's acting inspector general.

The letter was signed by [Sen. Carl Levin] Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Late Update: Read more for the text of the entire letter.

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Topics: Oil

Bob Schaffer

Bob Schaffer Helped Out With Kurdish Oil Deal Opposed By US State Department

Andrew Tilghman | July 10, 2008, 6:26PM

Bob Schaffer voted for the war in Iraq in 2002, then left Congress and went to work for the oil men hoping to profit from it.

We recently learned that the energy company that the Colorado Republican went to work for in 2003, Aspect Energy, is among the handful of companies who signed deals with Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government last year.

Those oil deals were officially opposed by the Bush administration, but maybe tacilty endorsed behind closed doors.

Schaffer visited Iraq's Kurdish region in November 2006 along with other officials from Aspect Energy.

State Department officials say those oil deals have threatened security in Iraq by undermining the federal government in Baghdad, which about 150,000 U.S. troops are now helping to prop up.

Schaffer said he had no idea that U.S. officials formally opposed to such deals.

Schaffer said he was unaware the State Department had warned energy firms not to strike oil deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government at the time of his visit. "We didn't experience any discouragement," Schaffer said.

Reader EL points out that Schaffer's ties to big oil have been a big campaign issue for him in his race for the Senate this year.

Late Update The Daily Sentinel in Colorado has a taped interview of Schaffer talking about his trip to Iraq and the oil contract.

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Topics: Bob Schaffer, Oil

Oil

Waxman Says White House Knew About Hunt Oil Deal In Iraq

Andrew Tilghman | July 2, 2008, 3:52PM

House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman says the Bush Administration knew about the September 2007 deal that Texas-based Hunt Oil struck with Kurdish officials in Iraq.

That contradicts what President Bush said at the time.

That deal was controversial because it came at a time of precarious negotiations in Baghdad about a possible revenue-sharing agreement between the warring factions in Iraq. The Kurds decision to forge a deal independent of the Baghdad government angered the Sunni and Shia Arabs in Iraq.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Waxman asked for further information about the U.S. involvement in Iraqi oil deals, the Hunt Oil deal as well as more recent deals. He quoted the president speaking shortly after the deal was announced almost a year ago.

Administration officials criticized the Hunt Oil contract because it jeopardized the efforts of the Iraqi parliament to come to an agreement on the national oil legislation. When President Bush was asked about the Hunt Oil contract, he stated:

"I knew nothing about the deal. I need to know exactly how it happened. To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I'm concerned"

Waxman said his committee has conducted an investigation of the Hunt Oil deal.

The documents that the Committee has received tell a different story about the role of Administration officials. Ray Hunt, the head of Hunt Oil, personally informed advisors to President Bush of meetings he and other Hunt Oil officials planned with representatives of the Kurdish government. Other Hunt Oil officials kept State Department officials informed about the company' s intentions.

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Topics: Oil, Oversight Committee

Iraq

Today's Must Read

Andrew Tilghman | June 30, 2008, 10:07AM

A couple weeks ago, we learned that Iraq's oh-so-very-sovereign Ministry of Oil was about to award a round of no-bid contracts to several western oil companies that would bring the large multinationals back into Iraq for the first time in more than 35 years.

The Bush Administration insisted that they were not going to interfere in this deal, which was between Iraq's democratic leaders and private-sector companies.

But today's New York Times report confirms what many people have suspected for years -- that U.S. officials are working behind the scenes to influence the future of Iraq's massive oil reserves.

In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.
...
The American government lawyers provided specific advice, the State Department official said, like: "These are the clauses you may want. You will need a clause on arbitration. You will need this clause to make this work."

Near the end of the story, the Times reports:

Advisers from the State, Commerce, Energy and Interior Departments are assigned to work with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, according to the senior diplomat. In addition, the United States Agency for International Development has a contract for Management Systems International, a Washington consulting firm, to advise the oil and other ministries. The agency's program is called Tatweer, the Arabic word for development.

A Washington consulting firm? Actually, Management Systems International is a subsidiary of a massive Australian company, Coffey International Ltd. focusing on mining, oil and gas infrastructure projects.

And guess who some of their clients are? Global oil companies including Cheveron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

So the company that touts big oil as clients is helping the Iraqi government negotiate with those companies -- and getting paid by the U.S. government to do so.

But USAID and the consulting firm they hired don't call that a conflict of interest, the call it "mentoring."

"The legal department of the Ministry of Oil passed us a draft of the contract," Samir Abid, a Canadian of Iraqi origin who is an employee of the Tatweer program, said in a telephone interview. "They passed it to us and asked for our comments because we were mentoring them."

U.S. officials suggested that the Iraqi's needed their help since they haven't dealt with western oil companies since the 1970s. That's when, you might recall, Saddam Hussein kicked out all the international oil firms and nationalized the Iraq National Oil Company.

The Times wrote Sunday, in a story about Iraq's oil in the Week in Review section, many oil experts say that Iraq is among the easiest places in the world to pull oil out of the ground.

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Topics: Iraq, Oil

Oil

The Great Red Scare: Take II

Kate Klonick | June 18, 2008, 10:03AM

As we reported yesterday, the China-drilling-off-Cuba story that has been a talking point for high level Republicans for the last few weeks is an urban legend. And the GOP is slowly acknowledging that:

From Roll Call:

"We're not using the China talking point anymore, but we will continue to point out that it is absurd that Cuba is developing its deep-water energy resources while Democrats are blocking America from doing the same," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

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Topics: Oil

Dick Cheney

Searching For The True Source Of A Bogus Story

Andrew Tilghman | June 17, 2008, 3:57PM

We've been trying to find the original source for that mysterious meme about China drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba and Florida.

It's flat out wrong. The AP debunked it a few days ago after Vice President Dick Cheney tried to pass it off in remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about high energy prices.

But it lives on. GOP operative Mary Matalin repeated it on CNN just last night.

We've traced the evolution of the non-fact and found it emerged a few months ago with an inexplicable spate of letters to the editor at small and regional daily newspapers. Within weeks it was popping up as a talking point among many Republican lawmakers and getting traction from conservative pundits.

In most instances, the Republicans point to the (fake) story as reason to suspend the current moratoriums on offshore drilling that are largely based on environmental concerns. It may also serve to gin up opposition to the Cuban regime, a sentiment that has been vital to GOP support in Florida.

It is true that Sinopec, the Chinese oil company, along with a half dozen other foreign firms, signed an agreement with the Cuban government to possibly explore for drilling opportunities offshore. The Sinopec deal was forged back in 2005, and any actual drilling has been delayed until at least 2009.

A 1977 agreement between Cuba and the United States set the maritime boundary at the halfway mark along the 90-mile stretch from Key West to the Cuban coast. Cuban drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Florida could begin next year.

Cheney said he got the misinformation from a George Will column published on June 5.

By then, it was already a common talking point for GOP lawmakers. Also on June 5, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) spoke on the House floor and said: "The Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida with their new energy partner, Cuba."

On May 23, David Gay, a Republican Congressional candidate from New York, said: "I think it is appalling that we allow Cuba and China to drill in the Florida Straits, meanwhile forbidding our own selves from seeking the common good, in this case, a way to lower the price of gasoline."

No doubt the notion was helped along by Weekly Standard writer Fred Barnes, who cited it unsourced in a column widely distributed by Yahoo.

A few weeks before that, our old friend Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) cited the alleged Chinese drilling in a May 1 press release.

Our Nexis search also found a reference to Chinese drilling from Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) in an April 12 op-ed in the Daily Press of Newport news.

It was in late March that the whole thing initially picked up steam. As though on cue, letter-to-the-editor writers nationwide began complaining about China's alleged drilling in the Gulf and fired off missives to their local papers.

On March 29. Jerry Lightsey in Texas wrote the Austin American-Statesmen, saying:

"China is drilling offshore from Cuba in waters where we should be."

Then a few days later on April 2 a man named Don Code of Reno wrote the Reno Gazette-Journal.

"As I write this letter, China is drilling oil in our own back yard, in the Gulf of Mexico for Cuba. They are drilling in the exact same spots we would be drilling in, but the tree huggers won't let us."

On April 6, from the letters to the editor page of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Edward Wolfe of Kirkwood, who described himself as a retired physician, wrote:

"China is drilling off the coast of Cuba only 90 miles from the U.S., some of it being done laterally into our ocean spaces."

April 8 Letter to the editor to the Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tenn. Jim Weague wrote:

"We cannot drill in the Gulf of Mexico, although China and Cuba are drilling there right now."

Before late March, we could find only trace evidence of this story, in obscure places online like this one here. What triggered this sudden, widespread and misinformed outrage? Was there some sort of email blast that went out?

Maybe the March 17 news story from McClathy planted the seed. The story didn't say that China was drilling, but it raised the spector:

HAVANA, Cuba -- Imagine oil rigs drilling in deep waters just 45 miles off the coast of South Florida. Refineries process the oil in Cuba and sell it across the Caribbean and beyond. Canadian and Mexican companies supply billions of dollars in equipment and services.

This could happen, as Havana invites foreign companies to explore its probable oil and natural-gas reserves while Washington's embargo against the communist-led island keeps U.S. companies locked out.

South Florida is watching closely, amid debate over drilling near its shores and concerns about U.S. energy policy. Oil companies increasingly seek to tap Cuba's deep-water reserves, now that oil prices are soaring and profits are more likely.

But all those letters all at once seems like an awful big coincidence.

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Topics: Dick Cheney, Oil