Energy policy papers go public

Secretary held no meetings with consumer, conservation groups

DANA MILBANK AND MIKE ALLEN THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests while helping to write President Bush's energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups, the Energy Department disclosed Monday night.

The information was released by the Energy Department a few hours before a court-ordered deadline and after 11 months of resistance by the administration to lawsuits by public interest groups seeking to determine who influenced the writing of the administration's energy plan.

A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents released bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production.

Abraham's meetings, between Feb. 14 and April 26 of last year, included groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Top executives of Westinghouse Electric Corp., Duke Power, Entergy, Exelon Corp., Utilicorp, American Coal Co. and others sat down with Abraham.

Environmental groups said their efforts to meet with the energy task force were rebuffed. The Energy Department has said that environmental groups did not respond to its request for input, and the administration has said it held at least one substantive discussion with 10 environmental groups in late March, prior to the May release of the energy policy. An e-mail released Monday by the Office of Management and Budget indicates the task force had a "draft interim report" no later than March 5.

The meetings with the business interests, including days devoted to nuclear energy, petroleum, and municipal and public power authorities, did not include a session Abraham had at the White House with coal producers and other administration officials, his aides said. Abraham met with petroleum interests March 14 and April 26, nuclear companies March 20, utilities March 28 and coal producers April 3 and 25.

Enron requests

Energy officials said Abraham declined requests for meetings with Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay of Enron Corp. But the energy company, a major Bush donor that collapsed late last year and is facing a criminal probe, did meet with other representatives of the task force six times, the administration has disclosed. One of those meetings was between Lay and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Abraham held numerous other meetings with the chief executives of oil companies and energy trade groups while the report was being written, but the Energy Department said those meetings included other topics. The 36 officials, who were divided among eight sessions, had requested meetings specifically to discuss the energy policy, the Energy Department said.

Abraham met Feb. 21 with Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, and five oil company presidents, including David O'Reilly, president of ChevronTexaco.

The department released the 11,000 pages related to Cheney's energy task force in response to a Feb. 27 federal court order won by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. Another 15,000 documents were withheld for privacy, security and other reasons, Energy officials said.

The documents included hundreds of unsolicited suggestions from citizens, companies and lawmakers, most of whom received form responses promising the ideas would receive "close and careful attention."

A separate court order required the White House Office of Management and Budget to release information about its involvement in the task force. That information, also provided just in advance of the court deadline, consisted of several hundred e-mails, but all but a few contained merely subject lines, with attachments omitted and substantive communication -- including agenda points -- deleted.

Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, the watchdog group that won the court order requiring the OMB release, said the White House appeared to be "playing games" with the release. He said he expects to "go back to court to seek testimony as to why we don't have the substantive e-mails."

Trent Duffy, OMB's spokes-man, would not explain the deletions beyond saying, "The items that were part of the deliberative process were redacted."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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