The Department of (Dirty) Energy

By Burkely Hermann - Originally published at whiterosereader.org, August 14, 2013; reposted by permission of the author.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Yesterday I was walking around Washington, DC with my friend from Chicago and my dad. We walked past a number of government buildings like the USDA (US Department of *Agribusiness*) and the Department of Education on the way to the Air and Space Museum. One of biggest government buildings was the Department of Energy. There was a flag emblazoned with the symbol of the department which has a lightening bolt going through the middle of it and a number of exhibits inside the building. To my companions, in brief I told them about the article I was writing, and how Jimmy Carter created the cabinet-level executive department in 1977. That article is the one that continues on for the next ten paragraphs and is a detailed critique and analysis of how the powerful and influential “energy lobby” corrupts the Energy Department from the inside out.

I first looked at who leads the department itself. The current Energy Secretary, a fracking-lover and nuclear power-lover, Ernest Moniz is one of the many “corrupted” officials of the Obama administration. This is nothing new because over half of the secretaries since the beginning of the department were either corporate-friendly or part of the military-industrial-complex. Only one person didn’t follow this pattern as he was a GOP Governor in South Carolina. On top of this, the sitting Deputy Energy Secretary, Daniel Poneman, “served as a principal of The Scowcroft Group for eight years, providing strategic advice to corporations on a wide variety of international projects and transactions,” before he took his current political office. Additionally the Secretary of Energy’s thirteen member Advisory board is corrupted in a sense. Ten of the members are corporate-friendly, with the rest either connected to universities or the scientific community. This group, while not forming policy, has seemingly profound influence on the Energy Secretary.

From here I began to look into their offices and commissions. The first of these was the Office of Fossil Energy, whose “mission” read like an advertisement on a corporate website! This was only the start: the Office’s President was headed by Christopher Smith, who according to his official bio, “spent eleven years with two major international oil companies focused primarily on upstream business development and LNG trading, including three years negotiating production and transportation agreements in Bogotá, Colombia…He subsequently worked for Citibank and JPMorgan in New York City and London in the area of emerging markets and currency derivatives.” Like most government websites it treated these qualifications as great pluses, but not as something to worry about. This former Wall Streeter, Smith, oversees the office‘s programs which are a bit shady.

From here starts words that seem like they are on a corporate website. One page talking about research and development involving shale gas says that “natural gas from shales has the potential to significantly increase America’s security of energy supply, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lower prices for consumers.” The same page says that there is cooperation on R&D projects with the Ground Water Protection Council, Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, Stripper Well Consortium, and NETL’s Regional University Alliance. The council about ground water which includes agencies from the 50 states that “mutually work toward the protection of the nation’s ground water supplies”

according to their website. The compact commission while only consisting of members from certain states, its mission is very pro-industry, as it “works to ensure our nation’s oil and natural gas resources are conserved and maximized.” However, on its homepage, the commission thanks annual

meeting sponsors that include Marathon Oil, BP, Occidental Petroleum, Linn Energy, Western States Petroleum Association, Enbridge and Schlumberger. Then there is the Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) which doesn’t hide which side its on: “SWC is a industry-driven consortium…focused on…new technologies needed to improve the production performance of natural gas and petroleum stripper wells.” After all, the bottom of every page says NySerda, Earth & Mineral Sciences Institute,  Penn State and NETL back the consortium.

It is important to shine a light on NETL as well. On a webpage about getting natural gas and oil in “unconventional” ways, it says that the “Ultra-Deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources Research Program…include　utilizing a non-profit consortium to manage the research, establishing two federal advisory committees, and funding of $50 million per year…a portion of the funding is directed towards cost-shared research, while another portion is used by National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to carry out complementary R&D.” The page continues, noting that other than “in-house research” by NETL, they contract out to a group called the “Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA)…to administer the research.” As it turns out, the members of the RPSEA cement the idea that major influence big energy corporations have huge influence over the Energy Department. Members of the RPSEA include corporations like BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, Lockheed Martin, Chesapeake Energy, Dow Chemical, and many others.

Then there’s the Federal Advisory Committees that are part of the Office of Fossil Energy.

The first of these is the National Petroleum Council  which officially is an “Oil and

Natural Gas Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Energy,” meaning it can influence policy tremendously. The members include a number of big companies, part of which are big oil & gas producers like BP, Chevron, Total S.A., ExxonMobil, Hess, Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips, Marthon Oil, TransCanada, and others such as Spectra Energy, Halliburton, U.S. Steel and Duke Energy. Next there’s the National Coal Council. After having a website that is non-accessible on mobile browsers, using Mozilla Firefox, I found out who was on this council. The Executive Committee included high-ranking managers of BNSF Railway; Hunton & Williams; Arch Coal; PPL EnergyPlus; the American Coal Council; CSX Transportation;  Connemara Ltd.; Peabody Energy; Norfolk Southern Corporation; Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association, Inc.; Joy Global, Inc.; Elm Street Resources, Inc.; and a consultant. The council’s finance committee includes top executives of Bibb Engineers; Architects & Constructors; CBCC; The Basic Industries Group; and Dominion Resources. Then there’s the ex officio members, who are part of the finance committee because they hold another office, include employees of PPL Energy Plus; Ameren Energy Fuels & Services; PTI Resources; and Alliance Coal. Then there’s the three staff members of the council. The companies that sit on these committees are various: three of them are Big Coal companies as noted by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) in their list of major coal producers, three are huge railroad companies, two are subsidiaries of huge money-making electric utilities, one is a lobby for the coal industry, one is a natural gas company, legal services company, a mining solution company and much more. This isn’t all. There is one group called the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee. According to its website, it includes seven members of higher education institutions, The Ocean Foundation, Roxanna Oil Company, ExxonMobil, Shell International E&P Inc. and three regulatory bodies. Talk about industry capture, as the members of these committees just shows how much power the energy lobby has in the department.

There are other committees as well. One of them is the Ultra Deepwater Advisory Committee or UDAC. The members of this committee include members of universities, an oil services company, big oil companies, special government employees and numerous consultants. A sister committee which is also digging for some of the last fossil fuels on Earth has similar members. It is called the Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee or URTAC which includes numerous faculty of universities, employees of oil companies, a member of a Gang Green outlet, and much more. I also looked into the Oil Spill Commission established to look at the cause of the BP Oil Spill and offer solutions. Like most government commissions established after a crisis or a scandal, there were inadequate solutions for the problem at hand. This could be partly because two of the members were connected to Gang Green groups, three were university faculty and one was a right-wing Senator named Bob Graham while all the members had conflict-of-interest waivers. There seems to be similar problems with the department’s defunct Shale Gas Commission. This Subcommittee was chaired by a former director of Citigroup, John Deutch, included corporate-corrupted Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense Fund, a director of NRG Energy, a member of the National Petroleum Council and numerous university faculty.

The list of committees went on and on. One committee is part of a collaboration on unconventional oil and gas research between the EPA, Department of Energy and Department of Interior, trying to “address the highest priority research questions associated with the safe and prudent development of unconventional shale gas and tight oil resources.” Then there’s the defunct Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage established by President Obama, which included the heads of 14 executive departments and federal agencies. This task force, like the collaboration on acquiring unconventional oil and gas, had an industry-friendly goal: “develop a comprehensive and coordinated Federal strategy to speed the commercial development and deployment of clean coal technologies.” There was one more committee: the Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee. The members of this committee includes university faculty, oil company geologists, and much more.

How does the influence of the energy lobby play out, you may ask. Well, it definitely influences the policies of the Office of Nuclear Energy since the head of office worked for the industry-captured Nuclear Regulatory Commission. After all, the webpage on nuclear reactor technologies looks like an advertisement. There are many other parts of the Department like the EIA, ARPA-E, the Office of Science, Natural Gas Regulation, the office of Indian Energy, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Heating Oil Reserve, Naval Petroleum Reserves, the “Clean Coal” Map by NETL, the loans put out by the Loan Programs Office (including the infamous one to Solyndra), and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy which I didn’t cover in depth because they obfuscate the overall issues with the Department itself.

What I did cover is very important for numerous reasons. First and foremost it shows that the the Department of Dirty Energy in not on the side of the people but is rather helping industry, even launching a public-private cybersecurity initiative to help the oil and gas industry protect their investments from cyber attack. Come on! After all, the editor-in-chief  of Counter Punch said that the Department focused a good deal on “nuclear trade” with foreign countries which another commentator called a “nuclear albatross.” One person in March, Karl Grossman, forcefully wrote that it was a “Department of Fracking and Nukes.” I’d rather call it the Department of Dirty Energy. Additionally, it explains in part why Obama in late June proposed a modest cut in emissions, he wants a “market-based solution to climate change’ or a cap and giveaway bill which Friends of the Earth said was a “step backward” for combating climate change, gloating over increased oil production, weak rules for coal companies (not a war on coal), an all-of-the-above energy strategy which brings in a little bit of renewable energy but overwhelming supports continued fossil fuel usage, increased natural gas use, supporting the industry fantasy of clean coal and calling for business-friendly “free trade.” Scarily, these energy policies, while opposed by some in his own political party, are likely a continuation of a Cheneyesque approach as Michael Klare notes in The Nation: “as recent events have demonstrated, Obama’s energy policies globally bear an eerie likeness to Cheney’s, especially in the way he has engaged in the geopolitics of oil as part of an American global struggle for future dominance among the major powers…When it comes to the pursuit of enhanced energy independence, Obama has embraced the ultra-nationalistic orientation of the 2001 Cheney report, with its call for increased reliance on domestic and Western Hemisphere oil and natural gas — no matter the dangers of drilling in environmentally fragile offshore areas or the use of hazardous techniques like hydro-fracking…In virtually every respect, then, when it comes to energy geopolitics the Obama administration continues to carry out the strategic blueprint pioneered by Dick Cheney during the two Bush administrations.”

In the end, we must follow the suggestions I made in my article about the mainstream environmental movement in the Spring Edition of State of Nature: “Changing your Facebook picture, sending a tweet or signing one of those many petitions isn’t going to do anything to mitigate climate change. Instead, we as world citizens should support and become part of “new green” groups…[and] be in participating in nonviolent resistance tactics like: picketing, vigils, leafleting, art, music and poetry that has a protest message, bringing new consciousness to your community, lobbying, tax resistance, civil disobedience, sit-ins, and…electronic civil disobedience…rejecting associations with the two-party oligarchy and pushing for a radical [anti-capitalist] approach to mitigate the coming environmental catastrophe.”

Burkely Hermann is a writer and activist who maintains numerous blogs to inform the public of local, national, and international issues. In recent years, he has been involved in more political action, fighting for economic, social and environmental justice, including attending numerous Occupy encampments, and several environmental protests in Washington, DC. He can be reached at burkemeister@inbox.com