50 days in, and we’ve just learned another shocking revelation concerning
the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill. In an interview aired
this morning, President Obama admitted that he hasn’t met with or spoken
directly to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward. His
reasoning: “Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy
like a BP CEO, he’s gonna say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in
words. I’m interested in actions.”
First, to the “informed and
enlightened” mainstream media: in all the discussions you’ve had with the White
House about the spill, did it not occur to you before today to ask how the
CEO-to-CEO level discussions were progressing to remedy this tragedy? You never
cease to amaze. (Kind of reminds us of the months on end when you never bothered
to ask if the President was
meeting with General McChrystal to talk about our strategy in
Afghanistan.)
Second, to fellow baffled Americans: this revelation is
further proof that it bodes well to have
some sort of executive experience before occupying the Oval
Office (as if the painfully slow response to the oil spill, confusion of duties,
finger-pointing, lack of preparedness, and inability to grant local government
simple requests weren’t proof enough). The current administration may be unaware
that it’s the President’s duty, meeting on a CEO-to-CEO level with Hayward, to
verify what BP reports. In an interview a few weeks ago with Greta Van Susteren,
I noted that based on my experience working with oil execs as an oil regulator
and then as a Governor, you must
verify what the oil companies claim –
because their perception of circumstances and situations dealing with public
resources and public trust is not necessarily shared by those who own America’s
public resources and trust. I was about run out of town in Alaska for what
critics decried at the time as my “playing hardball with Big Oil,” and those
same adversaries (both shortsighted Repubs and Dems) continue to this day to try
to discredit my administration’s efforts in holding Big Oil accountable to
operate ethically and responsibly.
Mr. President: with all due respect,
you have to get involved, sir. The priorities and timeline of an oil company are
not the same as the public’s. You cannot outsource the cleanup and the
responsibility and the trust to BP and expect that the legitimate interests of
Americans adversely affected by this spill will somehow be met.
White
House: have you read this morning’s
Washington Post? Not to pile it on
BP, but there’s
an extensive report chronicling the company’s troubling
history:
“BP has had more high-profile accidents than any other company in
recent years. And now, with the disaster in the gulf, independent experts say
the pervasiveness of the company’s problems, in multiple locales and different
types of facilities, is striking.
‘They are a recurring environmental
criminal and they do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy,’
said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer who led its BP
investigations.”
And yet just 10 days prior to the
explosion, the Obama administration’s regulators
gave the oil rig a pass, and last year the Obama
administration
granted BP a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
exemption for its drilling operation.
These decisions and the resulting
spill have shaken the public’s confidence in the ability to safely drill. Unless
government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives
accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!
Or we will be even more beholden to, and controlled by, dangerous foreign
regimes that supply much of our energy. This has been a constant refrain from
me. As Governor of Alaska, I did everything in my power to hold oil companies
accountable in order to prove to the federal government and to the nation that
Alaska could be trusted to further develop energy rich land like ANWR and NPR-A.
I hired conscientious Democrats and Republicans (because this sure shouldn’t be
a partisan issue) to provide me with the best advice on how we could deal with
what was a corrupt system of some lawmakers and administrators who were hesitant
to play hardball with some in the oil field business. (Remember the Alaska
lawmakers, public decision-makers, and business executives who ended up going to
jail as a result of the FBI’s investigations of oily corruption.)
As the
aforementioned article notes, BP’s operation in Alaska would hurt our state and
waste public resources if allowed to continue. That’s why my administration
created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office (PSIO) when we saw proof of
improper maintenance of oil infrastructure in our state. We had to
verify. And that’s why we instituted new oversight and held BP and other
oil companies financially accountable for poor maintenance practices. We knew we
could partner with them to develop resources without pussyfooting around with
them. As a CEO, it was my job to look out for the interests of Alaskans with the
same intensity and action as the oil company CEOs looked out for the interests
of their shareholders.
I learned firsthand the way these companies
operate when I served as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
(AOGCC). I ended up resigning in protest because my bosses (the Governor and his
chief of staff at the time) wouldn’t support efforts to clean up the corruption
involving improper conflicts of interest with energy companies that the state
was supposed to be watching. (I wrote about this valuable learning experience in
my book, “Going Rogue”.) I felt guilty taking home a big paycheck while being
reduced to sitting on my thumbs – essentially rendered ineffective as a
supervisor of a regulatory agency in charge of nearly 20% of the U.S. domestic
supply of energy.
My experience (though, granted, I got the message loud
and clear during the campaign that my executive experience managing the fastest
growing community in the state, and then running the largest state in the union,
was nothing compared to the experiences of a community organizer) showed me how
government officials and oil execs could scratch each others’ backs to the
detriment of the public, and it made me ill. I ran for Governor to fight such
practices. So, as a former chief executive, I humbly offer this advice to the
President: you must
verify. That means you
must meet with Hayward.
Demand answers.
In the interview today, the President
said: “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this
is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the
best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
Please, sir, for the sake of
the Gulf residents, reach out to experts who have experience holding oil
companies accountable. I suggested a few weeks ago that you start with Alaska’s
Department of Natural Resources, led by Commissioner Tom Irwin. Having worked
with Tom and his DNR and AGIA team led by Marty Rutherford, I can vouch for
their integrity and expertise in dealing with Big Oil and overseeing its
developments. We’ve all lived and worked through the
Exxon-Valdez spill.
They can help you. Give them a call. Or, what the heck, give me a
call.
And, finally, Mr. President, please do not punish the American
public with any new energy tax in response to this tragedy. Just because BP and
federal regulators screwed up that doesn’t mean the rest of us should get
punished with higher taxes at the pump and attached to everything petroleum
products touch.
- Sarah Palin
