Good thing Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was running the show when the Senate pretended to care about oil companies gouging the public. As MSNBC reported:
The Senate hearing had yet to begin when a dispute erupted over whether the top executives of five major oil companies should testify under oath about their record profits. Democrats wanted it that way, but Republicans balked, calling such a move a needless photo op that smacked of grandstanding. So no oath was taken.
Such a “needless photo op would have,” among other things, have put the oil execs under a legal obligation to tell the truth. As it was, they were apparently under no such obligation, and took full advantage. According to the Washington Post, the Oil CEOs have been caught fibbing at that hearing:
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.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate “to my knowledge,” and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
I’m not trying to make a big fuss over oil policy or whether or not Big Oil is colluding or otherwise taking undue advantage of its market position (in large part because I’m not sure what “undue advantage” is.) But, it looks really, really bad for Senator Stevens and the Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee to go to such great lengths to avoid having the CEOs put under oath only to have them caught lying about whether their companies were involved with Dick Cheney’s energy task force. I mean, even the baseball players testifying about steroid use were sworn in. Regardless of the merits of the oil hearing, it’s at least more important to the country than steroids in baseball.
Leave a Reply