As the President’s new oil spill commission prepares to meet next week, some lawmakers and others are expressing their outrage over the panel’s makeup, saying that it’s “stacked” with members who may be philosophically opposed to offshore drilling and more sympathetic to environmental causes. In response, Republicans and Democrats passed an amendment last week calling for an alternative Congressional commission that they say would better balance the dueling interests of oil and environment.
Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) said, “The President’s commission appears more dedicated to agenda-pushing than fact-finding.” Barrasso introduced the amendment for a separate commission, saying it would be “the best way to get the facts.”
“It does appear to me that [the commission] is somewhat stacked toward environmentalists,” said Lisa Margonelli, director of the New American Foundation’s energy initiative. “I think that throwing in a couple of people from the oil industry would help its credibility.”
The White House disputes any notion that its panel is skewed, and Obama risks political fallout if voters think he’s exploiting the spill in order to advance his clean energy agenda. “The commission will bring a set of fresh eyes” to offshore drilling regulations, said spokesman Ben LaBolt. “Its diverse representation includes environmentalists, academics, scientists, and a former EPA administrator as well as a former governor and senator.” He added that “the National Association of Engineering is conducting a technical analysis that the commission will draw from. The commission will also consult the best minds and experts in the Gulf, in the private sector, in think tanks, and in the federal government.”
And as for the costs of the commission: Those will run about $12 to $15 million, according to EPA spokesman David Cohen, who said Congress is likely to fund it for six months “with as many as 35 full-time employees during this period.” (Commission members will not be paid.)
Oil industry experts, concerned about a potential lack of drilling business insiders, say they hope the panel will weigh “the economic impacts that offshore drilling operations have on the economy,” said Erik Milito, a spokesperson with the American Petroleum Institute. “The industry as a whole provides and is responsible for some 9.2 million jobs, but there’s hundreds of thousands employed in the Gulf who could be put at risk. From a common sense standpoint, it’s hard to understand how they could review an incident when they don’t have folks are who are knowledgeable about offshore drilling.”
Others are broadly sidestepping the subject of the panel’s makeup. “We’re getting close to understanding the cause of the spill,” said Conoco Phillips spokesman John Roper. “Once we know the exact cause, we’ll take lessons learned and apply them. We have to take a wait-and-see attitude.” A spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, Cynthia Bergman, said, “We’re looking forward to the commission’s figuring out exactly what happened and what went wrong so we can prevent an incident like this from happening in the future.”
But energy economist Phil Verleger, who is a member of the National Petroleum Council, is more blunt. “The commission ought to focus on the question of, do we really understand what we’re doing drilling in deep water? The companies all had cookie-cutter response plans to spills, and preparedness for these accidents was subpar across the board, as the Markey hearings showed. The question really is, do we have the capacity to deal with major problems? It’s important that the government decide whether we have proper safeguards in place.”
The commission is expected to issue a final public report early next year. After next week’s meetings, additional meetings will be held, though dates and locations have not been announced.
A Who’s Who on the Panel
The team is headed by co-chairmen Bob Graham, former Democratic senator from Florida who is also serving on a congressional panel investigating the 2008 financial crisis, and William K. Reilly, former administrator of the EPA under President George H. W. Bush. Reilly has been president or chairman of such organizations as the World Wildlife Fund, Climate Works Foundation, and the Conservation Foundation. He was also on the board of Conoco Phillipps until he announced a leave of absence on May 22 to join the commission.
Other members are:
- Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit that works to advance environmental policy in the U.S. and worldwide
- Donald “Don” Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
- Terry D. Garcia, executive vice president for Mission Programs for the National Geographic Society
- Cherry Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and past president of the American Physical Society
- Fran Ulmer, chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage, member of Aspen Institute’s commission on Arctic Climate Change and on the board of the Alaska Nature Conservancy, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists
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