C&EN: TODAY'S HEADLINES - GAO Report Documents Industry Voice In Energy Policy

JEFF JOHNSON

Development of the White House national energy policy occurred behind closed doors during the first months of the George W. Bush Administration, was led by the vice president’s office and the Department of Energy, and was based primarily on industry advice, a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report says.

The Administration used a “centralized, top-down, short-term, and labor-intensive” process involving a few hundred federal employees, GAO says. Its report was requested by Democrats in Congress and ends an unsuccessful investigation into the cost and process used by the Administration to draft its national energy policy.

The office of Vice President Dick Cheney refused to provide information GAO sought during its investigation. The agency sued and lost on technical grounds, and eventually chose not to continue litigation. Instead, it will rely on results from private ongoing lawsuits (C&EN, Feb. 17, page 29).

Despite its limitations, the GAO report shows the energy policy staff meetings to have relied heavily on input from the petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industries, whose views are reflected in the final policy. GAO says that because data were withheld by the vice president’s office, GAO is unable to determine the extent that outside groups ultimately influenced the final energy policy.

The vice president’s office did provide 77 pages of data, two-thirds of which held no cost information and the rest of which contained information of “little or no usefulness,” GAO says. DOE, EPA, and the Department of Interior provided some cost data to GAO investigators, which show that about $860,000 was spent to develop the policy.