By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, April 12, 2002 (ENS) - A new set of documents released Wednesday by the Department of Energy show that the Bush administration gave 11 conservation groups a mere 48 hours to submit their comments on a national energy policy. An email sent in March shows the agency seeking proposals "that are consistent with the Administration's energy statements to date."

In spring 2001, after holding dozens of meetings with energy industry representatives, the National Energy Policy Development Task Force, headed by Vice President Richard Cheney, was receiving criticism from conservation groups for not including input from the environmental community.

Vice President Richard Cheney headed the National Energy Policy Development Group. (Photo courtesy the White House)

Karpoff was also asked to "review the proposals and recommend some that we might like to support that are consistent with the Administration's energy statements to date," also by the 48 hour deadline.

The 11 groups listed include the Alliance to Save Energy, Environmental Defense, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the Sierra Club, the World Resources Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the American Wind Energy Association, the Tellus Institute and Resources for the Future.

Environmental groups have argued for more than a year that task force representatives, including Vice President Cheney, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and others, met with more than 100 representatives of the energy industry and the business community, but held no meetings with the conservation community.

The latest batch of documents released by the DOE appears to support their contention.

"Clearly, the deck was stacked in favor of polluting industries," said Sharon Buccino a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the group whose lawsuit forced the release of the DOE papers. "Energy companies had a big hand in helping the White House craft an energy plan that does nothing to ensure national security or protect the environment," Buccino added.

Although the NRDC was not among the 11 environmental groups listed in the memo released Wednesday, the group says it did receive a call in late March from a DOE staff member, who gave the NRDC 24 hours to provide recommendations to the task force.

Many conservation groups kept records of their attempts to contact the task force, the DOE and the office of the vice president by phone, mail, fax and Email. Most of these attempts were spurned, the groups say.

Since March 2001, conservation and public interest groups, as well as the federal General Accounting Office, have been seeking the public disclosure of documents related to task force meetings, hoping to learn how much influence industry representatives may have had in shaping the Bush energy policy.

All documents related to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's involvement with the White House energy task force must be released to the NRDC, Judge Kessler ruled. (Photo courtesy DOE)

Buccino said the DOE is still withholding thousands of pages of documents, for which the NRDC is preparing to take the agency back to federal court. For example, the approximately 950 pages of documents the agency delivered Wednesday exclude calendar entries and correspondence for high level officials staffing the energy task force.

These officials include Andrew Lundquist, Karen Knutson, Charles Smith, John Fenzel and Kjersten Drager, all of whom were DOE employees detailed to the Office of the Vice President to oversee the day to day operations of the task force. Lundquist served as the task force's executive director, and Knutson was his deputy.

The Bush administration has provided no legal justification for why these records have been withheld, Buccino said.

"The Energy Department is still stonewalling, even though the court upheld the public's right to know what its government is doing," said Buccino.

In February, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the DOE to turn over the "vast majority" of the documents requested by NRDC by March 25. Kessler also ordered the agency to submit an index of every document it opted to withhold or censor, along with a detailed justification for why the documents were not released, by April 25.

After April 25, Kessler can rule on whether the DOE is justified in withholding and censoring the information, and could order additional releases.

The documents that were released this week do reveal hundreds of additional meetings between industry representatives and task force officials, Buccino noted.

Ninety-five percent of Alaska's North Slope, which contains the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is already open to energy exploration. The Bush energy plan proposes opening the remaining five percent. (Photo courtesy Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)

Former Senator Slade Gorton, now a lobbyist for Omega Oil, met with Energy Secretary Abraham and others on the task force, the documents show.

"That kind of access contrasts very sharply with the very limited opportunity that the NRDC and other environmental organizations had" to offer advice to the task force, Buccino noted.

Besides seeking documents from the DOE, the NRDC also submitted FOIA requests last year to other federal agencies, including the Department of Interior. Over the past year, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management has implemented many of the task force's recommendations, such as expanding industry access to energy resources on public lands, streamlining permitting procedures, and expediting the environmental review process.

So far, the Interior Department has released just 881 pages of documents related to the task force's activities. On Wednesday, the NRDC filed a legal appeal to force the Interior Department to release all records relating to the work of the energy task force.