{"id":7824,"date":"2015-05-04T06:08:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7824"},"modified":"2015-05-04T06:08:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:08:49","slug":"i-cant-believe-its-not-lobbying-the-national-petroleum-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7824","title":{"rendered":"I Can&#8217;t Believe It&#8217;s Not Lobbying: The National Petroleum Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/01\/cant-believe-lobbying-national-petroleum-council\/\" target=\"_blank\">I CAN\u2019T BELIEVE IT\u2019S NOT LOBBYING: THE NATIONAL PETROLEUM COUNCIL<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly \u201cmakes recommendations\u201d to the U.S. Secretary of Energy \u2014 as in its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npcarcticpotentialreport.org\/\">recent report<\/a>\u00a0\u201cArctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources,\u201d which advocates changes to regulations that \u201care limiting Arctic exploration activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So the NPC looks, walks and quacks like lobbyists. But legally it\u2019s\u00a0a \u201cfederal advisory committee,\u201d a little-known type of organization that in appearance and often in reality provides yet another way for corporations to get what they want out of the government.<\/p>\n<p>There are more than 1,000 federal advisory committees, including\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/organdonor.gov\/legislation\/acotcharter.html\">one about organ transplantation<\/a>. The Department of Energy alone has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/energy.gov\/management\/office-management\/operational-management\/federal-advisory-committee-management\">21 others<\/a>\u00a0in addition to the NPC. In theory all these federal advisory committees could provide a useful way for a range of experts and regular people to provide feedback on complex issues like the fossil fuel industry. In practice, the NPC is dominated by the industry itself.\u00a0Of the NPC\u2019s 210 members (all selected by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and his predecessor), 173, or 82 percent, are from oil and gas companies, corporations that provide them support services, and large utility consumers.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t even have to be a U.S. citizen or represent a U.S. corporation so long as you\u2019re a big enough player in the oil industry \u2014 other members include Russell Girling, Canadian CEO and president of Transcanada (the company behind the Keystone XL); Canadian president and CEO of Enbridge, Al Monaco; and Michel B\u00e9n\u00e9zit of the French multinational Total S.A. Members of the financial industry, such as the managing director of JPMorgan Securities, have a seat at the table as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I CAN\u2019T BELIEVE IT\u2019S NOT LOBBYING: THE NATIONAL PETROLEUM COUNCIL The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly \u201cmakes recommendations\u201d to the U.S. Secretary of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5163,5165,1283,1041,5164,4768,5162,2100,5166,1350],"class_list":["post-7824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-advisory-committee","tag-bp-american","tag-enbridge","tag-exxonmobil","tag-lobbying","tag-lobbyists","tag-national-petroleum-council","tag-shell","tag-total-sa","tag-transcanada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7825,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824\/revisions\/7825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}