Platts Energy Week: White House oil spill-panel leader urges congress to provide subpoena power
Washington - August 30, 2010
Also on Platts Energy Week TV: Next Steps on Hydro and Wind Power & Climate Change
A co-chairman of a White House commission investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster urged Congress Sunday to provide the panel with subpoena power, saying such authority would help compel testimony from oil industry personnel who might otherwise resist testifying.
"I wish they would give us subpoena authority," William Reilly said of lawmakers on Platts Energy Week, an all-energy television program. "I hope they do as soon as they come back from recess." To watch the full interview, click here.
US Representatives Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), have pursued legislation that would provide the commission with subpoena power, but the proposal is among a number of energy bills held up in Congress.
"At some point, I suspect, lawyers will say to various witnesses within industry who have vital information, 'You don't want to be implicated, and if you don't have to testify, you shouldn't,' " Reilly said.
Reilly explained that the mere threat of a subpoena may be sufficient to prompt otherwise reluctant industry personnel to talk to the commission. Some workers, he said, may actually be willing to talk to the panel, but fear repercussions from their companies if they do. Subpoenas would make it easier for them to cooperate.
"It's something that's practical and important," Reilly told Platts Energy Week host Bill Loveless Sunday. "You don't always use it if you have it, and often you don't have to if you have it."
The seven-member commission has held two hearings in New Orleans and Washington since its appointment in the spring, and plans more this year.
Joint hearings held by the Coast Guard and the Interior Department have run into a number of situations where oil company personnel have declined to testify out of concern they will be responsible for mistakes at the doomed well.
Also on the program, Reilly said the Interior Department should drop a ban on deepwater oil and gas drilling in the gulf before its scheduled November 30 expiration. He said a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center last week showed that the moratorium could be lifted sooner than planned because of steps taken by the agency to promote safer drilling operations.
In other comments, Reilly called for a "change in the culture of regulation" at the Interior Department, adding he was surprised that some former directors of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) appeared "complacent" about some of the "deficiencies" at the agency.
"We clearly have to have a very hard look at that," Reilly said. "You've got to have regulation that's as smart and sophisticated and serious and committed as the industry itself," he added. "And the technology that characterizes deepwater drilling is highly sophisticated."
Reilly did not comment on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which Interior Secretary Ken Salazar formed this spring to replace the MMS as the regulator of offshore oil and gas development.
President Barack Obama named Reilly, who was the director of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1989 to 1992, and former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat-Florida, as cochairmen of the commission in May.
In separate questioning by Loveless, Reilly offered his views on environmental risks and how to break the stalemate over climate-change legislation. For this discussion, click here.
Also on the program, Rob Gramlich, from the American Wind Energy Association, discussed what it means for the wind turbine and power industry now that the controversial Cape Wind proposal has the blessings of Interior’s Salazar.
With regard to hydro power, Sunday’s Platts Energy Week program explored the likely role water will play in the future U.S. energy mix. Guest Linda Church Ciocci, executive director of the National Hydropower Association, offered her views.
To hear Sunday’s “Capital Spotlight,” where Bill Loveless invites viewer opinion on the Alaska primary election and implications to the U.S. Senate Energy Committee and Congressional cooperation, click this link.
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