GOP senators claim oil commission is tilted

Two GOP senators on Thursday launched a political assault on the White House-created commission that’s probing the BP oil spill, saying it is tilted because of the presence of an environmental activist leader.

Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah) blasted the commission, which is probing the “root causes” of the spill and needed drilling safety reforms. They alleged it did not include experts on oil drilling and criticized the membership of Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke.

“The president said he wanted an objective look. Well the commission’s background and expertise doesn’t really include an oil or a drilling expert, so people in the Gulf, people across the country are wondering about the administration’s goals. Is it really about making offshore energy exploration safer, or is it shutting down our offshore and American oil and gas,” Barrasso told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“When they see that the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the seven members of the commission, and this group has just intervened as a defendant in the court case wanting to continue the moratorium, it is no surprise that the American people are asking questions,” he added.

Bennett questioned the commission’s technical expertise and took aim at Beinecke as well. He and Barrasso both noted that NRDC, which is a large environmental group, has intervened in ongoing litigation to defend the Obama administration’s freeze on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling.

“The most troubling appointment there of course is Frances Beinecke, who has an ideological position with respect to drilling and who heads an organization that has filed a lawsuit on this area,” Bennett said to Salazar, later adding, “doesn’t this strike you as a conflict of interest?”

Salazar defended the integrity of the commission, saying it is composed of “statesmen” who will transcend partisan politics and ideology.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham (D) and William Reilly, a Republican who headed EPA under former President George H.W. Bush, are the co-chairs of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

In remarks to reporters after he testified, Salazar likened the commission to past independent panels that probed the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident and other issues.

“I think what is wrong is the playing of politics with this issue. This is an issue of a national crisis,  and I think like so many other commissions that have been presidential commissions that have gone forward . . . this commission has people who are elder statesmen and women,” he said, and predicted the public will have confidence in the commission's report.

“I have full confidence in the commission,” he said.

A spokeswoman for NRDC declined comment on the senators’ attacks, saying questions about the commission should be directed to the White House.

Other members of the oil spill commission include Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Cherry A. Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.