Internal emails Reveal Deliberate Foot Dragging by Department of the Interior

Washington, DC –Through two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, American Solutions for Winning the Future has obtained more than 500 pages of internal emails revealing the Department of the Interior (DOI) is deliberately hiding evidence that the American people support offshore drilling by a 2 to 1 margin.  In an email dated October 27, 2009, Minerals Management Service Director Liz Birnbaum writes to senior MMS and DOI officials (including Salazar’s chief of staff, and DOI’s Deputy Director) that Secretary Salazar hadn’t been fully briefed on the results but that “I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

American Solutions filed FOIA requests on October 26, 2009 and December 7, 2009, asking for documents pertaining to the results of the public comment period for DOI’s five-year energy plan for offshore oil and gas drilling.  The comment period ended on September 21, 2009, but the tabulation of pro-drilling and anti-drilling comments still have not been made public a hundred and two days later.  In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, DOI Secretary Ken Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportun ity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

After examining the internal emails, Vince Haley, Vice President for Policy at American Solutions, released the following statement:

“It’s sad and pathetic that Secretary Salazar and his team knew way back in late October the breakdown of the comments but have yet to announce the results to the public three months later.  It is now abundantly clear that all of President Obama and Secretary Salazar’s talk about openness and transparency and wanting to know what the American people think about offshore development is a complete charade.  It’s also now increasingly clear that this Administration’s repeatedly expressed openness to offshore energy development is also a complete pretense.  Instead, we have an administration that can only be understood as ideologically committed to stifling offshore energy development of oil and natural gas while they offer up platitudes and a p ose of openness.  Holden Caulfield had a word for this behavior:  “phony.”

“Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

“Here’s the bottom line political reality: 10% of Americans are out of work and more have stopped trying to find work; the President just submitted a budget that projects trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020; and the President has said his number one priority is jobs and his administration has stated that anything that contributes to job creation is on the table.

“But the foot dragging at DOI on something as simple and seemingly small as announcing results of the public comment period on offshore drilling is the latest indication that everything is NOT on the table when it comes to job creation.

“According to the American Energy Alliance, a robust development of our offshore oil and natural gas resources over the next three decades would create over one million jobs and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

“These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on the Obama Administration’s agenda, notwithstanding all their phony rhetoric to the contrary.”

For more internal documents, visit www.AmericanSolutions.com

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