Not Your Sweetie

Also in March 2001 (when Iraq oilfields maps in Cheney's energy commission) - Posted by texas Zan on DU:

MARCH 2001
-March 2001 - Sherron Watkins later testified before the House of Representatives: "I had also heard from one of Mr. Baxter's close friends that he had a conversation with Mr. Skilling in March of 2001. Mr. Baxter's recollection of the meeting was that he told Mr. Skilling 'we are headed for a train wreck, and it is your job to get out in front of the train and try to stop it.'
- March 2001 - Peabody Energy chairman Irl Engelhardt and other energy executives meet with two Cheney task-force members, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey. Cheney's group also hears from officials from the nuclear-energy industry-whose trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, will contribute $100,000 to the Bush event on 21 May 2001. Both coal and nuclear power will get major endorsements in the task-force report. Peabody Energy is a coal behemoth whose holding company and top officer have given nearly $200,000 to the President and his party since Bush took office, including $25,000 for the May gala.
- March - "I would love to meet with Ken," writes Florida Governor Jeb Bush in an email reply to Bill Bryant, a lobbyist for a Tallahassee law firm representing Ken Lay. Lay had asked to set up a meeting with the governor, and Bryant e-mailed Bush to say that Lay "has asked if it would be possible to visit you in Tallahassee in the near future. The topic would be the energy deregulation bill pending in Congress and Enron's plan for a national media campaign promoting the benefits of a competitive electric energy market. When the bill now pending in Congress becomes law, a competitive wholesale market will soon follow. Mr. Lay would like to discuss this with you and explain how it would affect Florida." Instead of an actual meeting, a 30-minute phone call between Lay and Bush will be set up April 17. Governnor Bush will deny any memory of the phone call on 7 Feb 2002.
- March 1 - Haley Barbour, former RND chairman, writes a memo to Cheney, on behalf of the coal industry, suggesting the president must provide a sound energy policy by not taking action against carbon dioxide. "A moment of truth is arriving. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore," Barbour wrote. Among Barbour's 50 lobbying clients are the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry coalition. The lobbying group - which paid Barbour's firm a half-million dollars last year - was set up by power-generation companies including FirstEnergy, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority. FirstEnergy was a top contributor to the Bush campaign.
- March 4 - Tests in recent days confirm the world's largest oil find in three decades in the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea. Kashagan is a single reservoir at least 25 miles across, and two-and-a-half times the size of the nearby Tengiz field.
- March 7 - Enron officials meet a second time with Cheney to discuss energy policy.
- March 13 - Bush, in a policy reversal, declares that his administration will not seek to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, citing an Energy Department study that regulating these emissions could result in higher electricity prices.
- March 15 - United States Secretary of Energy Abraham testifies before Congress that power blackouts in California this summer are "inevitable." However, he does not argue for any federal government action to avert this outcome.
- March 19 - The second set of rolling blackouts hits California, affecting southern California for first time.
- March 20 - An official from the American Petroleum Institute sends an e-mail to Joseph Kelliher, a Department of Energy policy adviser, proposing language for a presidential directive governing energy regulations. API calls it "a suggested executive order to ensure that energy implications are considered and acted on in rulemakings and other executive actions." Bush will issue Executive Order 13211 on 18 May 2001, using nearly identical language to that supplied by API.
- March 22 -A low-level Energy Department staffer calls Grenpeace and and gives the environmental organization 24 hours to provide any input it has on energy policy. Greenpeace decides not to scramble to meet the tight deadline. "If they were serious about getting input," says Greenpeace spokesman Gary Skulnik, "that was certainly not the way to go about it."
- March 26 - Sen. Dianne Feinstein sends the second of three letters to Bush requesting a meeting to discuss California's dire energy situation. These requests are denied.
- March 29 - Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham meets with Enron executives Joe Hartsoe and Linda Robertson.