Chu's undersecretary of energy was BP chief scientist who gave $500 million grant to Chu's lab (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/us/politics/26energy.html

May 25, 2010
BP’s Ties to Agency Are Long and Complex
By HELENE COOPER and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — Three years ago, the national laboratory then headed by Steven Chu received the bulk of a $500 million grant from the British oil giant BP to develop alternative energy sources through a new Energy Biosciences Institute. Dr. Chu received the grant from BP’s chief scientist at the time, Steven E. Koonin, a fellow theoretical physicist whom Dr. Chu jocularly described as “my twin brother.” Dr. Koonin had selected the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, over other universities in the United States and Britain in part because of Dr. Chu’s pioneering work in alternative fuels.

Today, Dr. Chu is President Obama’s energy secretary, and he spent Tuesday in Houston working with BP officials to try to find a way to stop the unabated flow of oil from a ruptured well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Koonin, who followed Dr. Chu to the Energy Department and now serves as under secretary of energy for science, is recused from all matters relating to the disaster because of his past ties to BP, said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman. Dr. Chu, she said, “has never had a financial interest in BP.” Ms. Mueller added, “No one in their right mind would suggest that Dr. Chu is beholden to oil companies, especially since he’s spent the past decade working to cut America’s dependence on oil and move us toward a clean-energy economy.”

The relationships among Dr. Chu, Dr. Koonin and BP illustrate the complexity of the ties between the company and the government now playing out along the Gulf Coast as they struggle to cope with one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters. Just as the Pentagon and military contractors develop symbiotic business, technical and political interdependencies, the government in this case needs BP’s offshore drilling technology and well-control equipment; the company needs the government’s logistical and scientific expertise, including that of Dr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

Some critics say the Obama administration has relied too heavily on BP’s assessment of the blowout and its solutions for addressing it. But government officials say that BP is legally responsible for plugging the well and cleaning up the oil. And they acknowledge that government lacks the know-how to deal with the problem on its own. While there is no evidence that Dr. Chu or Dr. Koonin have represented BP’s viewpoints in internal deliberations or sought to influence administration policy in a way that would benefit BP, the mere fact of their shared history brought expressions of concern from environmentalists and other critics of the White House’s response to the spill...

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Koonin's biography:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~koonin/

The talking point yesterday was all about the brilliant Dr. Chu...wonder if they'll continue to stress that...

wth

:puke:

before becoming Vice President.....
Or that Bush was in the Oil Business,
before they tore down a lot of the regulations,
after that secret energy meeting.

Guess this is way more serious! :shrug:


I wonder how much in grants the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory got from the public sector during Bush's terms for research on alternative energy?

I guess this means if you've ever worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, don't ever, ever work for the government!

energy sector before even more de-regulation occurred....just sayin.

Was that before or after the concerned NYT cheerleaded us into war? I can't remember.

I will have to look it up again.

After Bush personally called them to the WH to demand that they not.

The Executive Editor Howell Raines and Judy Miller.

Those were dark days at the Times, they've acknowledged their faults.

Guess not. Just another shill, owned by the industry he should be regulating. (Just like Geitner, Summers, VilSuck, Salazar, etc.)

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