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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/B456474AF8527A5186257732001776B4?OpenDocument">BP's corporate, personal ties to White House emerge
BY HELENE COOPER AND JOHN M. BRODER
NEW YORK TIMES
05/30/2010
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.
Chu received the grant from BP's chief scientist at the time, Steven E. Koonin, a fellow theoretical physicist whom Chu jocularly described as "my twin brother." Koonin had selected the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, over other universities in the United States and Britain, in part because of Chu's pioneering work in alternative fuels.
Today, Chu is President Barack Obama's energy secretary, and he spent Tuesday in Houston working with BP officials to try to find a way to stop the flow of oil from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The relationships among Chu, 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 Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.
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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/B456474AF8527A5186257732001776B4?OpenDocument
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