GALE NORTON IS BACK
Former Bush Interior Secretary Takes Job As Attorney For Shell
By Todd Wilkinson, 12-27-06
Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company.Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
Shell, one of the world's largest producers of oil, was also one of the companies that Norton's Interior Department routinely engaged on matters of drilling in sensitive ecological settings.
According to Dow Jones Market Watch, which published her job announcement Wednesday, Norton will serve as general counsel for Shell's unconventional resources division. By "unconventional resources," a Shell spokesman said it pertained to emerging technology that targets such things as oil shale and extra heavy oil. Shell's U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil Co., is based in Houston, but Norton will be allowed to render her legal expertise from Denver.
The timing of Norton's career move is certain to raise eyebrows from government watchdogs and environmental groups that long have asserted that Norton, her former deputy at Interior J. Steven Griles, Vice President Dick Cheney through his national energy strategy task force, and Congress gave energy companies preferential treatment by opening up coastal areas as well as western and Alaskan lands to increased oil, gas, and coal development.
Shell has focused a significant part of its resources in the past on drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and in other coastline areas of the world.
Early in 2007, Democrats who now control the House and Senate, plan to hold hearings that closely scrutinize Interior's dealings not only with oil and gas companies, which have received billions of dollars in subsidies during times of record profits, but also the department's relationship to convicted felon and lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Indian tribes for which Interior has a trust obligation and a role in permitting gaming casinos.
During Norton's tenure at Interior, rules pertaining to the permitting of oil and gas were eased, allowing the Bureau of Land Management to speed up the leasing process for natural gas extraction in controversial areas like the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline in the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, across the state in the Powder River Basin and in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.
Another matter that may indirectly involve Norton is the fact that the Minerals Management Service which operates under Interior's umbrella waived royalty payments assessed against private oil companies, for two years running, owed the U.S. government on federally permitted leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Shell, historically one of the biggest industry players in the Gulf of Mexico, was one of five oil companies that reached an agreement with the MMS on Dec. 14 to pay royalties on the 1998 and 1999 leases," Market Watch reports. "An MMS spokesman said lost royalties from the leases amounted to $900 million, but other reports have quoted much higher figures. A Government Accountability Office report said the MMS omission cost taxpayers $10 billion."
Still another lingering issue, timely in the wake of the Abramoff scandal and central to calls for ethics rules reform involving political appointees and retired civil servants, is the so-called "cooling off period" following government service and before an individual goes to work for a company that he or she previously regulated.
Readers who are interested in more information about the activities of Shell and its subsidiaries in the inland West can read a report compiled by the Environmental Working Group titled "Who Owns The West? Oil & Gas Leases."
[End of article]
The former Interior Secretary is being rewarded big time! Shell Oil blew back into Alaska like a hurricane in 2005, buying up offshore oil leases in sensitive areas that the Norton team aggressively made available and seeking to end the Presidential moratoria on offshore leasing in Bristol Bay, our nation's largest fishery.
Interior Secretary Norton’s department held two massive auctions covering 9 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, and in 2005, Shell oil bought key offshore OCS areas off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in endangered bowhead whale feeding areas and polar bear habitats.
Norton is the second former Bush Interior Department official to join Shell this year, the other is Cam Toohey, her former DOI Special Assistant for Alaska in Anchorage who joined Shell January 2006. He was also former pro-“ANWR” drilling Arctic Power’s Executive Director immediately prior to the DOI position.
Both had policy-making roles over the offshore OCS leasing program in Alaska, including the Beaufort Sea Lease Sale 195 on March 30, 2005 in which Shell bought leases north of the Arctic Refuge coast. Shell plans to drill this coming year (see Map, Sig Ullig (Hammerhead) and Olympia wells). Shell is actively pursuing exploration and development in this controversial area where drilling is opposed by local communities as well as conservations. Shell's their activities put the arctic refuge at risk from spills, noise disturbance, on future pressure for onshore facilities.
So Gale Norton got a job at Shell but unfortunately she won't be washing the windows and checking the oil.
People in Montana who like using their rivers should know a little about Gale and the right-wing Denver based Mountain States Legal Foundation. Back in the 1990's Gale and friends (e.g. Joe Coors and James Watt) tried to torpedo the Montana's stream access law.
For those of you who might have forgot, it was Gale Norton and the Mountain States lawyers who introduced the "takings" litigation on the Ruby River, lawsuits that cost the decent people of Montana much time and money.
All in all it was a major effort by the foundation. The Bozeman Chronicle reported in November 1999 the Mountain States Legal Foundation was soliciting landowners on the Ruby to challenge the Stream Access Law which the foundation denied.
Anyway this all ended up in the Supreme Court. And when the court decided not to hear the case, they let the present state stream access law stand. Mountain States said at the time that their many challenges to the law had been exhausted and it was now a dead issue.
Jackie Corr, Butte
I have saved this article since the day she resigned - which explains one of her reasons-for getting out of Dodge - plus BIG JACK -- had the run of Indian Affairs - he got five years -- she got Shell Oil....they both should get the ELECTRIC CHAIR...in Florida...down here it takes a long time to be eliminated......but once the chemicals flair up your arms then you know it is eating your flesh...
The front-burner issue in the Interior Department during this Administration has been the foot-dragging, subverting and outright sabotaging of the largest class action case in US history, Cobell v. Norton....
Why? Colorado native Norton is of the James Watt school of pillage the environment (she entered the Reagan Administration to work for him) and her entire career has been to forward the interests of oil and gas, mining and forestry industries. And in the West, that means easy access to cheap federal land leases, hundreds of millions of acres of land rich with natural resources.
A large chunk of those federal lands are Indian Trust Fund lands, taken into trust in the late 1800s via the Dawes Act, and leased out to industries, ranchers and farmers at cut-rate prices. The money was then to be managed by Interior and paid out to native landowners. Of course, that didn't happen - hence Cobell v. Norton.
The courts have ordered a full accounting of the Trust. Problem is, many of the documents were destroyed, including a slew of them under Norton. So the plaintiffs decided a few years back that the only way to get a real accounting is to audit the industries' books. That's what makes everyone so nervous, as plaintiff experts, having done some sampling, estimate we're talking over $150 billion in underpayments and fraud, along with interest, of course. Yes, $150 BILLION.
The briefs are more than likely in File #13 in Gonzales office.
In the "Old West" there is a ghost Town named "Norton" But it's recent population registered in New Mexico is registered at ____ hummm ;)
Comment By Marion, 12-29-06I'm very uncomfortable with public sector employees of either party leaving and taking positions in companies or organizations that can be considered a perk. Another who comes to mind is Mike Findley who went to work for Turner. Both Norton and Findley are probably doing nothing off side, but it sure gives the appearance.
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Comment By statlySpusa, 2-03-09Я ни разу в своей жизни не верила в самые невероятные приворотные штучки, особенно тогда, когда кто-то говорил, что на меня колдовскими силами наложено какое-нибудь проклятье или порча. Но все-таки буквально чуть меньше месяца назад мы с моей лучшей подругой решили узнать свое будущее и сходить к провидице. Меня оправили к вещунье просто от нечего делать. Ну что же - подумала про себя я - настала моя очередь побывать у гадалки.
Когда же наконец мы попали к ясновидящей, гадалка неожиданно для нас подошла ко мне с такими невеселыми словами: "Ой, деточка, не суждено прожить тебе более месяца на белом свете...". Разумеется кроме улыбки у меня это заявление ничего не смогло вызвать. А гадалка продолжила свое невеселое повествование: "Наколдовали на тебя, дочка
самое что ни на есть ужасное на свете проклятье - суть у тебя уже по правде одной ногой не на этой стороне... и жизненный род свой ты никогда не сможешь развить из-за того же...". На самом деле врачи мне уже почти как 3 года назад рассказали о том, что я не могу больше иметь детей, но все же откуда старуха могла это знать - ведь я держала это в секрете и ни кому, ни папе, ни маме, ни родственникам не говорила.
После этих страшных слов она сняла с полки книгу, с надписью "Магия Вуду", раскрыла её и сделала непонятный мне ритуал. После всего отвлеклась от ритуала и сказала, что по традиции необходимо сделать жертвоприношение. Я прикинув все, решила быстро завершить этот магический сеанс и мы с подружкой ушли от вещуньи, не доведя до логического завершения диалога.
Ничего, кроме этого существенного бабушка не не поведала нам - как думаете, необходимо ли мне волноваться?
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