Earlier this week, a two-year old YouTube video surfaced that floated some raw sewage in the Obama Administration’s energy punchbowl. In it, EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Almendariz, speaking to a group of Texas citizens, chuckles while comparing his agency’s environmental enforcement strategy vis-à-vis oil and gas operators to conquering Roman legionnaires’ strategy of random crucifixion. How quaint.
So the Washington politicians did what politicians have done since Roman times: go into damage-control mode and attempt to distance themselves from the offending act. From the Washington Post:
“Frankly, [the comments] were inflammatory but also wrong,” [EPA Administrator Lisa] Jackson said Friday when asked about a YouTube video discovered this week by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe’s staff. “They don’t comport with either this administration’s policy on energy, our policy at EPA on environmental enforcement, nor do they comport with our record as well.”
The offending comments were uttered, not by low-level functionary deep in the bowels of EPA, but by a Presidential appointee, the Administrator of EPA Region 6. Region 6 covers “Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and 66 Tribal Nations” and as such is home to 56% of domestic crude oil production and 59% of natural gas production. Needless to say, statements of the Region Administrator on enforcement policy carry some weight. The tough-guy policies certainly seemed consistent with the treatment of Range Resources. Range was the subject of a Region 6 “endangerment order”, an EPA accusation of groundwater contamination that was contradicted by the scientific evidence and ultimately dropped.
Plus, these weren’t the words of a leaked internal email.
He said it in public.
In the private sector, it can be a problem when the public statements of a senior executive “don’t comport” with official policy. A recent example:
BP CEO Tony Hayward uttered the ill-advised “I’d like my life back” in the process of a public apology for the BP spill. Those five words resulted in a PR firestorm that led to Heyward’s dismissal by BP’s Board.
Twenty-nine congressmen, including all of Texas’ Republican representatives, have signed a letter calling for Almendariz’s ouster (excerpted below the fold). They have been joined in the call by Reps. Scalise, Alexander, Boustany and Landry in Louisiana.
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