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in 40 years, giving them control over key committees having jurisdiction over the oil and gas industry.
The Center's report charges that the National Petroleum Council (NPC), a little-known federally chartered but privately funded group that advises the secretary of energy, has been an "underground pipeline" of political influence for the oil and gas industry for years.
Ten NPC members were Bush Pioneers (a person who raises at least 100,000 dollars for the Bush campaign) and two were Rangers (raising at least 200,000 dollars) during the 2000 presidential election.
At the time, one NPC member was then Halliburton Chief Executive Officer Dick Cheney, who left the council after being chosen as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in August 2000.
According to the report, one of the major initiatives the NPC got the Energy Department to consider was a wide-ranging exemption for the energy industry from public disclosure, which has not yet been adopted. Another helped open up federal lands for oil and gas use in the Rocky Mountains, including Cheney's home state of Wyoming, adds the report.
"The average citizen has concerns that are more important to them than the amount of money spent by an oil and gas company on lobbying, but what the oil and gas industry is doing on Capitol Hill could have a dramatic effect on the lives of everyday citizens," said Center for Public Integrity Communications Director Steven Weiss, in an interview.
Koch (pronounced "coke") Industries, the largest privately held oil company in the United States, has also financed a network of conservative non-profit organizations. designed to influence policy debate in this country. All of the groups -- the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Federalist Society -- advocate in Washington for deregulation and less government, says the report.
"There are many multi-billion-dollar corporations (like Koch) developing policies and lobbying politicians that no one has ever heard of," according to Williams.
Despite repeated calls, Koch did not respond to IPS requests for an interview.
Bush has received the most campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry of any politician since 1998 (1.7 million dollars) says the Center's report. Contributors included Enron, Halliburton and Koch.
That total is more than three times the amount given to the next largest recipient of the industry's campaign contributions.
House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, and fellow Texan, Joe Barton, collected 574,000 dollars. Another Texas Republican, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, took in just under 500,000 dollars.
Only three democrats are on the report's top 20 list of recipients (Senator Mary Landrieu, Sen John Breaux and House Representative Christopher John, all of Louisiana).
The two national political parties each took in more than any individual candidate, national Republican committees getting 24 million dollars and Democrats just under eight million dollars.
While most of the big oil and gas companies operate their own lobbying offices in Washington, the industry also contracted out a substantial amount of its work to some of the capital's largest and most influential lobbying firms, says the report.
Topping that list was Bracewell & Patterson, which received more than 4.8 million dollars in lobbying work from the industry since 1998.
Among the partners at Bracewell & Patterson is Marc Racicot, the former Montana governor and chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 election campaign. Edward Krenik, former head of congressional and intergovernmental relations at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a lobbyist with the firm.
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