Southern energy heavyweights met with secret Cheney task force

A story that appears in today's Washington Post reveals the industry players who participated in Vice President Dick Cheney's controversial energy task force, and quite a number of South-based companies made the list:

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration's internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

The Post obtained the list from a former White House official. The Southern-based energy companies on it include:

* Duke Energy, an electric generation company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.;

* Enron, the now-bankrupt Houston-based energy giant;

* Entergy, an energy company with headquarters in New Orleans;

* Florida Power & Light of Juno Beach, Fla.;

* Southern Company, an electricity generator with central offices in Atlanta;

* TXU Corp., a Dallas-based energy company;

* Reliant Energy, an energy services company headquartered in Houston;

* the oil and gas division of Charlotte, N.C.-based Nucor;

* Exxon, the Irving, Texas-based petroleum giant;

* Mirant, a power-generation company with headquarters Atlanta;

* Fluor Corp., a petrochemical construction and maintenance company with main offices in Irving, Texas;

* Cabot Oil & Gas, an exploration and production company based in Houston;

* Tidelands Oil & Gas of San Antonio; and

* El Paso Corp., a natural gas pipeline and exploration company headquartered in Houston.

Some of the people who met with the task force's staff described their meetings as part of a normal review of major domestic policy and and said they were puzzled that the White House and Cheney tried to keep the deliberations secret, according to the paper.

The Post also reports that Cheney also met with a number of environmental advocacy organizations including Environmental Defense, Union of Concerned Scientists and Friends of the Earth. However, by the time those meetings took place, the first draft of the task force report was "substantially complete" and President Bush had been briefed on its progress, according to the paper:

Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."