Energy Task Force - Background

Background

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told a National Energy Summit on March 19, 2001 that America was going to face an energy supply crisis in the next 20 years. He believed that if America was not adequately prepared for those demands then the foundations for the prosperity of the country would be threatened. The Energy Task Force was developed to decrease American dependency on foreign petroleum, which the National Energy Policy deemed would have a negative effect on the US economy, standards of living and national security.

The Task Force was composed of Vice President Dick Cheney and the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and Energy, as well as other cabinet and senior administration-level officials. According to the GAO, these members held ten meetings over the course of three and a half months with petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists. None of the meetings were open to the public and no non-federal participants were involved. The first phase of the project was to inform the President of current energy supply problems and changes needed to the economic policy. This was completed on March 19, 2001, while the second phase, the presentation of the National Energy Policy, was completed on May 16, 2001.

The US General Accounting Office stated that "the National Energy Policy report was the product of a centralized, top-down, short- term, and labor-intensive process that involved the efforts of several hundred federal employees governmentwide". This meant that the cabinet officials members held the authority in developing the report, while working groups drafted sample reports and findings for them.