BP Spending (Buying) Again

5 Years Later: BP Spending Again, Targets Natural Resources Committee

by Clark Mindock

The House Committee on Natural Resources meets Wednesday to discuss how safety standards have improved since the catastrophic BP oil spill in 2010 — an offshore oil well explosion and fire that left 11 dead, 17 injured, and enduring environmental threats in the Gulf of Mexico. While money coming into Washington from the oil giant screeched to a halt after the 2010 disaster, BP’s Washington presence rebounded nicely in 2014 — with the Natural Resources panel a main target of BP cash in the House.

Five witnesses are expected to testify at the hearing, including an Interior Department official,  the chairman of biological oceanography at the University of Florida and three groups connected to big oil interests. One is the American Petroleum Institute, naturally enough, while the other two are industry-sponsored offshore drilling safety groups, the Center for Offshore Safety and Texas based Helix Well Containment Group.

The incident, five years ago this week, was called one of the “worst environmental disasters in U.S. history” in a report issued last June by the U.S. Chemical Safety Hazard and Investigation Board. The explosion occurred about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and released an estimated 5 million barrels of hydrocarbons into the Gulf, coating the shores and devastating marine life.

The board’s investigation revealed a complex web of failures that led to the explosion, including “inadequate management systems,” “human and organizational factors that created an environment ripe for error,” and an organizational culture insufficiently focused on preventing catastrophic failures like the one that eventually took place. At the time of the blowout, and in the immediate aftermath, GOP lawmakers seized the opportunity to criticize the leadership of President Obama.

Just after the explosion, BP slowed its political contributions, as OpenSecrets Blog reported in 2012, from almost $524,000 in the 2008 cycle to just over $150,000 two years later. The company’s lobbying expenditures also dipped — dramatically —  from a record high of $16 million in 2009 to $7.4 million the next year; last year lobbying by BP dipped to a post-explosion low of just $5.7 million. But, while lobbying has remained depressed, campaign giving has been on the rise, and the very panel that will be meeting tomorrow has been a prominent benefactor.

In the 2010 cycle, members of the committee received just $9,750 from BP, a dip from $21,000 in 2008. Just 74 lawmakers from both sides of the Capitol saw money from the oil giant in the 2010 cycle, down from 113. In 2014, though, Natural Resources Committee members took in $44,000 from BP, and the number of lawmakers getting checks had rebounded to 134.

BP may have been timid, but API — of which BP is a member — spent more on contributions in the last two cycles than ever before. In 2012 and 2014, the trade group gave $225,000 and $246,000 to congressional candidates, respectively. Republican lawmakers saw more than three-quarters of that in both cycles. And API spent $9.1 million lobbying the government last year on a variety of oil and energy issues, more than in any year except 2013.

The oil and gas industry overall has a vigorous interest in members of the committee. In the 2014 cycle, it accounted for more than $1.5 million in contributions to those who sit on the panel. Of that $1.5 million, Republican lawmakers were the overwhelming favorite: 90 percent went to GOP members, and Democrats soaked up what was left.

Overall in Congress, it’s tough to find a commercial industry that’s more partisan. In 2014, oil and gas interests gave $43 million to congressional candidates; 87 percent wound up in GOP war chests. Among the 50 nonideological interest groups that gave the most to candidates last cycle, only mining (91 percent of its donations went to the GOP) and two categories of labor unions (public sector, also 91 percent, but to Democrats; and industrial, 96 percent to Dems) had a more pronounced tilt.