Earth Equity News

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is Focus of Corruption Probe. By Jim Tankersley and Josh Meyer, LATimes, September 17, 2009. "The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department. The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary... As Interior secretary, Norton embraced an industry-friendly approach to environmental regulation that she called 'cooperative conservation' and pushed the department to open more public land for energy production. Norton also backed commercial development of the oil shale reserves buried in the rocks of the Mountain West... In early 2006 -- following the recommendations of a team representing several federal agencies and states -- the department announced that it planned to award Shell three oil shale leases. Norton resigned two months later, saying that she had no job lined up. In December of that year, Shell announced it had hired Norton as in-house counsel to its unconventional fuels division, which includes oil shale. The Justice Department, working with Interior Department investigators, is looking into whether Shell received a competitive advantage or other preferential treatment from the Interior Department in the awarding of the leases. 'If [Norton] had feelers out, or was in discussions with Shell in any way, she is absolutely forbidden from participating in any way from doing anything with Shell,' a law enforcement official said."