[Editor’s Note: Ms. Hampton presents a remarkable slate of research on the parties to the Inglewood oilfield controversy. Ms. Hampton will be among the scores of Culver City area activists expected to attend a 9:30 a.m. meeting on Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles where the County Board of Supervisors, led by Yvon ne Brathwaite Burke, is expected to approve two disputed documents that will regulate drilling in the oilfield until 2028. Residents claim the two documents require longer deliberation. The public hearing is at 500 W. Temple St.]
PXP is the “MLK” for Windsor Hills, View Park, Culver City, Ladera Heights and Inglewood.
It is unconscionable and irresponsible for County Supervisor Yvonne Burke to decide to approve a project, such as the new regulations for the Inglewood olfield, months before a document is even completed.
It also is unconscionable and irresponsible for Ms. Burke to ignore the many who have told her the process is both inadequate and incomplete to ensure the safety of her constituents . Our lives should come before the profits of PXP, the Plains, Petroleum & Exploration Co.
We are urging Ms. Burke and the other four Supervisors to vote No on Tuesday. A decision of this magnitude, affecting the lives of many, should never be rushed or pushed through based on Ms. Burke’s timeline, leaving office.
We are begging her to slow down and make sure all “i”s are dotted and “t”s are crossed, that all agencies have been give the time to do their job to protect the public and first determine if even the best regulated oil operation — using this new recovery technique (even US Gov. acknowledges that this technique triggers earthquakes) — is safe for this particular field and in this heavily populated urban setting before adopting anything that may be hard to undue at a later date.
We believe there are actions that can be taken to slow PXP down that are not being discussed in the rush to adopt the proposed Community Standard District (CSD) and would like to look into those options while enforcing existing regulations.
Most disturbing is that we still have no environmental review (EIR) of the actual oil- field/land itself but somehow ended up with an EIR/study examining the CSD, which is a set of proposed regulations. An EIR is supposed to properly examine impact of a proposed project on a piece of land to determine if the proposed project is safe in that particular setting.
To do an EIR on a CSD is very unusual.
It is akin to doing a study on proposed new ice hockey rules to play by without examining the ice rink. So, the teams may play by safer rules but if the ice is still not safe to skate on you still risk disaster, which is the situation with the oilfield in Baldwin Hills And only because Ms. Burke is hellbent on giving PXP what they want – the CSD, which was largely written by PXP. Why?
The CSD will streamline the permitting process for PXP (for example, DOGGR currently has to permit each individual well but this won’t be necessary if the CSD is adopted) and PXP will also be given the ability to self regulate in many instances (fox guarding the hen house?) and enables them to greatly expand their operation without ever providing an EIR on the oilfield/land – the very thing we need the most to ensure our health and safety.
In addition, the current EIR on the CSD was paid for by PXP and the lead consultant (Marine Research Specialists (MRS) was chosen by PXP. We had a difficult time finding info about MRS but did find quite a bit about the subcontractor, SAIC, which MRS confirmed is the subcontractor that provided data used in the EIR. The rest of the data came from the proprietor, PXP.
Below are the links we found on SAIC — and we wonder why this company’s reputation is of no concern to Ms. Burke? (She emailed a resident, admitting that she knew of the charges against SAIC but didn’t consider them of concern.)
SAIC found guilty of False Claims Act violations
SAIC loses federal conflict-of-interest case
The Los Angeles Times cites government officials declaring Science Applications (SAIC) guilty of the “largest environmental fraud . . . we’ve had here,” and an example of “corporate greed.” SAIC was indicted and pled guilty to 10 felony counts of fraud on a Superfund site, called “one of the largest (cases) of environmental fraud” in Los Angeles history.
An excerpt from: http://www.portobserver.com/26.html
SAIC has a long history of scandal and involvement in questionable conduct related to government contracting. In 1990 SAIC was indicted by the Justice Department and pled guilty to 10 felony counts for fraud in its management of a Superfund toxic cleanup site in Los Angeles. In 1993 the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an F15 fighter contract. SAIC has been accused of improprieties in dozens of other cases, including charges related to voter fraud, nuclear waste disposal, and false data on Iraqi WMD in the lead up to the Iraq war.
And more research for you, if you are interested:
Varec, Inc.
Varec, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC, has been a leading innovator in the petroleum and chemical sectors for over seven decades.
About the Company
Varec, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC, has been a leading innovator in the petroleum and chemical sectors for more than seven decades — delivering automated systems and professional services for most major oil companies worldwide. Varec’s FuelsManager® Oil & Gas is an integrated suite of software applications specifically designed for terminals, refineries and petrochemical plants. It integrates with Varec’s full product line of automatic tank gauging (ATG) instrumentation, communications interface devices and wireless products to deliver a complete solution.
For military air, ground and naval fueling applications, Varec provides mission-critical, commercial off-the-shelf solutions. FuelsManager® Defense manages and controls all bulk liquid assets in the dynamic environment of a military or government-owned fuels facility, including functionality for transaction and inventory management, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), tank gauging, dispatch and automated data capture (ADC).
Varec also provides performance solutions for commercial aviation fueling requirements. Varec’s FuelsManager® Aviation is an integrated, scalable solution — from simple fuels accounting to a fully automated airport — utilizing the latest mobile computing, Web-based services, wireless communications and paperless ticketing technology.
ALSO go here
http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/science_applications_international_corp
Science Applications International Corporation
by Charlie Cray, Crocodyl.org
For the latest company profile on Science Applications International Corporation, visit our corporate malfeasance wiki, Crocodyl.org.
Founded in 1969, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) is a major intelligence, military, aerospace, engineering and systems contractor. It is involved in defense/military (DoD), intelligence community and homeland security contracting, as well as selected commercial markets.
As a March 2007 Vanity Fair article put it, SAIC “sells human beings who have a particular expertise”—expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about “information dominance” and “information warfare.” “ … What everyone agrees on is this: No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. … No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy. SAIC almost never touts its activities in public, preferring to stay well below the radar.”
Global Fortune 500 position: 298
Ownership status: Publicly traded
Number of employees worldwide: 44,000
Chief executive officer: Kenneth Dahlberg
Website: http://www.saic.com
In 1991, SAIC was charged with falsifying data submitted to the EPA on soil samples from toxic waste dumps, for which it ended up paying $ 1.3 million in fines and restitution.
“SAIC’s relative anonymity has allowed large numbers of its executives to circulate freely between the company and the dozen or so government agencies it cares about,” Vanity Fair reported.
The company has many friends in Washington, including Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, a former member of SAIC’s board of directors.
William B. Black, Jr. (retired from NSA in 1997 to join SAIC and returned to NSA in 2000. He managed the Trailblazer contract that was abandoned after $1 billion was spent.
Donald Foley, a current SAIC director, is a former top official with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the group responsible for developing new military technology.
Mark Boster, a former deputy assistant attorney general, joined SAIC in 1999. He paid $30,000 to settle charges he violated federal ethics rules by calling the Dept. of Justice on behalf of the company just three months after he switched sides.
SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong, including Gordon Oehler, the commission’s deputy director for review a 25-year CIA veteran, Jeffrey R. Cooper, vice president and chief science officer for one of SAIC’s sub-units and Samuel Visner, a SAIC vice president for corporate development, who had also passed through the revolving door and back to the NSA.
David Kay, who later chaired the Iraq Survey Group (which showed that Hussein didn’t possess WMD, thereby proving that the war was launched under false pretenses), is also an SAIC shareholder and former director of SAIC’s Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis.
In 1998, Kay testified before a Senate committee that Saddam Hussein “remains in power with weapons of mass destruction” and that “military action is needed.” Another SAIC stockholder and board member, Wayne Downing, was used as a military analyst in the build-up to the war in Iraq. SAIC also hired Iraqi exiles including Khidhir Hamza, a member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, once perceived as a conduit for Iraqi exiles living in the U.S. who would be called upon to serve in the newly established government. (Operating under a $33 million contract, SAIC organized the Iraqi exiles and reported to Douglas Feith, then undersecretary of defense for policy and a key assistant to Donald Rumsfeld Feith's deputy, Christopher "Ryan" Henry is a former SAIC senior vice president, according to Bartlett and Steele.
Another SAIC "subject-matter expert" was Shaha Riza, whose relationship to Paul Wolfowitz was one of the reasons for his downfall as President of the World Bank.
During the Iraq war SAIC was awarded a $15 million no-bid contract (which later grew to $82 million) to establish a “free and independent indigenous media network” in Iraq. According toVanity Fair, “with SAIC’s cooperation, the network quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon — a little Voice of America.”
In addition to having many friends in high places, SAIC also pays lobbyists from FBA Inc. and Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis. In 2004, its lobbying expenditures topped $1.5 million.
The company's PAC, SAIC Inc., has spent hundreds of thousands so far in the 2008 election cycle.
Science Applications International Corporation was created in February 1969 in La Jolla by John Robert Beyster, former head of the accelerator-physics department at General Atomic Corp. Within a year, the company opened up an office in Washington, D.C., where it would bring in most of its revenues from government contracts. As Beyster saw it, the job of SAIC’s employees was to “sell your high-tech ideas and blue-chip expertise to the Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, NSA, Atomic Energy Commission and any other government agency to money to spend."
To help the company open these doors, Beyster “aggressively packed his company with former generals, admirals, diplomats, spies, and Cabinet officers of every kind,” using an internal stock ownership program as an incentive.
Financial information
Stock ticker symbol: SAI
Total revenue: $7.8 billion
Fiscal year: 2007
Net Income: $391 million
Fiscal year: 2007
