If a lobby group lobbies and nobody knows who it’s lobbying for, does it make a sound? Well, it does. The Commercial Energy Working Group (CEWG) certainly has a tangible effect, often lobbying against the regulation of the energy market.
Its secret nature is a problem that extends well beyond pseudo-philosophical quandaries though. According to Tyson Slocum from the Public Citizen, who spoke with The Intercept, the CEWG violates federal lobbying and ethics laws. Slocum has pushed the House and Senate to investigate the lobby group.
“The Commercial Energy Working Group is one of the most active – and secret – organizations seeking to undermine energy market regulations,” he said. “The purpose of my complaint is to force the group to start identifying its membership.”
The 2007 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act requires lobby groups that are registered with the federal government, to provide the names of businesses that have donated over 5,000 dollars in any particular quarter. Slocum notes that The Commercial Energy Working Group “does not disclose the individual companies or entities that constitute its active membership.”
Indeed the group has been able to get away with an unusual level of secrecy; it does not file annual reports to the IRS and has no website. It isn’t incorporated in any state, operating out of the Sutherland Asbill & Brennan law firm, the premises of which it used as its official business address in its 2013 lobbyist disclosure form.
Alexander Holtan and Blair Scott are both employees of Sutherland. They are also the official lobbyists for the Working Group. In 2015, CEWG paid Sutherland 130,000 dollars.
The Intercept notes that the CEWG wrote to the House Agriculture Committee members in June 2015, asking them to support the Commodity End-User Relief Act – it might have exempted some corporations from having to comply with derivatives rules.
In 2014 it submitted comments to five US regulators over margine requirements for derivatives, and in 2013 it submitted comments to international banking regulators over the same issue.
The CEWG cleverly avoids explicitly naming its members by describing them as “a diverse group of commercial firms in the energy industry”, “energy producers, marketers, and utilities,” or “some of the largest users of energy derivatives in the United States and globally” in these comment letters.
Ron Oppenheimer is a CEWG “representative,” and he also sits on the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC), as an associate member of the advisory committee. He is also a senior vice president and general counsel for Vitol, a Swiss derivatives trading company.
At a CFTC public meeting, Slocum asked Oppenheimer to disclose the membership of CEWG, but he refused to do so.
“If you feel entitled to formally provide advice to the government about how your members need relief from regulations, you’ve got to tell us who your members are,” Slocum said to The Intercept.
Slocum has identified several possible members of CEWG based on Freedom of Information Act disclosures relating to CFTC “external meetings” with CEWG last year. An April meeting identified the participants from Vitol, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell, while June and July meetings had representatives from Vitol and ConocoPhillips. Another meeting in 2013 had representatives of Hess Corporation, NextEra Energy Resources, Vitol and Royal Dutch Shell.
It should be noted that that nobody has proven that these companies are part of CEWG.
Sources: The Intercept
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