Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe
LA Times
By Jim Tankersley and Josh Meyer
September 16, 2009/divThe Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.
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. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, , the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.
The investigation’s main focus is whether Norton violated a law that prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company if they are involved in dealings with the government that could benefit the firm, law enforcement and Interior officials said…
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force recommended aggressive steps to encourage private industry to develop such technology. In response, the Bureau of Land Management issued six oil shale "research, development and demonstration" leases. The leases, five in Colorado and one in Utah, granted access to up to 160 acres of federal land apiece to develop shale programs – with an option to increase that to 5,000 acres once a technique proved commercially viable.
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