Papers Detail Industry's Role in Cheney's Energy Report

Ford's memo was dated March 20, 2001. In May that year, Bush issued an executive order similar to API's proposal.

Cheney appears to have played a more behind-the-scenes role in the task force's deliberations, the document indicates, listing only a handful of meetings with the vice president. Those included a previously reported meeting with Lay, who died last year; a meeting with officials from Sandia National Laboratories to discuss their economic models of the energy industry; and two sets of meetings with lawmakers. Cheney had other meetings, such as with John Browne, then the chief executive of BP, that were not listed on the task force's calendar.

The vice president also met with energy experts he had known, such as J. Robinson West, chairman of the Washington-based consulting firm PFC Energy and an old friend of Cheney's.

Those who met with Cheney said he was intensely interested in waning U.S. energy supplies, even though prices of oil and natural gas were much lower than they are today.

West agreed, and still agrees, with Cheney about opening up more areas in the United States and offshore for oil drilling, but he said he thinks the administration ended up not doing enough to dampen energy demand. West said he also urged in vain that the administration pursue a cap-and-trade system that would include China and India in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"I don't agree with the administration on a number of issues," said West, who gave a memo to Cheney with his views. "But this issue of Cheney being a stooge of the oil industry . . . there's nothing there."

Cheney and Lundquist also met with Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of "The Prize," a history of the oil industry. Yergin recalls discussing energy efficiency and natural gas data, which were then showing that increased drilling had for the first time not raised U.S. production.

The task force issued its report on May 16, 2001. Though the report was roundly criticized by environmental groups at the time, some energy experts say that in retrospect it appears better balanced than the administration's actual policy.

Divided into eight chapters, the report correctly forecast higher energy prices, stressed energy efficiency and conservation, and pushed for boosting domestic conventional energy supplies and increasing use of renewable energy. Although it advocated wider drilling and omitted climate-change measures, it also said that "using energy more wisely" was the nation's "first challenge."

Some key proposals, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, have never won congressional approval, but some measures to encourage oil and gas production, coal output, and the development of biofuels and nuclear power have been included in Bush's budgets and in the 2005 energy bill.

"Cheney had his finger on a critical issue," said David G. Hawkins, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "He just pushed it in the wrong direction."

Staff writer Rachel Dry contributed to this report.