Oil Watchdog

In a letter sent Friday to the UC Board of Regents, three national
organizations urged the campus to delay sealing its $500 million
partnership with energy giant BP, saying the public has not had a
chance to review the contract before its finalization.

The letter — signed by directors of Greenpeace USA, the
Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights and Washington,
D.C.-based public awareness organization Essential Action — warned
that the agreement with BP should be scrutinized for public comment to
preserve academic freedom on campus.

"The prospect of giant carbon polluters directing research
related to and gaining control of key energy technologies is very
troubling, especially when the research is conducted at, and the
technologies are developed in collaboration with, public institutions,"
the letter states.

UC spokesperson Chris Harrington said university officials are reviewing the letter.

Since it was announced in February, the deal — which would
establish an alternative energy research institute on campus with
scientists from UC Berkeley, BP and the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign — has drawn criticism from students, professors and
community members who say its planning process lacks transparency.

"The letter reflects many of the concerns that we’ve been
raising for almost a year now, especially the great concern of such a
contract on such a huge scale between a multinational, private oil
company and public university that’s supposed to research for public
good," said Ali Tonak, a member of the student-driven coalition Stop
BP-Berkeley.

Nine months since the deal was first announced, numerous delays have kept the stakeholders from signing the final contract.

Tonak called the delays a "perfect indicator of how wrong this contract is."

"Who knows why what’s going on, what are the problems?" he
asked. "We as students at this university have a right to know about
this."

Campus spokesperson Robert Sanders said officials are "pretty
close" to signing off on the Energy Biosciences Institute by end of the
month, adding that the contract so far is not substantially different
from the initial proposal.

"We feel that the process that this contract is going through
was reviewed by lots of people in the Berkeley community and office of
the president," Sanders said.

He noted that campus officials posted the proposal for the Energy Biosciences Institute online shortly after its announcement.

But John Simpson, consumer advocate for the Foundation for
Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, said he is concerned the final
contractual terms could let corporate interests taint UC Berkeley
research.

"We feel it was done with too much behind closed doors, when
you have something like this which has the potential of completely
altering the face of public education," Simpson said. "There’s the
notion that 50 BP scientists are going to be able to come onto campus
and public facilities and do secret propriety research that they won’t
share with anybody."
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Contact Stephanie M. Lee at [email protected].