Beyond VECO

In all the media coverage of these arrests, I have not seen any mention of the connection between VECO and the major oil producers, like BP, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil. VECO is described simply as an "oil field services company" and there's not a lot of coverage of what it is, exactly, that VECO does or what its relationship with the North Slope producers is.

Yet the obvious point is that the producers benefited from the positions that VECO bought last session, as we've seen in the PPT payments this year and would have seen had the Murkowski contract gone ahead. I'm not accusing anybody of anything but it does seem that we should at least consider how closely Bill Allen, Rick Smith, et al. worked with lobbyists and representatives of the Big Three. After all, the Big Three couldn't have been completely in the dark about what Allen and Smith were up to.