NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chevron Corp Chief Executive David O'Reilly on Friday denied that he or any representative of Chevron took part in Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
``I did not participate on the Vice President's Task Force in 2001, nor did any Chevron representative. I did not participate in meetings convened by the Task Force, nor did any Chevron representative,'' O'Reilly said in a letter to Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and Democrat Sen. Jeff Bingaman.
The letter follows O'Reilly's testimony, along with other Big Oil executives, at a Congressional hearing last week on price gouging in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Democrats and environmental groups have fought unsuccessfully to find out which energy industry executives met privately with Cheney's group in 2001 as it prepared a broad plan friendly to oil industry interests. Environmental groups said they were mostly excluded from the discussions.
At the hearings last week, Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked the five executives there, ``Did your company or any representatives in your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy force in 2001?''
Each executive answered the question in the negative. Lautenberg has subsequently demanded an investigation into whether any of them were lying.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that a White House document showed that some companies -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco, Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc., whose executives testified at last week's Senate hearing -- did in fact meet with the task force, but Chevron was not named in the document.