I had the coolest reunion the other day with someone I’d like you to meet: David Pettit. To my surprise, he popped up on the Tee Vee Machine, right there on MSNBC, right there on Ed Schultz’s show. I knew him 100 years ago, and yes, I am over 100 years old.  But that’s not important now.

What is important is that he is a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council. And he knows stuff.

He always did know a lot, but now he’s gone public with how much he knows, and I’m impressed. Check him out on The Ed Show (transcript here, video clip is unavailable).

I watched him live, and decided to try to get in touch with him. I e-mailed, he e-mailed, I e-mailed again, he e-mailed again, and then he linked me to something he wrote for the following site,  something that is awfully worrisome:

Switchboard is the staff blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group. For more about our work, including in-depth policy documents, action alerts and ways you can contribute, visit NRDC.org.

And here is what he wrote. The post is titled “Should the U.S. Enter into a Collateral Agreement with BP?” Guess what the answer is:

The Wall Street Journal reported on August 10, 2010 that the Obama administration was close to sealing a deal with BP that would make the U.S. business partners with BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico.  The idea is that the U.S. would take as collateral a security interest (like a mortgage) in BP’s future oil and gas revenues from Gulf operations for the $20 billion that BP promised to put into escrow. Should that happen, the U.S. Treasury would have a direct financial interest in the success of BP’s oil exploration and production activities in the Gulf until the entire $20 billion is deposited in the escrow fund.

We do need BP to remain solvent to fund the escrow account, but what the Journal reports is a bad idea which will, if implemented, cast a shadow on the legitimacy of future regulatory activity in the Gulf by the Bureau of Ocean Energy (formerly the Minerals Management Service), NOAA, and every other federal agency charged with watching over BP’s Gulf operations.

You guessed right. The answer was a resounding “no.”

Please go read the whole thing.

I’m awfully glad to have made contact with my old pal. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more of his work with you.