Gulf of Mexico Advocacy Group Has Oil-Industry Ties

At last half of the board members of a nonprofit conservation group that has questioned doomsday assessments of the impact of the recent oil spill have links to the oil business, according to ProPublica.

At least half of the 19 directors of the Corpus Christi, Tex., Gulf of Mexico Foundation have direct ties to the offshore-drilling industry, and one is an executive at Transocean, the company that owns the rig that exploded, causing the spill, the news site reports. The foundation’s executive director, Quenton R. Dokken, was quoted in a May 4 New York Times article as saying, “The sky is not falling,” with regard to the spill.

Mr. Dokken told ProPublica that oil and gas interests have “never tried to dictate the direction of the foundation or change the mission of the foundation.” He said the organization gets about a quarter of its money from private sources and the rest from federal and state grants.