WHITING, Ind. (AP) — Gov. Mitch Daniels' has said he won't meddle in a new air pollution permit for BP's Whiting refinery, but e-mail exchanges indicate the oil giant kept his office informed of arguments supporting the new permit, a report Sunday said.

BP sent talking points, advance copies of newspaper ads, and company responses to media inquiries to the governor's office in the months leading up to a March 14 public hearing conducted by Daniels' Department of Environmental Management, according to e-mail messages between his office and BP obtained by the Post-Tribune of Merrillville

A BP manager for government and public affairs, Margaret Laney, sent an e-mail to David Pippen, a Daniels aide on environmental issues, nine days before the public hearing in Hammond under the subject line "BP talking points — revised," reported the newspaper, which obtained the e-mail messages under a public information request.

"It is important that BP has certainty around how much this project will cost and how long it will take to complete before the company can commit more than $3 billion of its stakeholders money to modernization the Whiting refinery to make more gasoline from a secure source of North American oil," Laney wrote.

"If we do not have an air permit this year, some of our credits will expire and we will need to modify our permit application and recalculate the costs and timing of this proposed multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment in the Midwest economy," her e-mail said.

During the public hearing, IDEM officials said they expected to approve the new permit within about six weeks, or before the June 1 expiration of air emission credits that BP earned for improvements it made in 2003 to the refinery.

A planned expansion would turn the refinery about 20 miles southeast of Chicago into a hub for processing heavy Canadian crude oil. BP hopes to use the emission credits to offset some of the new pollution the expanded refinery would produce.

After a speech in nearby Valparaiso on March 25, Daniels said his office had not been involved with the permit.

"That's IDEM's business," Daniels said. "Their instructions — like every other agency — are: move fast, be consistent, check the public interest, be consistent, be quick. That's where our guidance stops."

Daniels' press secretary, Jane Jankowski, said there was nothing unusual with the e-mails. She said the governor's office receives news releases, advisories and other documents from trade groups, nonprofits and others involved in public policy debates.

"Gov. Daniels sets the vision and framework for state government executive branch operations,' Jankowski said in an e-mail. "He does not make IDEM permit decisions."

However, Kim Ferraro, an attorney with the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana, said it was shady and inappropriate for the governor to accept talking points from BP.

"Why would the governor need BP's talking points? I don't understand unless the governor is interested in promoting BP's views," Ferraro said.

BP spokesman Scott Dean said sending the talking points was a courtesy and normal procedure.

"You share things like these to communicate the company's views on a subject to external parties," Dean said.

The e-mails obtained by the Post-Tribune show BP met with Pippen and other officials from the governor's office and IDEM several times in the months leading up to the public hearing.

However, Jankowski said Pippen also was meeting at the same time with environmentalists holding opposing views on the permit.

"It's David's responsibility to know about and be informed of IDEM issues because he is the governor's policy liaison to the agency," she said.

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Information from: Post-Tribune, http://www.post-trib.com