The Center for Public Integrity has revealed the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to oil giant BP and some of the nation’s other biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight. The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the other firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.