Forsgren HBW

shawn martini frack prop 97 colo rising?

HBW Resources

Senior Communications Director Senior Communications Director

HBW Resources LLC HBW Resources LLC

2012 - 2016 · 4 yrs

Denver, CO Denver, CO

Shawn successfully provided guidance to HBW and its clients on communications, marketing, outreach and policy to help achieve their goals in both the public and private arena. He worked to establish organizational reputation and thought leadership to advocate for policy and projects using a broad range of traditional and new media strategies. Shawn successfully provided guidance to HBW and its clients on communications, marketing, outreach and policy to help achieve their goals in both the public and private arena. He worked to establish organizational reputation and thought leadership to advocate for policy and projects using a broad range of traditional and new media strategies.…see more

---

not BP akin gump?

no lnx many

BUSINESS

CLIMATE CHANGE

GREENHOUSE GAS

Revealed: BP And Shell Back Anti-Climate Lobby Groups Despite Pledges

An Unearthed and HuffPost investigation identified at least eight trade associations the companies failed to disclose in transparency reports.

By Zach Boren

Alexander C. Kaufman

Lawrence Carter

Sep. 28, 2020,

BP and Shell omitted anti-climate groups from their public reviews of lobbying by their trade associations, demonstrating what one researcher said was the oil giants' "standard business practice."

Earlier this year, oil giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell assessed the climate lobbying done by trade associations they have been involved with, and publicly quit a handful of high-profile industry groups campaigning to undermine regulations to reduce greenhouse gases.

The effort was part of a vow to increase corporate transparency and bring planet-heating emissions to net zero over the next few decades.

But Shell and BP ― the second- and fourth-largest oil companies by revenue last year ― are still active members of at least eight trade organizations lobbying against climate measures in the United States and Australia, an Unearthed and HuffPost investigation has found. These groups were not disclosed in the public reviews.

Reviews of leaked and publicly available documents show those groups are part of the sprawling network of state and regional trade associations that have, in at least one case, boasted about quashing the very carbon-reduction policies the oil giants publicly claim to support.

The companies said they either hoped to reform the trade groups, including the eight identified here, of which they are still part, or planned to review their membership going forward. But both BP and Shell refused to disclose full lists of trade associations where they have ongoing involvement.

“Our approach is that where policy differences arise, we will seek to influence from within ― and this may take time,” BPsaid in a statement. “If we reach an impasse, we will be transparent in publicly stating our differences. And on major issues, if our views and those of an association cannot be reconciled then we will be prepared to leave.”

A Shell spokeswoman said its next review would “select the additional industry associations because their climate-related policies have brought them to the attention of investors and non-governmental organisations, and because they operate in regions or countries where we have significant business activities.”

“We were one of the first companies to publish an industry associations report and we are pleased that other companies have since published reports,” she said by email. “Our next update will assess our alignment with the 18 industry associations featured already, as well as others.”

But the findings cast a dim light over the oil behemoths’ ballyhooed new climate pledges, raising questions about how seriously they can be taken when the companies are still funding lobbying operations that undermine their new commitments.

[BP CEO Bernard Looney speaks during an event in London on Feb. 12, where he declared the company's intentions to achieve "net zero" carbon emissions by 2050.]

In the United States, both Shell and BP support groups such as the Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, which crusaded against Oregon’s efforts to put a price on carbon emissions, and theTexas Oil & Gas Association, a trade group in the nation’s top oil-producing state battling rules to restrict output of methane, a super-heating greenhouse gas.

In Australia, the two giants back the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia, two groups fighting to undercut the country’s contributions to the Paris climate accords. Shell, meanwhile, quietly held its seat on the Queensland Resources Council, a key advocate of building the world’s largest coal mine.

“This is a standard business practice,” said Robert Brulle, a climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. “They’re trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”

Undisclosed Groups

Shortly after taking the helm in February, BP CEO Bernard Looney began a review of lobbying by the company’s trade groups. He billed the effort as a “small but important step towards rebuilding trust in BP.” He promised a new era on climate change, where the company that a decade earlier rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum” would eliminate its carbon footprint and direct its powerful lobbying machine toward “advocacy for policies that support net zero.”

Shell published its own review in 2019, which it updated this year as part of what CEO Ben van Beurden called “a first step towards greater transparency around our activities with industry associations on the topic of climate change.” Yet the reviews covered only a narrow slice of their memberships.

Shell acknowledged its membership in hundreds of industry groups worldwide, but said its review assessed only 19 organizations selected “because their positions on climate-related policy have brought them to the attention of investors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).”

BP declined to provide a ballpark estimate of how many trade associations it affiliates with, but said its review focused on 30 groups “on the basis that they are actively involved in energy policy discussions and salient to stakeholders.”

“BP and Shell’s disclosures focus on a narrower selection of industry associations,” said Faye Holder, an analyst at InfluenceMap, a British research outfit that analyzes the fossil fuel industry’s finances. “These groups tend to be the larger and more visible ones that already disclose their corporate membership, while the smaller, regional and sometimes less transparent ones are more likely to be left out.”

United States Of AstroTurfing

Among the more jarring examples of groups the companies omitted from the reviews are two regional organizations whose names suggest they represent coalitions of ordinary citizens concerned about energy prices.

In fact, the groups represent some of the biggest companies in the world, a tactic known in politics as “AstroTurfing,” wherein powerful industry players create front groups meant to appear like grassroots organizations with Average-Joe followings.

In February 2019, Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, which represents heavy industry on the West Coast, boasted that it had “defeated all carbon pricing bills” in Oregon ― describing efforts to drive “grassroots opposition” and coordinate “vote counts” during the state legislative session, emails obtained by the Climate Investigations Center show.

[Royal Dutch Shel CEO Ben van Beurden listens to a question during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.]

Both companies claim to strongly support carbon pricing, including in Oregon. Yet several employees of both BP and Shell at the time are listed as recipients of these emails. Shell confirmed that it is a member. BP declined to comment.

Though the companies failed to disclose it in their reviews, BP and Shell are also listed as top members of the Consumer Energy Alliance. The group bills itself as the “voice of the energy consumer,” but is actually run by the Republican-linked consultancy HBW Resources.

After running campaigns to oppose President Barack Obama’s rules to limit emissions of methane from oil and gas operations and pollution from coal power stations, the Consumer Energy Alliance turned its attention to state-level fights. The group was party to a lawsuit seeking to overturn Oregon’s clean fuel program, which aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport fuels. The case concluded unsuccessfully in March 2019.

In a statement, the Consumer Energy Alliance said it fought Oregon’s clean fuel program because it would have raised prices without achieving significant environmental outcomes. The group said it opposed the Obama administration’s methane rule because it “would have interfered with the successful performance of state rules that were already reducing methane emissions.”

Methane Haze

When President Donald Trump moved to roll back the methane rule shortly after taking office, BP and Shell publicly opposed the move.

“We don’t usually tell governments how to do their job but we’re ready to break with that and say, ‘Actually, we want to tell you how to do your job,’” Shell’s U.S. Country Chair Gretchen Watkinstold Reuters at a March 2019 conference, urging the Trump administration “to put in a regulatory framework that will both regulate existing methane emissions by also future methane emissions.”

When the Environmental Protection Agency finalized plans to gut the methane rule in August, David Lawler, the head of BP America, issued a statement saying the company “respectfully disagrees with today’s decision by the administration.”

Both companies remain members of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest and most influential lobby in the United States and a fierce proponent of the Trump administration’s changes to the methane rule. Yet perhaps even more influential on the rollback were the state-level organizations whose smaller members claimed the biggest benefits from the deregulatory effort.

BP remains a member of the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association, the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. Shell and BP are members of the Texas Oil & Gas Association.

All of the groups campaigned aggressively for changes the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association said brought the federal regulation in line with what’s “appropriate” to “emphasize flexibility and innovation.” None of the groups’ names appeared in either company’s reviews.

[A slogan is seen on a protective face mask of an Extinction Rebellion climate action group protester as she demonstrates against multinational gas and oil firm Shell in London last month.]

Meanwhile, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming ― on whose board a BP executive sits ― joined a lawsuit last year to allow the leasing of public lands for oil and gas drilling without assessing the climate impacts.

Among the other major groups BP and Shell left off their reviews was theNational Ocean Industries Association, which successfully lobbied the Trump administration to open up the United State’s entire continental shelf to drilling.

The move would open up areas containing up to 45 billion barrels of oil ― 21 billion barrels of which are estimated to be economically recoverable ― and jeopardize chances of meeting the Paris climate goals. A report released by the campaign group Global Witness last year found that any investment in new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial norms, an average temperature roughly half a degree warmer than today.

NOIA has also lobbied the Trump administrationto exclude the wider climate impacts of oil and gas projects from being assessed as part of the process of approving major infrastructure. Earlier this year Unearthed reported that BP has lobbied in support of these changes.

“We think it’s important that we continue to responsibly explore for and develop U.S. offshore resources to counter the natural decline of existing fields,” a Shell spokeswoman said. “It’s equally important that regulators ensure sound science can be gathered from prospective new areas to inform potential leasing and future exploration decisions.”

Australia’s Climate Loophole

The key condition that BP and Shell say they have placed on trade groups is support for the Paris climate accord, which means backing the goal ― and policies to reach it ― of keeping global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees celsius. This has led Shell to walk away from one of its lobby groups and BP to quit three. Both companies have said they will seek to change some trade associations from within and identified others as being fully aligned with them on climate policy.

But two powerful lobby groups that BP and Shell publicly support ― the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia ― back the use of a controversial loophole that could slash Australia’s contribution to the Paris goals.

“Our approach is that where policy differences arise, we will seek to influence from within ― and this may take time.”

The loophole involves using surplus carbon credits from Australia’s overachievement in meeting weak emissions reduction targets it secured under the Kyoto protocol. According to an analysis of the Australian government’s plans, using the credits would effectively cut the country’s 2030 climate target from 26% to 14%.

The European Union has banned member states from doing this on the grounds that it threatens the integrity of the Paris Agreement and no country other than Australia is openly planning to do so. But during last year’s general election, both the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia challenged the Labor Party for refusing to use the credits if they won.

Despite this, both oil majors insist they are aligned with these groups on climate policy.

“Despite Australia’s horrific summer of bushfires, the government has not retracted its support for Kyoto carryover credits, and nor have APPEA [or] the BCA,” said Dan Gocher, an analyst for the nonprofit Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

Norwegian oil major Equinor― another member of Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association ― has also criticized the loophole, and said in a review of its own lobby groups that the use of Kyoto credits could reduce the ambitions of the Paris climate agreement.

Equinor added that it would “encourage APPEA to take a clear stand on ... not supporting carryover of credits from the Kyoto protocol to the Paris Agreement.”

“BP and Shell have announced ambitious cuts to their carbon emissions,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an interview, “but if they were serious about addressing climate change, they’d give big trade groups an ultimatum: support serious climate legislation or we’ll quit.”

Signer beware

Pro-oil-and-gas-industry Initiative #138 has a familiar pedigree

Joel Dyer

June 16, 2016

When it comes to the ballot initiatives being put forward this election cycle — at least the ones pertaining to oil and gas extraction — you often hear them referred to with terms like “community rights” or “local government authority.”

But unlike in the past, those terms are being applied to a variety of initiatives, including one that would actually prevent communities from creating local ordinances to protect themselves from oil and gas extraction in close proximity to their homes, schools and hospitals.

As a result, signing a petition in 2016 has become a rather confusing exercise wherein “signer beware” seems an appropriate warning. Not surprisingly to many observers of the ongoing and heated battle over fracking in Colorado, this confusion due to the blurring of such terms doesn’t appear to be an accident.

Over the past five years, the terms “community rights” and “local authority ” have become closely tied to the various citizen-driven initiatives written to allow local communities or even counties the right to ban or delay fracking or otherwise regulate oil and gas extraction within their jurisdictions. This explains why these terms so often find their way into the official or popular titles of such citizen efforts. This year’s initiatives with that same intent are no exception.

• • •

Initiative #40 is most often referred to as “The Colorado Community Rights Amendment” or the “Local Governance Amendment.” It has been put forward as a project of Coloradans for Community Rights.

Proponents of Initiative #40 claim the amendment addresses the conflicts that exist between the fundamental rights of communities, people and the environment, and the excessive legal authority that politicians have wrongly granted to corporations.

They further claim #40 would not only allow local communities to ban or otherwise regulate oil and gas extraction, but also allow local governments to control all industrial activity as well as other things, such as allowing communities to set their own minimum wage limits.

Another initiative designed to empower local authority to regulate oil and gas extraction is also currently gathering signatures. Initiative #75, titled “Local Government Authority to Regulate Oil and Gas Development,” was put forward by Coloradans Resisting Extreme Energy Development (CREED).

Proponents of #75 say it would give local governments the ability to protect citizens from the harmful industrial processes of oil and gas extraction by allowing a community to ban them within city limits or otherwise apply local regulations stricter than current state regulations.

CREED is also gathering signatures for Initiative #78 titled “Mandatory Setbacks From Oil and Gas Development,”which, if it makes the ballot and then passes, would force the oil and gas industry to leave a 2,500-foot buffer or “setback” between oil and gas drilling/production operations and homes, schools and hospitals. CREED says the size of the buffer zone was determined based on health studies.

• • •

In the past, anyone supporting the effort to put an initiative on the ballot giving citizens and local governments more control over the oil and gas industry simply had to listen for the code words “community rights” or “local control” coming out of the signature gatherer’s mouth and then sign the petition. But times have changed and so have the oil and gas industry’s strategies.

There is another ballot measure making the rounds this year, Initiative #138.

The popular title for #138 is “Local Regulation of Oil and Gas Development.” I know, sounds familiar right?

As you can see, #138’s informal title is shockingly similar to Initiative #75’s title of “Local Government Authority to Regulate Oil and Gas Development.”

It certainly seems bizarre and more than a little inappropriate for the Secretary of State’s office, which oversees such matters, to have allowed two initiatives collecting signatures at the exact same time to be operating under virtually identical names.

This name debacle is a recipe for a range of signature-gathering disasters from mere confusion to outright deception.

So just how similar are the two initiatives in what they are seeking to accomplish? While the names may be virtually identical, they are, in fact, opposites.

Initiative #138 says the following:

“Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution stating that local governments may enact and enforce local laws and regulations concerning oil and gas development or operations so long as the laws and regulations are no more restrictive than, and do not conflict with, state laws or regulations?”

At first blush, it’s hard to understand the point of passing this initiative. The Colorado Supreme Court pretty much just made this the law of the land when it struck down both the fracking ban in Longmont and Fort Collins’ moratorium. It is simply redundant to that ruling.

And obviously, despite its deceptive title, for all practical purposes, the goal of #138 is to eliminate all rights of all local governments to regulate oil and gas extraction in any way that is contrary to the state’s oversight, which the industry largely controls due to its outsized influence over our governor and state house. In short, pass #138 and nothing changes.

So what’s the point?

Good question.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, the designated representatives of Initiative #138 are Shawn Martini and Scott Prestidge. The lineage of these two “designated representatives” tells you all you need to know about Initiative #138.

Prestidge is the energy industry director of the Denver Area Chamber of Commerce where he works for political operative Kelly Brough. You may remember Brough from Boulder Weekly’s “Behind the curtain” investigation. She is the former Gov. Hickenlooper staffer who is a member of Colorado Concern, the state’s most influential organization when it comes to pushing for unfettered oil and gas extraction.

She is, or was last year, also on the Advisory Committee for CRED, the pro-oil-and-gas group funded by Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy.

CRED pays for many of the pro-fracking commercials that inundate the airwaves these days. CRED also paid for the pro-fracking “energy and environment” section that previously ran in the Denver Post leading up to the 2012 elections in an effort to turn back the anti-fracking citizens initiatives that year.

Brough also sat on the board of Vital for Colorado,a pro-oil-and-gas front group working to defeat citizen opposition to unfettered oil and gas extraction in their communities, including previous and current citizen initiatives such as #75, #78 and #40.

As you may recall from previous Boulder Weekly investigations, Vital for Colorado has strong ties to Josh Penry and his EIS Solutions consulting firm as well as to Penry’s wife Kristin Strohm who runs the controversial Common Sense Policy Roundtable (CSPR), which works with both Vital and the Koch Brothers. Strohm runs CSPR through her position at Starboard Group, one of the nation’s leading fundraising organizations for conservative causes and Republican political campaigns. DeSmogBlog and Greenpeace have referred to Penry and Strohm as the nation’s “power couple of fracking.”

For a more complete explanation of how the oil and gas industry runs the state of Colorado and why establishment Democrats and Republicans alike are working behind the scenes to defeat citizen initiatives like #78, #75 and #40, please read Boulder Weekly’s two previous investigations, “Who killed the vote on fracking?” from Sept. 17, 2015 and “Behind the curtain” from Oct. 2, 2014.

This is the circle in which Prestidge operates.

He currently sits on the board of Vital for Colorado along with several members of Colorado Concern, including its Executive Director Mike Kopp.

Chad Vorthman, executive vice president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, is also on the board of Vital for Colorado and the advisory Committee for CRED, which brings us to Shawn Martini.

A few years back, Martini was director of communications at the Colorado Farm Bureau. But he took a four-year hiatus to be the senior communications director for an outfit called HBW Resources, LLC out of Houston. At HBW, one of Martini’s tasks was to pen a fracking blog that kept track of anti-fracking activism around the country for the benefit of HBW’s oil industry clients. The blog rated states red, yellow or green based on how much anti-fracking activity was occurring and how much opposition there was to drilling tight shale formations via fracking. Colorado was rated “red.”

Martini recently returned to Colorado and his old friend Chad Vorthman at the Farm Bureau. Martini’s new title is vice president of advocacy and, of course, designated representative of Initiative #138.

• • •

The pedigree of Initiative #138 raises the question of whether or not it’s just a coincidence that this oil-and-gas–industry friendly initiative sells itself with a nearly identical name to the one already being used by Initiative #75, a citizen effort that is attempting to accomplish the exact opposite outcome as #138.

And does it seem a well thought out strategy for petition gatherers for #138 to be, according to numerous citizen accounts, concentrating their efforts in places like Boulder County and Denver? Places where support for the oil and gas industry’s desire to restrict community rights so fracking can be done in neighborhoods is at its absolute lowest?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to gather signatures in places like Weld and Garfield counties or Pueblo and Colorado Springs where some people might be more receptive to signing away their communities’ rights for the benefit of oil and gas industry profits in exchange for the industry’s promise of permanent jobs, a promise we now know was only temporary?

These oil industry operatives’ choice of where to solicit signatures really did seem odd until we started hearing from people who claim that after signing a petition they thought would amend the constitution to allow local fracking bans, they now fear they may have mistakenly signed Initiative #138.

It’s the kind of mistake that should rarely if ever happen with proper oversight from the Secretary of State’s office.

At the end of the day, it’s the responsibility of each of us to read and make sure we know what we are signing. If you believe you signed the wrong petition, then by all means take the time to sign the right one.

The stories floating around about $1,000 fines for signing more than one “local regulation of oil and gas” petition are just more deception aimed at Colorado citizens. If you feel like a petitioner has intentionally deceived you, take their name and report them to the Secretary of State’s office. There is always a very slim chance that someone in that office might even write it down.

:{But for now, I’m afraid signer beware is your best strategy.:{

}:}:

9 22

https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.09.14%20Hearing%20Report_PR%20Firms%20Preventing%20Action%20on%20Climate%20Change.pdf

2. Third-Party Mobilization

The general public is less likely to be convinced by a narrative that appears only to serve a special

interest, especially one with significant reputational liabilities, such as the oil and gas industry. PR

firms consequently work to make the industry’s positions seem widely supported by a range of

ostensibly unrelated groups, manufacturing the appearance of representing the broader public

interest.32 This tactic can take the form of third-party spokespersons, “generating favorable media

coverage, attributing advertisements to [a] third-party group instead of to the organization, creating

supportive social media, and mobilizing “astroturf” groupsof public supporters.”33 Oil and gas

companies have also created and funded nonprofit entities, which they used to organize opposition

to climate policies.

34 Through these front groups, the industry has funneled tens of millions of

dollars to public relations firms to manage media campaigns.35

A prominent example of such an approach is the successful defeat of a 2016 effort to put on the

Colorado ballot two initiatives that would have altered Colorado’s constitution to (1) give local

municipalities the ability to ban fracking, and (2) prevent oil and gas development within a 2,500-

foot buffer zone from occupied buildings and parks, waterways, playgrounds, and other “areas of

special concern.”36 Seeing an existential threat to its “license to operate,” Noble Energy, a major

natural gas company operating in Colorado (later bought by Chevron), hired PR firm Story

Partners to help it prevent these safeguards from becoming law.

The Committee has obtained documents that reveal, in the PR firm’s own words, howStory

Partners successfully designed and executed its multipronged plan to defeat the initiatives at the

signature-gathering stage (Appendix 5). Story Partners achieved this through tactics including

astroturfing and careful analysis of which kind of message was most likely to persuade people that

the ballot measure would economically harm not onlyNoble Energy and “the industry at large,”

but the general public as well.37 This campaign and its techniques are discussed in greater detail in

the final section of this memorandum.

Third-party mobilization can also directly reach policymakers and their staff. Following the

Russian invasion of Ukraine, House Natural Resources Committee staff received a series of seven

...p 11

Staff from “HBW Resources” sent the emails and identified themselves as representatives of CEA,

describing it as “a nationwide grassroots organization that supports energy policies ensuring

abundant, affordable, reliable, and sustainable domestic energy supplies.”CEA claims to have

more than 550,000 individual members and to represent “a broad list of organizations that include

farmers, academia, conservation groups, truck drivers, laborers, trades-people, energy producers,

manufacturers, business owners to so much more.”51

Watchdog organization Energy and Policy Institute calls CEA an industry front group, and its

positions align closely with fossil fuel interests. CEA has been accused of engaging in astroturfing

on behalf of the major extractive energy industries.52 The organization received a score of “E-”

from LobbyMap (on an “A+” to “F” scale) on their climate policy’s alignment with the goals of

the Paris Agreement, reflecting CEA’s work to obstruct climate policy and energy transition at the

state and national level.53

HBW Resources, a self-described “government affairs, advocacy, public relations, and

communications firm,”54 appears to run CEA. The organization is run out of HBW’s Houston-based office.

55 IRS forms indicate that CEA has no paid staff and its chief officers include HBW

employees, such as CEA President and Director—David Holt—and Vice President—Michael

Whatley.

56 Since 2010, HBW Resources has been CEA’s highest paid contract by far. Over this

time, 53% of all of CEA’s expenses were paid to HBW, totaling nearly $17 million.57

Large sums

were also paid to two PR firms currently under investigation by this Committee, FTI Consulting

and Story Partners.58

p 12

The source of CEA’s funding is unclear. Since 2010, CEA has reported revenues of over $34.7 million made up almost entirely of contributions and grants.59 As a registered 501(c)(4) organization, CEA is not required to disclose its donors. 60 However, CEA’s members include major oil corporations such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell USA.61

3. Delegitimization of OppositionDelegitimizing competing narratives is the final major strategy PR firms use to shore up the fossil fuel industry’s messages.62 PR firms use a range of tactics to undermine other narratives and their messengers, from disputing the facts to attacking individuals and organizations’ “reliability and reputations.”63 The following case study illustrates the extreme and unethical methods some PR firms use. Industry Defeat of Colorado Anti-Fracking Ballot Measures

...

P 14

...reaffirmedNoble Energy as a strong partner in the community.”74 Meanwhile, print and digital

advertisements “creatively told the story of the unintended consequences of the proposed ballot

measures,” and “informed voters of the products and services dependent on oil and natural gas,

both from a funding point of view and from a resources perspective.”75 These narratives position

Noble as a socially responsible member of the community, while eliding the full environmental

and public health burden the fossil fuel industry creates in Colorado.

These advertisements against proposed fracking restrictions ran “under the brand of the South

Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce (SMDC),” and “concurrently under the banner of the

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA),” creating the illusion of third-party mobilization.

76 Notably,

“guerilla marketing teams attended dozens of Colorado events and engaged hundreds of thousands

of citizens.”77Story Partners’ budget for this campaign is not public information, but CEA’s tax

filings show that the organization paid the PR firm $535,442 in 2016 for “communications,”

presumably for this effort.

Story Partners called the campaign a “huge success,” and “an enormous, measurable achievement

for Noble Energy.”79 The PR firm noted that a survey, “after just two months of campaign activity,

indicated that support for the specific ballot measures dropped to its lowest point in our research,

and opposition to the measures had increased. For the first time, support for the measures was

under 51 percent, and it was clear the campaign messages were working and recalled.”80 The PR

campaign had successfully stopped climate legislation.

Two years later, there was an effort to revive the buffer zone ballot measure. Proposition 112(aka

initiative 97) was a 2018 Colorado ballot initiative designed to mandate that new oil and gas

development, including fracking, be sited a minimum distance of 2,500 feet from occupied

buildings such as homes, schools, hospitals, and other areas designated as vulnerable. The measure

was brought by grassroots environmental group Colorado Rising.81

Industry pushback was coordinated, sophisticated, and heavily funded. Oil and gas firms funneled

millions of dollars into coordinated PR campaigns to defeat Proposition 112.82 Oil and gas industry

[CRED protect colo]

P18

attempted to end their contract while demanding additional payments.96,97 When Colorado Rising

contracted with another signature-gathering firm, the firm broke the contract several days later. In

a recorded conversation shared with the Committee, a subcontractor admitted to taking a bribe of

“a lot” of money to stop working with Colorado Rising. He also stated the people who paid him

off had asked him to give them the signatures he had gathered for Proposition 112, but he did not

confirm or deny that the request came from Protect Colorado, the Pac/West front group. (Appendix

7(a))

Volunteers for Colorado Rising also experienced harassment in their volunteer and personal

capacities. Members of the opposition attempted to infiltrate their campaign trainings, showed up

repeatedly at their press conferences and outside their campaign office to monitor them, and

monitored the campaign’s delivery of signatures to the Secretary of State’s office. In her personal

life, the witness was followed around town by unidentified men – who also showed up to record

Colorado Rising press conferences – and received unsolicited texts from one of the people who

attempted to infiltrate their campaign (Appendix 7(b)).

99 Another lead volunteer received

harassing mail at her home address (Appendix 7(c)).[gun in waitband?]

100

CONCLUSION

For decades, the oil and gas industry denied or downplayed climate change and its role in causing

it. Now that fossil fuel companies and trade groups can no longer get away with outright denial,

they pay millions to PR firms to wage sophisticated and varied campaigns that go far beyond mere

marketing. These efforts include falsely depicting industry as joining the fight against climate

change, engineering astroturf “citizen” groups to advocate for industry interests and defeat

legislative proposals, and using unscrupulous tactics to sabotage genuine policy solutions and

attack community advocates. These modern techniques are arguably far more insidious than the

denialism of the past, thanks to the pivotal involvement of PR firms.[long appendix rich st'd CEA, threat ltr]

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/05/23/koch-edison-electric-institute-wooing-interior-department-vincent-devito

Fossil fuel groups backed by the Koch brothers and lobbyists for anti-renewable energy entities have been courting an Interior Department official responsible for energy policy, according to internal documents. Vincent DeVito, a senior energy advisor to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, has received considerable attention from these groups, accepting several invitations to closed meetings and conferences.

DeVito, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the Boston-based firm Bowditch and Dewey, joined Trump’s Interior Departmentas a political appointee in early 2017, and has already loomed as a key official responsible for rolling back federal species protections at the behest of the fossil fuel industry.

His calendar and travel documents, recently released through an open records request and reviewed by DeSmog, show that in his first few months in office, DeVito attended many energy industry events.

Agenda: ‘Easing Barriers’ to Fossil Fuel Development

In June last year, DeVito received an invitation to attend a meeting in Boston of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a national trade group representing investor-owned utilities. The invitation was sent byMichael Whatley, a lobbyist for the firm HBW Resources, which runs the fossil fuel-backed front group Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), of which EEI is a member.

In the invitation, which is signed by EEI President Thomas Kuhn, EEI sought insights about “easing barriers” to siting energy infrastructure such as transmission lines and gas pipelines, as well as on “regulatory reform.” The Interior Department oversees drilling and energy infrastructure permitting on all U.S. public lands and waters.

In a follow-up email to the invitation from an EEI staffer, DeVito was specifically asked to attend EEI’s closed-to-the-public natural resources subcommittee meeting, which would discuss “ways to streamline federal permitting processes on public lands.”

Lobbying records show that at the same time he sent the invitation to DeVito, Whatley, a former Trump campaign and transition team advisor, was registered to lobby the Interior Department on CEA’s behalf, advocating “access to federal lands and offshore areas for energy development.”

In recent years, the EEI and CEA have been involved in campaigns promoting oil and gas pipelines while opposing renewable energy expansion. In one of their latest endeavors, both groups participated in a successful effort to kill a pro-solar bill in the Maine legislature.

Yet according to Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute, which tracks attacks on renewable energy, this seems to be the first evidence indicating HBW Resources and its front group CEA are working directly for EEI.

“The documents show Whatley using his insider status within the Trump administration to communicate on behalf of his client, a powerful electric utility industry association,” said Anderson. “So to connect the dots: here you have Whatley sharing a personal invite from Tom Kuhn, the president of EEI, for Trump's Interior Department to discuss deregulation at the utility industry’s largest annual events. All the while, EEI is also working with the oil and gas industry on such campaigns as countering public concerns about pipelines and fracking.”

Neither Whatley nor EEI replied to requests for comment.

Koch Connections

Two months after the EEI event, DeVito received an invitation to speak at a Richmond, Virginia meeting of the Koch-funded think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Jason Funes, a special assistant at the Interior Department’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, who forwarded DeVito the invitation, told DeVito he was slated to speak on a panel with two other AFP executives.

DeVito would join Chrissy Harbin, formerly an AFP vice president for external affairs who recently joined the Department of Energy, and Grant Kidwell, formerly an AFP policy analyst who now works for the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), on a panel titled “Give Me Liberty in Energy.”

Specifically, Funes wrote, the panel will focus on “deregulation in the energy sector,” adding: “You would be a YUGE hit if you could attend!” After DeVito accepted the invitation, Funes, who previously worked as an operative on Trump’s presidential campaign, responded: “Making American Energy Great Again! 1 event at a time :).”

An email from Jason Funes to Vincent Devito about attending an Americans for Prosperity meeting.

AFP, which lauded Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement as a “major victory,” has a history of climate change denial. In 2008, the organization held a 40-state “Hot Air Tour,” decrying “global warming alarmism.”

Meetings with Fossil Fuel Industry

These were not the only industry meetings DeVito attended in 2017. In September, he spoke at the Kentucky Coal Association’s annual meeting. Tyler White, the association’s president, told DeVito’s assistant in an email that because the meeting will be closed to the public and press, “it will be a friendly crowd.”

From an email by Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, to Vincent Devito’s assistant.]

Shortly after, DeVito accepted an invitation by the North Dakota Petroleum Council to attend its meeting in Grand Forks. The original agenda billed DeVito’s talk in a way that suggests a focus on deregulation — “30 Day Permitting: Is It Achievable?” — though a handwritten note crossing out that title indicates it was changed to “Energy Perspective.”

Other events DeVito attended included the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s energy and sustainability conference, which was sponsored by such fossil fuel companies as Dominion, EQT Corporation, and Mountain Valley Pipeline; the Energy Exposition in Colorado, an oil and gas industry event; and the oil and gas industry-funded Western Energy Alliance’s annual meeting in August 2017.

The Department of Interior did not respond to detailed questions about this story.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/28/epas-new-water-safety-official-is-a-lobbyist-with-deep-ties-to-the-dakota-access-pipeline/

forsgren

FORSGREN, a former lobbyist recently tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency office in charge of water safety, has deep ties to a fossil fuel advocacy group engaged in the promotion of the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as controversial offshore drilling efforts.

The appointment signals a victory for industrial opponents of clean water regulations. The department that Forsgren will now help oversee, the EPA’s Office of Water, is in charge of implementing the landmark Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts passed in the early seventies. In that capacity it studies the toxic effects of fracking on groundwater safety, the downstream consequences of industrial pollutants, and the environmental impact of oil spills.

Before arriving at the EPA, Forsgren was an attorney for HBW Resources, a fossil fuel lobbying firm known for orchestrating campaigns on behalf of industry clients.

The public-facing side of Forsgren’s lobbying firm is the Consumer Energy Alliance, an astroturf advocacy organization managed by HBW Resources that works aggressively to build support for contentious oil and gas projects around the country.

CEA portrays itself as the “voice of the energy consumer,” providing “sound, unbiased information on U.S. and global energy issues.” However, tax filings show that the organization shares office space in Houston with HBW Resources, HBW’s staff simultaneously serve as CEA’s staff members, HBW is registered to lobby for CEA, and CEA transfers the bulk of its funding to HBW for “management” fees.

Moreover, the group relies heavily on funding from the corporate interests which benefit the most from their advocacy. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the trade group for the nation’s largest oil refineries, provided significant financing to CEA. Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for building the Dakota Access pipeline, is listed as a corporate member of CEA.

CEA played a significant role in the energy industry’s attempt to build support for the Keystone XL, sponsoring a study on the economic benefits of the pipeline, providing draft letters used by members of Congress to endorse it, and setting up a special website to mobilize thousands of petitions to pressure the State Department to approve the project.

Similar tactics were deployed by the CEA and HBW to win support for offshore drilling efforts stalled because of public backlash. Letters filedwith regulators in support of Shell Oil during its bid to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic used language provided by CEA. In another case, metadatafrom a letter signed by several governors in support of drilling efforts in the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard revealed that a staffer with HBW had authored the document.

Over the last year, CEA and HBW have worked to build approval for the Dakota Access pipeline, which would bring fracked oil from North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

In 2016, the group launched a campaign called “Pipelines for America,” which included grassroots events and advertisements designed to push back against growing opposition to the Dakota Access. The group also appeared in the media to sharply criticize protests at Standing Rock, the encampment for activists opposed to the Dakota Access. David Holt, the president of both HBW and CEA, was quoted last fall claiming that Standing Rock protesters have no interest in “protecting the environment” and are instead motivated by an interest in “shutting down the American economy.”

In response to the decision by President Donald Trump to approve pipeline projects delayed by the previous administration, Holt issued a statement stating, “CEA has strongly supported both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines for many years and we enthusiastically applaud President Trump’s decision today to move ahead with these long-delayed projects.”

The deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Water, the position awarded to Forsgren, does not require Senate confirmation,meaning that he can start his job right away. The announcement was made through an EPA staff email obtained by The Intercept.

As we’ve reported, the EPA under Administrator Scott Pruitt has become the perhaps the greatest nexus for industry influence in the entire Trump administration.

The official tapped to lead the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Nancy Beck, is a former chemical industry lobbyist. Susan Bodine, nominated to lead the EPA’s enforcement office, previously worked as a lobbyist for industrial paper and forestry clients cited for hundreds of EPA violations. Justin Schwab, appointed as a senior attorney at the EPA, previously worked for utility industry interest to oppose the EPA’s climate change regulations. Even the EPA’s new legislative outreach staff includes a former industry lobbyist who worked previously for a power plant trade group tasked with repealing the EPA’s Clean Air Act rules.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment about whether Forsgren has signed an ethics waiver, and if he will recuse himself from any issues related to HBW or CEA advocacy.

In recent months, the EPA’s Office of Water has been busy dealing with the lead-poisoning water scandal in Flint, Michigan, as well as complying with President Trump’s executive order to help find “existing regulations that could be repealed, replaced or modified to make them less burdensome.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/trump_picks_dapl_lobbyist_to_oversee

SHAIKH: We turn now to the latest move by the Trump administration to undo President Obama’s environmental legacy. Trump has already withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate change agreement, rescinded the Clean Power Plan, reversed a moratorium on leasing federal lands for coal mining and proposed deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. On Tuesday, the EPA announced new plans to roll back an Obama administration policy that environmentalists say will remove drinking water safeguards for one in three Americans and threaten thousands of streams that flow into large rivers and lakes, as well as wetland areas that filter pollutants and absorb floodwaters. The 2015 regulation, known as Waters of the United States, determined that more than half of the country’s waterways are covered under the Clean Water Act.

AMY GOODMAN: Now The Intercept has revealed the person that President Trump has tapped to head the EPA agency in charge of water safety is a former lobbyist with deep ties to a fossil fuel advocacy group that promotes the Dakota Access pipeline and offshore drilling.Dennis Lee Forsgren will help oversee the EPA’s Office of Water, which implements the landmark Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Act, that were passed in the early ’70s. This includes studying the toxic effects of fracking on groundwater safety, the downstream consequences of industrial pollutants, and the environmental impacts of oil spills.

For more, we go to San Francisco. We’re joined by Lee Fang, investigative journalist at The Intercept covering the intersection of money and politics. His latest piece, "EPA’s New Water Safety Official is a Lobbyist with Deep Ties to the Dakota Access Pipeline."

Lee, welcome back to Democracy Now! Tell us what you found.

LEE FANG: Amy and Nermeen, thank you so much for having me.

The latest political appointee in the Trump administration, as you mentioned, is Dennis Lee Forsgren. This is an individual who’s been appointed to head up the department within the EPA that deals with safe drinking water and, you know, reviewing research into water safety. And this is a potentially problematic political appointee, because this person comes directly from a fossil fuel lobbying firm, HBW Resources, that is kind of infamous for cloak-and-dagger tactics. They were very prominent in the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline and, more recently, on the Dakota Access pipeline.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, who are—Lee Fang, just tell us a little bit more about HBW Resources and who their clients have been.

LEE FANG: Well, we’ve tracked HBW for a while now, and this is a lobbying firm that actually specializes in kind of deceptive tactics. And I’ll just give you three examples of that.

They operate a kind of fake consumer group. This is the Consumer Energy Alliance, purportedly, you know, an organization that represents mom-and-pop energy users. But, in fact, this is an organization fully controlled by these fossil fuel lobbyists, funded by large oil and gas companies, oil refineries, that goes out and kind of misrepresents itself to influence the public debate around these oil and gas issues.

Another example is the fight over Arctic drilling.You know, when Shell Oil was pushing to drill in a very sensitive area of the environment near Alaska, there was a letter-writing campaign to kind of convince regulators to give them approval. And HBW and CEA helped facilitate a lot of these letters. One of these letters supposedly came from an onion farmer group. But we looked at these letters, and they were essentially copied and pasted from language provided by these lobbyists. So it didn’t seem like a truly authentic letter. They kind of specialize in these type of astroturf or fake grassroots strategies.

And on the Dakota Access pipeline, you know, these same lobbyists were involved in setting up events and going up to Standing Rock and being quoted in the media. They attacked the protesters at Standing Rock, claiming that the protesters who went to demonstrate against the pipeline, they weren’t interested in protecting the environment, that the people involved in these protests were simply going up there to slow down the American economy. And, you know, if you’ve talked to any of these protesters, that’s clearly not true. But that’s kind of part and parcel to the tactics used by this lobbying firm.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to read a statement by Consumer Energy Alliance President David Holt in October 2016 during the protests by waterkeepers against the Dakota Access pipeline. Holt stated, quote, "The steps taken by these individuals to sabotage pipelines—in addition to the threats, intimidation, and cyber-bullying tactics they are using—clearly show that their agenda has nothing to do with protecting the environment and everything to do with shutting down the American economy and hurting everyday Americans, families, small business, and our economic way of life." So, Lee Fang, can you respond to that and also explain who the funders are for the CEA, the Consumer Energy Alliance?

LEE FANG: Right. Well, you know, the CEA group, you know, they pretend to be an independent organization, but we’ve gone through tax filings and found that large oil refineries, companies like Koch Industries, that you previously referenced on your show, and Phillips 66, these big kind of industrial polluters, are providing a significant portion of the financing for CEA. And, you know, the quote that you just read is kind of a typical strategy. They place advertisements, they write letters to the editor, they hold rallies and kind of organize opposition to actual social movements and to grassroots groups. And the individual that provided that quote you just read, you know, he says that he is a voice of the consumer, but actually he’s just another person at the same lobbying firm where Dennis Lee Forsgren is from. So, you know, they control this fake consumer group. They go out, and they use these kind of aggressive tactics to diminish the work of social movements.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, earlier this week, the EPA taking steps to rescind the Waters of the United States rule, explain what the administration is trying to do and how it links in to the current man that Trump has tapped, Forsgren?

LEE FANG: Well, the Waters of the United States rule is a major achievement by the Obama administration. It extends Clean Water Act protections. You know, this law originally applied only to large bodies of water like the Chesapeake Bay. But the regulation in 2015 extended these protections to wetlands and streams, bodies of water that feed into larger bodies like the Chesapeake Bay. And this has been bitterly opposed by lobbyists. We see big agribusiness and industrial polluters lobbying very aggressively against this rule. You know, back when there was the debt ceiling fight, the government shutdown fight, lobbyists attempted to attach budget riders to repeal this rule, and they were unsuccessful.

But now with the Trump administration, they have another opportunity to repeal this regulation, and that’s exactly the process that began this week. The Office of Water in the EPA will be managing that process. And, you know, the EPA, under the Trump administration, is a perfect example of industry capture. From the top of the administration down, we’ve seen political appointees directly from industry. You know, the legal affairs office is now staffed by Trump administration appointees from the utility industry. We see a coal lobbyist as the number two appointee. Just this week we saw another oil and gas lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute appointed to another legal affairs office of the EPA. So, as the EPA moves to repeal these environmental safeguards, you literally have oil and gas lobbyists, who have spent the last, you know, three to four years fighting this regulation, now in charge of repealing it.

AMY GOODMAN: Does Forsgren have to go through congressional approval, Lee Fang?

LEE FANG: No, and that’s kind of an interesting dynamic here. You know—

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

LEE FANG: No, he does not. He’s a deputy administrator. And the EPA has been pushing through a lot of deputy roles that do not require Senate confirmation.