america's energy forum

nathan flagg staff foghorn leghorn

Paid InternPaid Intern

America’s Energy Forum; American Petroleum InstituteAmerica’s Energy Forum; American Petroleum Institute

2012 - 2013 · 1 yr2012 - 2013 · 1 yr

Washington D.C. Metro AreaWashington D.C. Metro Area

• Facilitated high-level VIP visits to Washington, D.C., serving as liaison for duration of trip for visiting ambassadors, senior company executives, high ranking military officers, and elected officials, including Major General Duane A. Jones

• Facilitated high-level VIP visits to Washington, D.C., serving as liaison for duration of trip for visiting ambassadors, senior company executives, high ranking military officers, and elected officials, including Major General Duane A. Jones …see more

gen did not disclose api $ testimony

General James Jones Didn't Disclose Industry Ties Before Testimony at Keystone XL Hearing - DeSmog

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common cause

American Petroleum Institute’s State-Level Campaign

API’s increase in New York State spending since 2012 is part of the organization’s national strategy to engage at the

state and local level to convince the public of the safety and economic benefits of oil and gas drilling. In recent years,

American Petroleum Institute has increased its nationwide spending from $185 million in 2010 to $235 million in 2012.

API’s budget is raised primarily through “membership dues” from oil and gas companies but groups incorporated as

501c6 trade organizations do not have to disclose the detailed records of which companies and/or individuals contribute.

In March 2012, API held a series of workshops around the county, including one in Albany, on the “best practices”

of fracking and how these standards “protect human health and the environment.110”

Nationally, API oversees numerous public relations websites including “Energy Citizens”(.org)”, “Energy Nation”(.

org), “Energy From Shale”(.org), “Energy Tomorrow”(.org), “Energy Answered”(.org), and “America’s Energy Forum”(.

com).

These sites present themselves as neutral, fact-based sources of information on the energy, although most of

them do disclose in a banner on the bottom of the page that they are sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute.

At the state level, the “America’s Energy Forum” campaign has created separate state websites for 26 states, including

New York’s “Empire Energy Forum,” registered as a domain name in 2011111.

Grassroots Lobbying by American Petroleum Institute: 2012 – July 2013

FIRM RETAINED BY API AMOUNT $ PURPOSE

ADVOCATES, INC. $51,000 GRASSROOTS ADVOCACY / EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

AECOM $85,272 CONSULTANT SERVICES / TECHNICAL EXPERT

BOLTON ST JOHNS $20,000 UPSTATE OUTREACH

DDC ADVOCACY $288,784 GRASSROOTS ADVOCACY / RALLIES / WEBSITE

ERIC MOWER & ASSOCIATES $15,150 PUBLIC RELATIONS ADVISOR

HOMETOWN ENERGY GROUP $6,000 GRASSROOTS ADVOCACY / EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

MERCURY PUBLIC AFFAIRS $124,512 MEDIA CONSULTANT

MULTI MEDIA SERVICES $39,985 TV COMMERCIAL

XRM LLC $146,709 CONSULTANT SERVICES / TECHNICAL EXPERT

TOTAL: $777,412

...

American Petroleum Institute began to spend heavily on grassroots lobbying in New York in 2011 and has since paid out a total of $777,412 to nine consulting firms. The highest amount, $288,784, was paid to DDC Advocacy, a Washington DC lobbying firm specializing in internet grassroots outreach and organizing.112 API’s “Empire Energy Forum” has a disclaimer on the bottom of the page that reads: “Any sponsors of this site do not warrant the accuracy of information contained herein, and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for the use of or reliance on the information presented.”

This statement implies that the website is managed by a third-party consultant such as DDC Advocacy, rather than API staff directly.

In 2013, API used the “Empire Energy Forum” name to send out mailers113 and robocalls 114 throughout upstate New York. The grassroots communications campaign emphasized the safety of fracking, with particular emphasis on the industry’s claim of “ZERO incidents of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing.” “Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute” was disclosed in small type on the rear of the mailers, it is not clear if this was disclosed in the robocalls.

Fracking opponents note that this claim rests on a “word game” involving blaming the specific technique of hydraulic fracturing for groundwater contamination rather than the entire fracking process115.In response to this claim, Cornell University Professor of Engineering Anthony Ingraffea, a prominent opponent of fracking, responded: “The right question to ask and have answered is: ‘How many private water wells have experienced abrupt increases in one or more contaminants following nearby gas well development activities?’ “The answer is, nationwide, thousands in the last decade alone.116”....

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:{Obama's offshore drilling plan meets heavy res:(style="font-family:Merriweather"):}:istance along Atlantic coast | Oil | The Guardian

2016

obama sally jewell pro?!

guk

kure Beach, North Carolina, doesn’t seem a likely place to call itself “ground zero” for a key plank of Barack Obama’s presidential legacy. The small coastal town’s concerns rarely stretch beyond its golden beaches and shucked oysters; but it has found itself at the forefront of a struggle to head off a huge expansion in US oil drilling.

Obama’s interior department has proposed prising open the US’s Atlantic seabed for oil and gas drilling, ending various congressional and presidential bans that stretch back to 1984. The nascent 2017-2022 plan, to be finalised by the end of the year, would lease out nearly 104m acres of the Atlantic – stretching from Maryland down to Georgia – to petroleum companies.

View image in fullscreen

Photograph: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The potential drilling, which the interior secretary, Sally Jewell, says is “a key part of the president’s efforts to support American jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil”, has dismayed his allies. Obama has been accused of deploying the sort of tortured logic last seen when he initially allowed Shell into the Arctic while attempting to forge a climate legacy via a 196-nation pledge to cut greenhouse emissions and phase out fossil fuel use by the second half of the century.

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have all distanced themselves from opening up a new fossil fuel frontier in the Atlantic. Edward Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has even fretted that any oil spill would cause a “tragedy” along the entire eastern seaboard.

“Everyone I know here doesn’t want the drilling,” said Mo Linquist, who runs an arts store and gallery in Kure Beach. “I voted for Obama in both his elections, so I was so disappointed they would open it up. What were they thinking?”

In Kure Beach, the concerns are more immediate than the spectre of a Deepwater Horizon-like spill. The community, located on a thin island south of Wilmington, has been in a mild state of uproar for the past two years, when its then mayor Dean Lambeth put his name to a letter supporting seismic testing for oil and gas. The letter was penned by America’s Energy Forum, a lobbying group backed by the American Petroleum Institute.

Irate residents claim that seismic testing, during which compressed air guns are blasted underwater to help ascertain whether rock formations contain fossil fuels, would harm marine life, including 20 species of marine mammals – among them the endangered right whales that traverse the area.

This could drive away visitors from the tourism-dependent town, which has a winter population of 2,000 that swells tenfold during summer. Eight applications for seismic testing are before the federal regulator, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

...

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wow api a whole bunch:

food & ww

http://web.archive.org/web/20160220093132/https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/**who-supports-fracking**

11.21.14

By Alison Grass

The science is in: climate change is a threat, and fracking worsens climate change. Fracking also brings many other well-documented problems, including water contamination, air pollution and adverse health effects. Clean, safe energy solutions are available, such as wind and solar power, energy efficiency technologies and conservation policies. To harness these solutions, we must remake the U.S. energy system -- but the oil and gas industry stands in the way.

The oil and gas industry has captured U.S. energy policy. To see that U.S. energy policy continues to serve the industry’s bottom line, it has erected a huge money machine to push a pro-fracking agenda at all levels of government. Whether it’s lobbying the halls of Congress or spreading misinformation in the media, the following groups are helping the oil and gas industry manipulate public opinion so it can continue drilling and fracking for fossil fuels. Here is our list of some of the main players helping to push fracking on the American public.

Trade Associations

America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA)

• ANGA was formed in 2009 by a group of 27 independent natural gas companies to lobby for an industry-friendly climate bill.
• ANGA “… works with industry, government and customer stakeholders to promote increased demand for and continued availability of our nation’s abundant natural gas resource … ”
• ANGA lobbies for natural gas interests and spends millions of dollars on advertising and public relations aimed at convincing people to carry out its agenda.
  • ANGA spent $300,000 on lobbying in the early stages of the failed climate bill in 2009, to push for natural gas incentives.
  • In 2012, ANGA gave $50,000 to a group called Longmont Taxpayers for Common Sense, the largest donation to help keep a local fracking ban off of the ballot in Longmont, Colorado.
• In one of its most egregious public relations stunts, which can be seen in its 2012 IRS 990 form, ANGA gave $1 million to help fund “Truthland,” a short film devised by the oil and gas industry to respond to the 2010 documentary “Gasland.”

American Gas Association (AGA)

• AGA is a natural gas utility trade association that advocates for the use of natural gas and “represents companies delivering natural gas to consumers …”
• AGA’s president and CEO, Dave McCurdy, is a former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma. Among McCurdy’s priorities at AGA is to expand the use of natural gas for transportation, so as to serve the AGA membership’s interests in increasing demand for natural gas.
• AGA is credited with positioning natural gas as a “bridge fuel” decades ago. This positioning has allowed natural gas to be viewed as part of the solution to climate change, but climate pollution stemming from natural gas dependence is a major threat.

American Petroleum Institute (API)

• API is “the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and gas industry.”
• API uses its financial power to back several dark money groups, including the Coalition for American Jobs, a 501(c)(6) group, which was set up by API lobbyists and is also supported by the chemical industry to air political ads for supportive candidates.
• Since 2008, API has been led by its president, oil lobbyist Jack Gerard. Under Gerard’s leadership, API has invested heavily in public relations campaigns, like its Vote4Energyadvertisements that inundated televisions during the 2012 presidential election.
• According to the Center for Public Integrity, in 2012 API spent $85.5 million to four PR and advertising firms including $51.9 million to just one firm—Edelman, which calls itself “the world’s largest public relations firm.” The API is Edelman’s biggest client.
• A bulk of API’s advertising and lobbying is done under names of its front groups: Energy Nation, Energy Citizens, EnergyTomorrow and America’s Energy Forum.
• API’s front groups aggressively employ astroturf campaigns to give the appearance of grassroots support by organizing rallies and spreading misinformation to promote its agenda.

Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA)

• IPAA is a national trade association that represents companies focused on exploration and production of oil and natural gas.
• IPAA is responsible for creating Energy In Depth (EID), an industry-biased media outlet designed to respond to hydraulic fracturing criticism.
  • In 2011, DeSmogBlog revealed an IPAA leaked memo from 2009 that stated: “For months, IPAA’s government relations and communications teams have been working around-the-clock on a new industry-wide campaign — known as “Energy In Depth (energyindepth.org) — to combat new environmental regulations, especially with regard to hydraulic fracturing.”

Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC)

• The MSC is a trade association working to promote drilling and fracking for shale gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.
• The MSC comprises a large number of companies and law firms with stakes in expanded drilling and fracking for natural gas in the region, and across the country.
  • One of the MSC’s associate members, Aqua America, the second largest U.S. investor-owned water company, sells water to shale drillers.
• The MSC’s Executive Board is run by industry employees from Range Resources, Williams, XTO Energy, CONSOL Energy, EOG Resources and numerous other companies profiting from fracking.
• The group spends big money on public relations initiatives, has funded industry-biased fracking studies and has given money to colleges.
• Many of Pennsylvania’s elected officials, regulators, lobbying groups and law firms have direct ties to the natural gas industry and the MSC.
  • For example, in 2010, the MSC brought on former Department of Homeland Security Secretary and Pennsylvania GovernorTom Ridge for a year as a strategic adviser under a $900,000 contract, shared by his two consulting firms.

Astroturf Campaigns and Front Groups

American Clean Skies Foundation (ACSF)

• While ACSF benignly describes itself as “an independent nonprofit working for cleaner energy in the U.S. transportation and power sectors,” it is, at best, an astroturf group that works to advance the natural gas industry.
• ACSF was co-founded in 2007 by Aubrey McClendon, the former Chesapeake Energy CEO who was stripped of his chairmanship in 2012 after it was revealed that major financial backers of Chesapeake issued personal loans to McClendon in order for him to take personal stakes in the company’s wells.
• Although McClendon stepped down from the ACSF board in 2013, its leadership still has ties to oil and gas industry interests.
• One way that ACSF exerts its influence is through its financial backing of academic studies — funding so-called “frackademia” — such as the high-profile 2011 MIT study, The Future of Natural Gas, led by Ernest Moniz, now U.S. Secretary of Energy.
  • In 2011, before the report was released, Moniz was appointed to a profitable position on the Board of Directors of ICF International, a consulting firm with strong ties to the oil and gas industry.
  • Moniz also served on the NGP Energy Technology Partners advisory board for several years (although it is unclear whether or not he was compensated), in addition to his many other professional ties to the energy sector.

### America's Energy Forum

• America’s Energy Forum, launched in 2008 by the American Petroleum Institute (API), is a lobbying group.
• In a presentation by API, the target audience of America’s Energy Forum is described as: “Politically influential third parties — 'grasstops' — including ‘political family’ members of local, state, federal lawmakers and federal candidates.”
• API says that the mission of America’s Energy Forum is to: “Orchestrate new public policy outcomes for the industry by surrounding lawmakers with the most politically persuasive grass-top constituents supporting energy issues.”

• • For an example of how the group operates, in early 2014 America’s Energy Forum managed to write, and have a North Carolina mayor sign, a letter of support for oil exploration off the state’s coast.

Big Green Radicals

• On March 6, 2014, Big Green Radicals, an industry front group, launched an attack on Food & Water Watch, and two other activist groups, with a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, a 90-second commercial online and a website calling us a “big green radical.”
• Big Green Radicals is led by PR flack/lobbyist Rick Berman, a man nicknamed “ Dr. Evil.” He has been the force behind many industry front groups pushing the interests of tobacco companies, payday lenders and casinos, and is often hired by companies to attack consumer and public interest groups.
• Berman runs an advertising firm, Berman and Company, which shares office space with many of his industry-driven nonprofits, devised to appear like grassroots advocacy groups or independent research institutions.
• Big Green Radicals is a project of Berman’s Environmental Policy Alliance.

Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD)

• The Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) greenwashes the public with the delusion that widespread drilling and fracking can be done safely and sustainably, as long as the industry follows the CSSD’s drafted voluntary guidelines and performance standards.
• These “standards” are the basis for the CSSD’s certification scheme, which it shamelessly likens to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program for recognizing green building design. For $30,000, applicants that meet certain standards are rubberstamped and the company can flaunt that it has met certain “sustainability” criteria.
• Launched in March 2013, the CSSD was formed by a group of 11 companies, foundations and nonprofits: Chevron, CONSOL Energy, EQT, Shell, PennFuture, Group Against Smog and Pollution, Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Clean Air Task Force, Environmental Defense Fund, The Heinz Endowments and William Penn Foundation.
• In reality, the CSSD is a portal for the oil and gas industry to exert its influence and help “scrub the image” of drilling and fracking.

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA)

• CEA poses itself as a grassroots organization, claiming that it works as “the voice of the energy consumer” and that it “provide[s] consumers with sound, unbiased information on U.S. and global energy issues.”
• However, HBW Resources — an oil and gas lobbying firm — formed CEA in the late 2000s, and an IRS 990 form shows that CEA is run out of HBW Resources’ Houston office; many of the listed CEA staff are also employed at HBW Resources.
• CEA has been a staunch advocate of the Keystone XL Pipeline, of drilling offshore from Florida to Maine and of fracking.
• In 2011, CEA funded a public relations campaign that helped defeat a fracking ban ordinance in Peters Township, Pennsylvania.
• More than once, CEA president David Holt, also a managing partner at HBW Resources, has written articles attacking Food & Water Watch, alleging without support that we are misrepresenting the risks and harms from fracking. Science makes clear the significant risks and harms.
• However, CEA is misleading the public by claiming that it is a grassroots group. Its members consist of industry trade associations and oil and gas companies, while it receives funding from oil and gas industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute.

Energy Citizens

• Energy Citizens is one of the American Petroleum Institute’s (API’s) front groups and has a presence in every congressional district in the United States.
• Energy Citizen’s mission is to “identify, recruit, educate, engage, and mobilize citizens to voice support, participate in the energy-policy debate, and affect change at all levels of government” in order to fulfill oil and gas industry interests.
• API describes its Energy Citizen membership base as mostly males with “nationalistic tendencies,” who consider themselves “eternal pragmatists,” “very religious” and “right of center,” and who “Love Sports — in particular Motorsports.”
• According to a 2012 presentation by API’s Director of External Mobilization, the target audience for Energy Citizens is “Voters without a direct connection to the oil and natural gas industry.”
  • A leaked memo, however, exposed that in 2009, Energy Citizens planned astroturf rallies against climate change legislation that year, rallies that were fully organized from the top down and paid for by API, other industry lobbyists and API member companies, so that employees of those companies would participate.
• The memo noted: “API will provide the up-front resources to ensure logistical issues do not become a problem. This includes contracting with a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns, corporations and interest groups. It also includes coordination with the other interests who share our views on the issues, providing a field coordinator in each state, conducting a comprehensive communications and advocacy activation plan for each state, and serving as central manager for all events.”
• Energy Citizens propagates its agenda by using the web to “educate, activate, and organize,” while also attending Vote4Energy rallies, holding roundtables and participating in hearings.

Energy In Depth (EID)

• EID acts as a PR arm for the oil and gas industry.
• EID uses pseudo-grassroots tactics to build opposition against fracking activists, and it aggressively attacks any group, person or media outlet that displays concerns about or objections to fracking, in order to discredit them.
  • Among its tactics, in 2011 EID bribed citizens into testifying at public hearings in Pennsylvania on the industry’s behalf by offering free Pittsburgh Pirates tickets, paid airfare or bus transportation, and meals, in an effort to fill the space with pro-industry members of the public.
• In response to “Gasland,”IPAA and EIDspearheaded the pro-fracking short documentary “Truthland.”
• EID’s “Contact Us” page on its website used to describe itself as, “… a project of America’s small, independent oil and natural gas producers…” Conversely, major fracking companies have heavily funded EID.
  • As an IPAA memo noted: “The ‘Energy In Depth’ project would not be possible without the early financial commitments of: El Paso Corporation, XTO Energy, Occidental Petroleum, BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, API, IPAA, Halliburton, Schlumberger and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.”
• EID’s influence is extensive. For example, former EID spokesperson John Krohn is now employed with the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Energy Nation

• Energy Nation, one of the American Petroleum Institute’s front groups, is a fleet of fracking advocates made up of current and former oil and gas industry employees, vendorsand their families.
• Although backed by major oil and gas interests, Energy Nation attempts to rally itself like a grassroots organization. As illustrated in this presentation, the group strongly fosters employee mobilization to get current and former employees to be active “brand ambassadors.”

Energy Tomorrow

• Energy Tomorrow is centralto the American Petroleum Institute’s misinformation projects.
• A key method of disseminating its propaganda is through TV advertisements, in which Energy Tomorrow spokesperson Brooke Alexander — a former soap opera actress — hypes the “benefits” of natural gas jobs.

Environmental Policy Alliance

• Environmental Policy Alliance — “EPA”! — is a project of the Center for Organizational Research & Education, formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom, and has the same registered address as Rick Berman’s PR firm Berman and Company.
• The Environmental Policy Alliance says it is “ … devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersection between activists and government agencies.” In reality, the group is operating on its own financial interests, not the public interest:
  • In July 2014, the Environmental Policy Alliance launched a snarky and misleading advertisement in Colorado to counter fracking activists who have been campaigning to get anti-fracking ballot measures on the November ballot.
  • The ad spotmocks, insults and ridicules fracking activists, claiming that activists’ opposition to fracking is rooted in asinine assumptions, ignorant of science — even though science makes clear the significant risks and harms.
• In June 2014, Anastasia Swearingen, who works for Rick Berman and the Environmental Policy Alliance, published two pro-fracking newspaper op-eds attacking the Bureau of Land Management for not yet opening up federal lands to fracking and drilling.
  • Swearingen’s op-eds are based on findings from a University of Wyoming study authored by Timothy Considine, a notorious figure in the world of frackademia, who has led industry-skewed studies funded by the Marcellus Shale Coalition and American Petroleum Institute.
  • In March 2014, five days after Swearingen published an op-ed attacking LEED certification in USA Today, the paper added an editorial update stating that it found out that she was “… employed by public relations firm Berman and Co., not the Environmental Policy Alliance.”
  • The editorial update went on to say: “The Environmental Policy Alliance, a tax-exempt group, has no employees and is housed at the same address as Berman, which controls the recently created group, according to Berman spokeswoman Sarah Longwell.”

United Shale Advocates (USA)

• On March 20, 2014, the Marcellus Shale Coalition launched a new initiative in Pennsylvania, United Shale Advocates, “focused on ensuring that [they] advance common sense, predictable policies that encourage investment and job growth across the Commonwealth.”
• This group, with its noticeably patriotic abbreviation (USA) is billed by the MSC as “a movement to tie together those interested in Pennsylvania energy and it’s a platform for them to engage further.”
• As previously mentioned, the MSC is a consortium of major oil and gas industry players and their special brand of “grassroots” organizing, which should really be called “gasroots” organizing.
• On May 6, 2014, “USA” hosted a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to oppose any efforts to impose taxes on the oil and gas industry in the state, and in support of fracking jobs and further development of the Marcellus Shale in Harrisburg.

Vote4Energy

• Launched on January 1, 2012, Vote4Energy is another American Petroleum Institute astroturf campaign, which staged fake citizen support with commercials that highlight “real Americans” who are “energy voters.”
• Activists revealed, after responding to the Vote4Energy casting call sent out on behalf of API, that the campaign initiative was an election-related advertising package with CNN, tied to the network’s political coverage for maximum political influence.
• The casting call, sent on December 1, 2011, stated:
  • “We are writing to you because we need all ages and races to express their views in a Commercial Spot on American Made Energy!”
• The call listed five qualifications that they were seeking, including:
  • “You are willing to go on camera and state your beliefs” and;
  • “You are comfortable portraying YOURSELF! They want REAL PEOPLE not Actors!”
• Yet several people were kicked out if they didn’t agree to read API’s script verbatim.

Astroturf Propaganda

"Truthland"

• “Truthland” is a short film conceived by the oil and gas industry as a rebuttal to “Gasland.” Its name, however, is an oxymoron, as the film is rather misleading.
• The film, released in 2012, initially had its web domain registered to Chesapeake Energy Corporation.
  • It was eventually changed so that it was registered to MFL Holdings, ATTN TRUTHLANDMOVIE.COM, care of Network Solutions, but LittleSis (a project of Public Accountability Initiative) was able to save a cached screen shot of its domain when it was registered to Chesapeake.
• According to the movie’s website, it is a project of Energy In Depth and IPAA, and according to an EID document acquired by LittleSis, Fred Davis, a Republican media strategist, produced “Truthland.”
• Biased appearances were also made by: Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission member and fracking advocate, Terry Engelder; former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary, John Hanger; and former Pennsylvania DEP Deputy Secretary for Mineral Resources Management, J. Scott Roberts.

“FrackNation”

• “FrackNation,” a pro-fracking documentary, was released in 2013 in response to “Gasland 2” — with its public debut at the same time as Matt Damon’s “Promised Land.”
• The people behind “FrackNation” claim that it is an independent, grassroots-funded film, free from financial backing from the industry. But that doesn’t mean it is without its biases.
• Once described as “stars of the Republican Party,” the producers/directors of “FrackNation” are climate change-denying couple Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, who have significant ties to powerful right-wing entities.
  • McAleer and McElhinney’s first two films received money from Donors Trust/Donors Capital, a nonprofit that siphons money into the climate change denial agenda and has financial ties to the Koch Brothers.
  • In a 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, McAleer referred to environmentalism as “outsiders coming in and treating people like children.”
  • McAleer and McElhinney are reportedly “proud” that film critics compared one of their early films, “Mine Your Own Business,” to “pornography” and “Nazi propaganda.”
• “FrackNation,” endorsed by countless oil and gas groups, also spotlights several industry persons, a former Big Tobacco champion, and climate change deniers, dubbed as “independent experts.”
• DeSmogBlog has described how “FrackNation” takes a page from the Big Tobacco playbook and tries to turn clear scientific concerns into a matter of opinion, or into a “he-said, she-said” debate.

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5 24 ggl

[### Earth Day Greenwash: API Front Group Iowa Energy ...

DeSmog

https://www.desmog.com › 2014/04/22 › earth-day-gree...](https://www.desmog.com/2014/04/22/earth-day-greenwash-api-front-group-iowa-energy-forum-sponsors-pro-keystone-xl-event/)

Apr 22, 2014 — American Petroleum Institute (API) deployed ... Iowa Energy Forum is part of API's broader astroturf campaign called “America's Energy Forum,” the ...

political carnival that is the prelude to the Iowa caucuses has started over a year and a half early. At the center of it this time around: a game of political hot potato over the northern leg of TransCanada‘s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

American Petroleum Institute (API) deployed one of its paid consultants — former Obama Administration National Security Advisor General James “Jim” Jones — to deliver an Earth Day address in the home state of the presidential caucuses at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

James Jones used his time on the podium to promote the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which another James — retired NASA climatologist James Hansen — once called a “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.”

“General James Jones…will discuss the benefits of the pipeline initiative, including more jobs, less dependence on foreign oil, and cheaper energy costs for Americans,” explained an April 15 Drake University press release promoting the event.

Gen. James Jones; Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Days after the Obama Administration decided to delay making a decision on Keystone XL North until after the 2014 mid-term elections, API went on the offensive, with Jones acting as the group’s surrogate.

API is using one of its numerous front groups that could factor most prominently during election season: the Iowa Energy Forum, chief sponsor and organizer of the event titled, “The Pipeline to National Security Discussion.”

Iowa Energy Forum is part of API‘s broader astroturf campaign called “America’s Energy Forum,” the privacy policy on its website reveals. In tiny print at the bottom of the Iowa Energy Forum website, it also says, “Sponsored by American Petroleum Institute.”

Image Credit: Iowa Energy Forum Website Screenshot

API paid the powerful Des Moines-based public relations (PR) firm LS2group to help them promote the Earth Day event.

An April 17 press release published in Des Moines’ Business Record lists Matt Bierl of LS2group as the contact person. And a glance at the guest list for the Facebook event page for Drake University event shows eight of the 22 attendees work at LS2group.

LS2group and the 2012 Elections

Mark Twain once quipped, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

In that vein, rewind back to 2012 and the activities by Iowa Energy Forum before the Iowa caucuses, with PR efforts overseen by LS2group.

Among other things, former Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty — who ran for president in the 2012 GOP primaries — had two campaign advisers that wore two hats, Charles Larson Jr. and Karen Slifka. Both of them also worked for LS2group in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, where they work full-time now.

Both Larson and Slifka denied they were coordinating Iowa Energy Forum’s agenda with the Pawlenty campaign in an interview with The Des Moines Register. But evidence suggests otherwise.

even though the ad doesn’t even mention energy issues,” explained an August 2011 article published on The Iowa Republican. “The people featured in the Pawlenty ad are Jennifer Cantrick and Maddison Abboud, two summer interns that were hired to work for the Iowa Energy Forum by Larson and Slifka’s firm.”

Further, Iowa Energy Forum also made an appearance at the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll held in Ames, Iowa and did so in style.

“An air-conditioned ‘igloo’ paid for by the Iowa Energy Forum will rise up from the straw poll campus in Ames next month, an attraction meant to woo Iowans’ affection with free treats, kids’ rides and displays about energy technology,” explained an article in The Des Moines Register. “The Republican Party of Iowa has received $100,000 from the organization.”

Drake Students Protest Event

In response to Jones’ jaunt to campus, Drake University students held a protest outside of his speaking engagement.

“There is no Planet B, this project won’t create jobs, it will raise gas prices in the Midwest, and none of these other issues matter if catastrophic climate change destroys the ability of the Earth to sustain human, plant, and animal life,” Drake students Jade Suganuma and John Noble said in a statement provided to DeSmogBlog.

Activist group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement provided DeSmogBlog with some photos of the protest and The Des Moines Register produced a short video segment on it, too.

Political Hot Potato Begins Anew

As with the 2012 campaign cycle, it appears Keystone XL will be tossed around in 2014 by those candidates on the take of Big Oil as a political hot potato in the aftermath of the Obama Administration’s election-year punt.

The Drake University event featuring Gen. James Jones, then, likely just portends far more to come. After all, campaign season has really only just begun.

===

facing so sue

ore than 500 people showed up at a public hearing held last week at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina to weigh in on proposed rules for fracking in the state. Commenters were overwhelmingly opposed to the controversial natural gas drilling technique -- but not for lack of creative effort on the part of the drilling industry.

About 20 people showed up at the hearing wearing turquoise T-shirts that said "Shale Yes North Carolina" -- and at least some of them were bused from a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem.

An activist with the anti-fracking Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League videotaped a conversation outside the hearing venue between Betsy Ashby, an activist with the Jackson County Coalition Against Fracking, and some of the men, who were not knowledgeable about fracking. One of the men who identifies himself as Christian Bradshaw of Winston-Salem and who has a Shale Yes T-shirt draped around his neck confesses in the video, "We did not know about none of this."

Ashby reports that before filming began, another man who was part of the group told her he was bused there from a Winston-Salem homeless shelter and came for the money. That same evening, a reporter with The Sylva Herald spoke with a man who was part of the Shale Yes group and said he was an Army veteran living at the Bethesda Center for the Homeless in Winston-Salem and came because he was told fracking would help the environment. He said he felt misled.

A man who appears to be leading the group of homeless men turns his ID badge over when Ashby attempts to read it. Watch the video here:

The back of the Shale Yes T-shirts were emblazoned with the name N.C. Energy Coalition (NCEC), a group that advocates for fracking and offshore oil and gas drilling. NCEC's website says the coalition is sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and gas industry. Among API's members are drilling giants BP America, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and Shell.

Also part of the NCEC are America's Natural Gas Alliance, the National Ocean Industries Association, N.C. Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business North Carolina chapter, N.C. Farm Bureau, Carolinas Associated General Contractors, American Council of Engineering Companies of North Carolina, the N.C. State Grange, Carolina Business Coalition, Consumer Energy Alliance Southeast, N.C. Energy Forum, Energy in Depth, and the N.C. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Two of those coalition members -- Energy in Depth (EID) and the N.C. Energy Forum (NCEF) -- also have close API ties. API along with other industry groups and drilling companies formed EID as part of a pro-drilling public-relations campaign and to fight environmental regulations, while the NCEF discloses on its website that it's sponsored by API. NCEF also offered free bus transportation to the public hearing from Asheville.

The chair of the NCEF is Algenon Cash, co-founder of Wharton Gladden, a Greensboro-based real estate investment banking firm. Cash, who is African-American, also serves as minority engagement director for the NCEF's parent organization, America's Energy Forum, an API initiative that has affiliates in 22 states besides North Carolina including Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Cash told the Winston-Salem Journal that he did not know about the plan to bus homeless people to the hearing.

The NCEF's executive director is Albert Eckel, co-founder of and partner with Eckel & Vaughan, a strategic communications and lobbying firm based in Raleigh. In addition to fracking, Eckel has been involved in promoting offshore oil and gas drilling in North Carolina. He spoke on behalf of API at a heated Kure Beach Town Council meeting in January, where hundreds of residents showed up to protest Mayor Dean Lambeth's decision to sign a letter endorsing seismic testing for oil and gas reserves off the North Carolina coast. The letter in question was written by America's Energy Forum.

According to a case study by Eckel & Vaughan, API wanted to make energy a top issue for North Carolina voters in the run-up to the 2012 election. API had previously tried to do that through public rallies, but its events had a limited reach and tended to attract audiences that already supported the group's agenda. So Eckel & Vaughan came up with a new approach for API:

The centerpiece of the campaign was the North Carolina Energy Forum Event Series. Instead of developing stand-alone rallies, we established a presence at existing family- friendly, non-political events around the state to reach a larger and more diverse coalition of voters. Voters were invited to spin the energy wheel, answer an energy trivia question, and join the Energy Forum.

"Eckel & Vaughan helped API reach, engage, and activate an entirely new voter population in North Carolina," said Tara Anderson, API's director for external mobilization.

Eckel said he too knew nothing the plan to bring homeless people to last week's fracking hearing -- and he told The Smoky Mountain News he took action when he heard about it:

"It was brought to our attention that someone who was homeless and was uneducated on the issue was part of the group that came, and when we heard about that we identified the gentleman and we asked him to not sit in the hearing."

UPDATE: The Bethesda Center for the Homeless gets support from the Power of One Fund, a charitable foundation created by Algenon Cash's company.

===

maine

w industries have been as successful at

achieving their public policy goals as the oil

industry. And few industries have been as aggressive as Big Oil in trying to give its political agenda

the gloss of public support.

In 2009, as the U.S. Congress considered long-overdue steps to reduce global warming pollution, the

American Petroleum Institute (API), Big Oil’s lobbying

arm in Washington, D.C., launched Energy Citizens—

a front group that used “astroturf” (or phony grassroots) tactics in an effort to convince legislators that

climate legislation was widely unpopular. The group’s

key tactic was to protest climate legislation at public

events held by members of Congress during the last

weeks of August 2009.

Ordinary citizens, however, had little to do with

“Energy Citizens.” As revealed by an e-mail leaked

from the desk of API’s president, the organization encouraged oil companies to recruit their current and

former employees, as well as vendors and contractors, to attend Energy Citizens rallies in key Congressional districts across 21 states.2

API’s president also

stated that API was prepared to bus employees of its

member companies to the rallies and provide logistical support, and that the group had hired “a highly

experienced events management company that has

produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns, corporations and interest groups.”3

API has used similar tactics to pressure policymakers

to support development of the Canadian tar sands,

and to transport diluted bitumen (or tar sands oil) via

the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. In 2012, for

example, API created another astroturf group called

“Iowa’s Energy Forum” in an attempt to manipulate

the Republican presidential primary race by planting

industry employees or other paid “activists” at candidates’ campaign stops to ask them to pledge support

for the pipeline and to hand out literature about

tar sands oil.4

Iowa’s Energy Forum is one of the 23

state affiliates of API’s “America’s Energy Forum,”

which claims to be “a non-partisan community of

concerned citizens committed to two goals – achieving energy security for our country, and holding our

elected officials more accountable in shaping energy

policies.”5

Now, South Portland is at the center of yet another

API-led astroturf campaign aimed at protecting the

oil industry’s goal of creating a U.S. East Coast shipping hub for Canadian tar sands oil. In 2013, Environment Maine joined with South Portland residents,

350 Maine, the Natural Resources Council of Maine,

and Toxics Action Center in an attempt to block the

oil industry from handling tar sands in South Portland. The effort utilized a proposed ordinance that

would have prohibited construction of a tar sands

terminal on the city’s waterfront. In response, API

and other Big Oil interests launched an extravagantly...

[### American Petroleum Institute Clones - frackorporation

WordPress.com

https://frackorporation.wordpress.com › 2015/06/15 › a...](https://frackorporation.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/american-petroleum-institute-clones/)

Jun 15, 2015 — An example of the use of “clones” is API's America's Energy Forum. It states “America's Energy Forum is a non-partisan community of ...

Inside the Big Oil Playbook

Toward Freedom

https://towardfreedom.org › EnvME_big_oil_scrn](https://towardfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/EnvME_big_oil_scrn.pdf)

PDF

tar sands oil.4 Iowa's Energy Forum is one of the 23 state affiliates of API's “America's Energy Forum,” which claims to be “a non-partisan community of.

[### Meet the gas industry front group exploiting the homeless ...

Facing South

https://www.facingsouth.org › 2014/09 › meet-the-gas-i...](https://www.facingsouth.org/2014/09/meet-the-gas-industry-front-group-exploiting-the-h.html)

Sep 18, 2014 — ... Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and gas industry. ... America's Energy Forum, an API initiative that has ...

[### Obama's offshore drilling plan meets heavy resistance ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › environment › jan › ku...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/21/kure-beach-north-carolina-offshore-drilling)

Jan 21, 2016 — ... oil and gas. The letter was penned by America's Energy Forum, a lobbying group backed by the American Petroleum Institute. Irate residents ...

[### Testing for Offshore Drilling Sets Off Debate

Coastal Review

https://coastalreview.org › Archives](https://coastalreview.org/2014/01/testing-for-offshore-drilling-sets-off-debate/)

Jan 21, 2014 — API estimates that the equivalent of four million barrels of oil ... He attended a handful of seminars hosted by America's Energy Forum, a ...

[### Earth Day Greenwash

CounterPunch.org

https://www.counterpunch.org › 2014/04/23 › earth-da...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/23/earth-day-greenwash/)

Apr 23, 2014 — Iowa Energy Forum is part of API's broader astroturf campaign called “America's Energy Forum,” the privacy policy on its website reveals. In ...

[### THE NEW MEXICO OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY AND ITS ...

Common Cause

https://www.commoncause.org › sites › 2020/03](https://www.commoncause.org/new-mexico/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2020/03/Oil-and-Gas-Report-Final.pdf)

PDF

... oil and gas ... America's Energy Forum (American Petroleum Inst). American Gas Association. America's Natural Gas Alliance (may have merged with API in 2016).

81 pages

[### The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Drilling

Coastal Review

https://coastalreview.org › Archives](https://coastalreview.org/2015/02/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-drilling/)

Feb 20, 2015 — If you never heard of it, you're forgiven. It is one of 27 state groups that are part of a larger effort known as America's Energy Forum ...

[### Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets in New York State

Amazon.com

https://s3.amazonaws.com › files › original › Dee...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/attachments.readmedia.com/files/55339/original/Deep_Drilling_Deep_Pockets_2014--FinalVersion.pdf?1389624959)

PDF

... Petroleum Institute. At the state level, the “America's Energy Forum” campaign has created separate state websites for 26 states, including. New York's ...

[### Nevada Energy Forum Facebook

https://m.facebook.com › ... › Nevada Energy Forum](https://m.facebook.com/p/Nevada-Energy-Forum-100069244400252/)

Everyone is talking about the Renewable Fuel Standard, learn more about the RFS and join the discussion on. America's Energy Forum now! #RFS #E15

[### Fracking: Further Investigations into the Environmental ... google.com

https://books.google.com › books](https://books.google.com/books?id=eSJgDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT580&lpg=PT580&dq=%22america%27s+energy+forum%22+api+petroleum&source=bl&ots=SkGzuAWQb_&sig=ACfU3U0wIiZowkihFwBTHMgEvUh0bkcn7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimkND14fSFAxVs4MkDHbXXB2M4ChDoAXoECAMQAw)

Michael D. Holloway · 2018 · ‎Science

... America's Energy Forum part of the American Petroleum ... (API) for proppant sand that could be used for ... Petroleum & Other Liquids, Eia. gov, Retrieved Oct. 31 ...

[### Industry Shadows the PA Pipeline Infrastructure Taskforce (PITF)

WordPress.com

https://frackorporation.wordpress.com › 2015/07/15 › i...](https://frackorporation.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/industry-shadows-the-pa-pipeline-infrastructure-taskforce-pitf-part-1/)

Jul 15, 2015 — An example of the use of “clones” is API's America's Energy Forum. It states “America's Energy Forum is a non-partisan community of ...

[### Forging Grassroots Mobilization ULB

https://dipot.ulb.ac.be › bitstream › Dissertation](https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/284008/3/Dissertation.pdf)

PDF

America's Energy Forum. Breast Cancer Action ... Petroleum Institute (API). The objective of EC is ... greenhouse gas emissions of shale gas, natural gas, coal, and ...

[### Fracking : Further Investigations into the Environmental ...

dokumen.pub

https://dokumen.pub › ...](https://dokumen.pub/fracking-further-investigations-into-the-environmental-consideration-and-operations-of-hydraulic-fracturing-2nbsped-9781119363422.html)

Figure 16.46 API gravity of oil vs density and classification of oil based on API gravity. ... Petroleum geochemistry and oil-oil ... America's Energy Forum part of ...

---