citizens to protect PA jobs

<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/08/26/fti-consulting-fossil-fuels-work-climate-disinformation-house-natural-resources-subpoena/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.desmog.com/2022/08/26/fti-consulting-fossil-fuels-work-climate-disinformation-house-natural-resources-subpoena/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">a powerful Washington, D.C., consulting and PR firm, with a long history of waging influence campaigns for fossil fuel corporations, is under scrutiny by a congressional committee as part of a broader investigation into the decades-long efforts by the oil industry and its allies to block action on the climate crisis.<a href="https://www.desmog.com/fti-consulting/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">FTI Consulting</a>, a billion-dollar firm that has a global presence, is not a household name. But it has been instrumental in an array of oil industry campaigns meant to <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/02/07/fti-consulting-fossil-fuels-pr-energy-in-depth/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">sow doubt about climate change</a>, attack climate scientists, and play up the benefits of fossil fuels.  Last year, a House committee<a href="https://khanna.house.gov/media/in-the-news/house-committee-schedules-2nd-hearing-oil-and-gas-industrys-role-climate" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> held hearings</a> in which members of Congress questioned oil executives on their role in peddling climate disinformation. But in June of this year, a separate committee, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent<a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.06.12%20Grijalva%20Porter%20letters%20to%20PR%20firms_combined.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> letters</a> to five PR firms — Story Partners, DDC Advocacy, Blue Advertising, Singer Associates, and FTI Consulting — requesting all documents related to their work running influence or marketing campaigns for oil, gas, and coal companies and their trade groups. The PR industry has been a critical but often overlooked player in the history of climate denial, as DeSmog has<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/11/30/pr-industry-major-overlooked-influence-climate-politics-brulle/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> reported</a>. “For decades, fossil fuel companies and associations have engaged in public relations campaigns to downplay the threat of climate change and the central role fossil fuels have played in causing it,” the committee’s June letter stated. “Fossil fuel companies and trade groups have partnered with PR firms to use a variety of questionable tactics to undermine legislative and regulatory environmental initiatives.”Two months after the request, FTI still had not turned over documents. The Committee grew impatient with the stonewalling, and on August 17, it fired off another<a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2022-08-17%20RG%20&%20KP%20to%20FTI%20re%20warning%20subpoena.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;"> letter</a>, stating that “FTI has not wavered in its blanket refusal to provide even the most basic information about its clients or descriptions of the grounds for its refusal beyond the vaguest assertions of confidentiality and privileges.”It then went on to warn: “FTI has provided no indication that this obstruction of congressional oversight will come to an end voluntarily. Unless FTI Consulting produces all responsive documents by 5:00 PM on August 24, 2022, the Committee will be forced to consider all of its options for obtaining this information, including, but not limited to, authorizing and issuing a subpoena.”“Through its past client work and present refusal to cooperate with an ongoing congressional investigation, FTI Consulting is engaging in climate obstruction,” Christine Arena, a former VP at Edelman, who has tried to expose the PR industry’s role working on behalf of its fossil fuel clients, said in a statement to DeSmog. “Refusing to cooperate with the House Natural Resources Committee suggests that FTI knows it has something to hide, yet believes it is beyond reproach. Its flagrant disregard for the negative consequences of disinformation undermines the reputation of the PR and ad industry as a whole.”<h2 id="h-a-permanent-campaign-strategy" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">A “Permanent Campaign Strategy”</h2>FTI’s work for its fossil fuel clients goes far beyond creating billboards, online ads, or TV commercials, as a run-of-the-mill PR firm might do.“You only hire a PR company when you have a problem to solve. And you hire an FTI when you’ve got real problems. You need dirty tricks. This is not just like selling a hamburger,” Kert Davies, founder and director of Climate Investigations Center, told DeSmog. “This is designing an influence campaign. It’s like designing a whole intelligence operation.”The head of FTI’s Strategic Communications for the Americas is a man named Brian Kennedy, who was the communications strategist for drilling contractor Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Kennedy, who “is best known for his expertise in crisis management,” as his<a href="https://www.fticonsulting.com/experts/brian-kennedy" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> bio</a> on the FTI website says, headed up Transocean’s PR work during the disaster and in the litigation that followed. The campaigns waged by FTI for its fossil fuel clients are extensive and wide-ranging. As the New York Times<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> reported</a> in 2020, FTI helped set up regional astroturf websites for its oil industry clients, such as Texans for Natural Gas, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, Western Wire, and the Arctic Energy Center. The websites artificially created the appearance of grassroots political energy, and shared misleading “news” that downplayed environmental damage from fracking while simultaneously promoting the benefits of pro-drilling policies.<figure class="wp-block-pullquote" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 3em 0px; text-align: center; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box;">“FTI remains a major, major contractor to the fossil fuel industry. They run front groups, fake news channels, they pose as reporters, they write reports about activists.”<cite style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;" /><div style="text-align: left;">– Kert Davies</div></blockquote></figure>The most high-profile climate denial project FTI is involved in is <a href="https://www.desmog.com/energy-in-depth/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Energy In Depth</a> (EID), a pro-fracking constellation of websites that spreads industry talking points. Ostensibly a project linked to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, EID — which promotes fracking, attacks climate scientists and environmental activists, and plays up the benefits of fossil fuels — was jointly launched with FTI back in 2009.The website wasn’t just a project of small and medium-sized independent oil producers. In 2011, DeSmog<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2011/02/17/energy-depth-was-created-major-oil-and-gas-companies-according-industry-memo/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> revealed</a> that Energy In Depth had the early backing of some of the largest oil companies, including BP, Anadarko, Halliburton, Chevron, Shell, XTO Energy (owned by ExxonMobil), and several other oil companies and trade associations. Without that financial backing from major oil companies, the project “would not be possible,” according to a 2009<a href="https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/HFUnderFire.pdf" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> memo</a> DeSmog found.In 2019, Huffington Post<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-denial-energy-in-depth_n_5df7eff6e4b0ae01a1e59371" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;"> reported</a> that the Independent Petroleum Association of America spent close to $2 million annually on Energy In Depth. That amounts to roughly a<a href="https://climateinvestigations.org/exxon-and-friends-still-funding-climate-denial-and-obstruction-through-ipaa-fti-energy-in-depth/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;"> fifth</a> of the trade group’s budget.“We know some of the contracts FTI has with various trade associations,” Davies said. “But the truth is, we don’t know the half of it.”Earlier this year, DeSmog published <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/02/07/fti-consulting-fossil-fuels-pr-energy-in-depth/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">a 2015 FTI presentation</a> in which the firm bragged about its deep connections with the oil industry and trumpeted its work on behalf of its fossil fuel clients. FTI’s presentation highlighted its work, through Energy In Depth, at “debunking” peer-reviewed studies that link fracking to water contamination, as well as providing “facts” to media about how methane emissions from oil and gas were in decline.<figure class="wp-block-image size-full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A screenshot from FTI Consulting’s 2015 presentation.]</figcaption></figure>Energy In Depth acts as “a public-facing clearinghouse” and a “permanent campaign strategy” for the oil industry, Melissa Aronczyk, a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, told DeSmog in an email. “FTI works for oil and gas clients by trying to shut down the conversation about climate-related problems before they happen – or especially, before they become a problem for their clients,” Aronczyk said.The firm took the lessons learned with Energy In Depth around the world. FTI<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190920025421/https:/www.fticonsulting.com/_{/media/Files/us-files/insights/reports/managing-aboveground-risks-experience-from-the-united-states.pdf}" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;"> boasted</a> at an industry conference in Brazil in 2014 that Energy In Depth had the ability “to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”  In another instance that has not previously been reported, FTI gave a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22267372-fti-consulting-corporate-overview" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">presentation</a> at a 2012 industry conference in Canada, in which it shared its experience “generating pro-gas news” in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, and how the firm intended to do the same in Quebec. At the time, the gas industry was facing public<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/industry-aims-to-win-support-for-quebec-shale-gas/article4180268/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;"> opposition</a> to fracking in the Canadian province, and FTI, via Energy In Depth, wanted to shift public opinion in the industry’s favor. That included proactively creating pro-gas news in the media, as well as a sponsored trip for Quebec farmers to travel to fossil fuel-rich Alberta to learn about how shale gas is produced. <figure class="wp-block-image size-full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A screenshot of a 2016 Earth Day message from Energy In Depth, a fracking industry project of FTI Consulting and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.]</figcaption></figure>“FTI remains a major, major contractor to the fossil fuel industry. They run front groups, fake news channels, they pose as reporters, they write reports about activists,” Davies said. “They do all manner of strategic communications work to defend the honor of fossil fuel companies and trade associations.” The House Committee has also sent a letter to a separate PR firm called Story Partners. Established in January 2010 by well-known PR executive Gloria Dittus, Story Partners has also run multiple influence campaigns for the fossil fuel industry in recent years. The firm led the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">American Petroleum Institute</a>’s <a href="https://storypartnersdc.com/case-study-american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Vote for Energy campaign</a>, which sought to equate drilling for oil and gas with jobs. Story Partners also ran campaigns for <a href="https://storypartnersdc.com/portfolio-item/case-study-venture-global/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Venture Global LNG</a>, a Gulf Coast LNG export company. And it also helped Noble Energy <a href="https://storypartnersdc.com/case-study-noble-energy/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">defeat </a>a ballot measure in Colorado that would have increased setback distances between fracking operations and homes and businesses, a measure that would have encroached upon Noble Energy’s assets. As it happens, Gloria Dittus previously founded Dittus Communications, which was acquired by FTI in 2005. In 2009, the Energy In Depth website was registered by “FD Dittus Communications,” a unit of FTI, according to the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/WHOIS-History-Report-energyindepth.org.pdf" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">website’s registration</a>. According to a Story Partners spokesperson, “Gloria Dittus left FTI Consulting in early 2009 after the 2005 sale of Dittus Communications was finalized to Financial Dynamics (FD) and fully integrated into FTI Consulting at the end of 2008. Any Energy in Depth work was outside her tenure and likely launched following her leave from FTI.”  Story Partners did not respond to questions from DeSmog about their role running climate disinformation campaigns for fossil fuel companies.   Arena said that FTI is among a small group of “pariah” PR firms that “do not represent the majority of the PR and ad industry, but they are our industry’s biggest reputational liability.” <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 550px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" /></div></figure>[twt ca]"But the bigger point here is that these are deceptive practices that no ethical marketing firm should engage in, for any client. They muddy public understanding and suppress the truth by design and should therefore be repudiated by the PR and ad industry at large,” she added. “The silver lining here is that this moment of reckoning has the potential to change the communications industry for the better.”Ultimately, FTI’s mission has been “to preserve the reputation of the fossil fuel industry as it has come under pressure around climate change,” Davies said. Referring to FTI’s direct involvement in spreading climate disinformation, he added: “In doing so, you are now part of the effort to hide the truth.”In a statement to DeSmog, Matthew E. Bashalany, a spokesperson for FTI Consulting, said: “Our company takes the Subcommittee’s request very seriously.  We continue to be in regular contact with subcommittee staff as we progress our efforts to be responsive to the chair’s request in a manner consistent with our legal obligations to preserve our clients’ confidentiality and privileges. FTI Consulting is called upon by clients in dozens of industries globally, including those involved in traditional, renewable and alternative energy development, and we are committed to ensuring that all professional services we deliver align with our firmwide position to support action to address climate change.” It is unclear what will happen next, but the House Committee could subpoena documents or have executives appear before the congressional panel. The August 24 deadline came and went, and now the firm faces a potential subpoena. In an email to DeSmog on August 25, a day after the deadline, a spokesperson for the Committee said: “The Committee has not yet gotten an adequate response from FTI.”Another spokesperson for the Committee told DeSmog, “stay tuned.” </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>
</div><div>How One Firm Drove Influence Campaigns Nationwide for Big Oil</div><div>FTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that can appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.</div><div>
</div><div>The headquarters of FTI, which has a prominent role in influence campaigns supporting fossil fuels, in Washington.]</div><div>
</div><div>By Hiroko Tabuchi</div><div>Nov. 11, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market.</div><div>
</div><div>All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.</div><div>
</div><div>On closer look, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels.</div><div>
</div><div>...An examination of FTI’s work provides an anatomy of the oil industry’s efforts to influence public opinion in the face of increasing political pressure over climate change, an issue likely to grow in prominence, given President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledge to pursue bolder climate regulations. The campaigns often obscure the industry’s role, portraying pro-petroleum groups as grass-roots movements.As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns....</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><blockquote>FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.</blockquote><blockquote>The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group [ipaa?] that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published. <div>
</div><div>This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.

Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. [FTI lies in its own defense][1] “We hide behind no one,” he said.

“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatory the general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”</div></blockquote><div><div>
</div><div>This is just a reminder that the real war in America is over winning hearts and minds. The goal for rich and powerful people and interests is gaining and maintaining wealth and power. The goal for the masses, or the mob as the radical right sees it, is a better deal based on less economic inequality and special interest over public interest influence (i.e., money and power). </div><div>
</div><div>This is an all-out war of dark free speech (lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation, self-serving motivated reasoning, etc.) against the masses. Unfortunately, dark free speech is more powerful than honest free speech. The playing field is heavily tilted in favor of the rich and powerful as it usually is and has been throughout history.</div></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">full txt</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">fTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that can appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market.All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.On closer look, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels.An examination of FTI’s work provides an anatomy of the oil industry’s efforts to influence public opinion in the face of increasing political pressure over climate change, an issue likely to grow in prominence, given President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledge to pursue bolder climate regulations. The campaigns often obscure the industry’s role, portraying pro-petroleum groups as grass-roots movements.As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns.FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published.This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. “We hide behind no one,” he said.“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatory the general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said he would not comment on the findings because he considered the reporter to be biased against the fossil fuel industry. Kathleen Sgamma, a spokeswoman for the Western Energy Alliance, which funds Western Wire, said her group had been open about its partnership with FTI and about its approach to fracking.The business of corporate consulting and public relations is vast, and countless companies routinely provide media outreach, public messaging, crisis management and other services. FTI is among them, and it has taken up an important role in helping promote the messages of the fossil fuel industry.Those messages have sometimes run counter to the scientific consensus that the world must burn less oil and gas to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Texans for Natural Gas, for example, has downplayed the magnitude of emissions of methane, the prime component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas production.FTI’s work is the latest chapter in a long history of campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, political strategists and public relations professionals to influence climate policy. The industry has faced tough headwinds this year, in particular, as demand for oil and gas has tumbled amid the pandemic.Founded in 1982 in Annapolis, Md., as a firm that provided expert witnesses and presentations for litigation, FTI has grown into a multinational firm that employs almost 5,000 people in 28 countries. Its business spans a wide range of services, from business consulting to crisis communications.One of FTI’s largest shareholders, the investment firm BlackRock, won kudos this year for saying it would put environmental sustainability at the center of its investment approach. Main Street Investors, one of FTI’s projects, has spoken out against shareholders who press corporations on climate and other issues — an effort that would seem to be in conflict with BlackRock’s stance.Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said the firm’s work “in no way contravenes — nor is it misaligned with” BlackRock’s statement. BlackRock declined to comment.‘Do something big’On a clear day in July, a plane soared over America’s biggest oil and gas field with a banner trailing behind it that read: “Thank you essential oil and gas workers.”“We wanted to do something big, and what’s bigger than an airplane with a banner?” Elizabeth Caldwell of Texans for Natural Gas said in a statement. The group, which describes itself as a local organization representing “citizens and officeholders, business owners and students” with more than 400,000 supporters, is funded by oil and gas companies including XTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary, according to its website.The statement identifies Ms. Caldwell as “a spokeswoman for the grass-roots organization.” She is also a director at FTI, according to her LinkedIn page. (There was nothing unusual about an organization receiving corporate support and public relations help, FTI’s spokesman said.)Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of the Permian Basin oil field, and written opinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women, two of whom are represented with stock photos and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines.FTI’s Mr. Bashalany acknowledged the use of the stock photos and said adjustments would be made to avoid confusion. He said the supporters and testimonials were real.Texans for Natural Gas has also shared misleading information about greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, it issued a study inaccurately claiming that emissions of methane had decreased significantly in the heart of Texas oil country at the height of the fracking boom.To arrive at that conclusion, scientists say, the report tallied data from the Environmental Protection Agency that the agency itself states does not represent overall emissions: The numbers, which are reported by the energy industry about a limited number of compressor stations and other facilities, do not include emissions from the area’s thousands of wells. The data are “too low by at least a factor of two, and quite likely more,” said Robert W. Howarth, a professor at Cornell University who has researched methane emissions.FTI stood by the report, calling its findings “on track with broader trends in Texas’ oil fields.”Texans for Natural Gas is just one campaign run with the help of FTI employees. Others include: Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, the Liberty Energy Project and the Arctic Energy Center, according to interviews, internal documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites.Another such organization, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said of FTI in a statement: “We are proud to have them as a contract partner, especially when it comes to direct and transparent media support.”‘Susan,’ the fake Facebook userWithin FTI, a group called StratCom, short for Strategic Communications, focuses on industry messaging campaigns. In the United States, the group is led by Brian Kennedy, former press secretary for the office of the House minority leader and a former spokesman for Transocean, the drilling contractor involved in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.The StratCom group studied environmental protesters on behalf of the driller Apache Energy. Apache was seeking to drill near Balmorhea State Park in Texas and was concerned that protesters were planning camps similar to those set up to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to two people with direct knowledge of the work.One FTI document prepared for Apache, dated Jan. 25, 2017, included a link to a list of groceries and camp supplies compiled by organizers, which the document said provided a hint of the proposed camp’s size.The fictitious Facebook profile — of a Texas woman named Susan McDonald who likes ice cream, the movie “Annie” and her local farmers’ market — was also intended to help FTI keep tabs on activists, former FTI employees said. The “friends” list on the fake profile, which remained present on Facebook as of Wednesday, includes one current and one former FTI employee.Mr. Bashalany of FTI said, “A Facebook profile was created by a former employee to monitor social media anonymously. This was wrong, and it is against our policy.”Apache declined to comment on the substance of the reporting.StratCom employees also studied and developed strategies designed to influence public discourse, according to five former employees. An internal document dated Nov. 20, 2015, laid out various techniques. The “Semantic Nitpicker,” the document explained, “asks an endless series of questions.” The “Dog Typing on a Keyboard” uses “very poor grammar, spelling and punctuation and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it hard to read.”A successful effort, the document advised, might use several commenters, “each with an assigned role.”Mr. Bashalany said senior managers were never aware of the document and it “never informed any activities or approaches to social or digital media engagement of any kind.”Other campaigns used common techniques, buying social media ads to target people with interests in Alaska and energy and steer them toward the Arctic Energy Center, an industry-funded site that promoted drilling in the waters off Alaska and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.Exxon was a backer of the Arctic Energy Center, according to documents and people who worked on the project. An FTI presentation prepared for Exxon, dated July 13, 2016, showed Exxon was scheduled to spend $120,000 over six months across social-media platforms, a draft budget dated the previous month shows.The Arctic Energy Center’s website has since been taken down.Climate lawsuit spurs actionIn 2018, as New York City moved to sue Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies, claiming that the companies had defrauded shareholders by downplaying climate change, a team within FTI’s StratCom group prepared a pushback.The task at hand was to produce an article and tweets for Energy In Depth, the pro-industry site. The target: Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who was under fire at the time for his SUV use.According to an internal planning calendar, one tweet should show “Bill de Blasio in a giant SUV, wearing shirt that says WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, or maybe a speech bubble with WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS!”New York lost that court battle.According to its website, Energy In Depth is a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade organization representing hundreds of mostly smaller oil and gas producers. FTI employees familiar with the project said the site’s content had direction from Exxon. FTI employees also wrote much of the content published on Energy In Depth.In a statement, an Independent Petroleum Association of America senior vice president, Jeff Eshelman, said “support for Energy In Depth comes from a wide segment of industry.”Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said, “Any contention that it is supported in whole or even substantially in part by one company is categorically false.” He said FTI staff members reach out to companies, academics and others for input, “not the other way around.”Energy In Depth, along with the other industry-funded site that FTI helps run, Western Wire, has been central to the fossil fuel industry’s championing of fracking. Both sites, staffed by FTI writers, have pushed back against the #ExxonKnew campaign waged by environmental activists, which claims that the company knew about climate change for decades yet blocked action to confront it.‘This is really fishy’In spring 2018, Nell Minow noticed a tweet from a new group, one she had never heard of, seeming to support small investors. Ms. Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge, a firm that advises investors, and a longtime advocate for mom-and-pop investors, was excited.“I thought, ‘Great, a shareholder group! I need to know about them,’” she said. “Then I started looking into them and thought, this is really fishy.”Though the group, Main Street Investors, described itself as representing small investors, it was started by a number of industry organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers. Main Street has criticized the ability of pension funds and other powerful investors to influence companies’ policies on matters like climate and the environment.Working for the National Association of Manufacturers, FTI produced a study arguing that activist shareholders tend not to help shareholder value. The report’s five authors were employees of the consulting firm Compass Lexecon, a wholly owned FTI subsidiary. The Main Street Investors website is now offline.FTI also worked with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the industry group associated with Energy In Depth, to start DivestmentFacts.com, which warns that divesting from fossil fuels — a growing trend among university endowments and pension funds — could cost those institutions millions of dollars. At least six academic papers published on Divestmentfacts.com were by professors who, in addition to their university jobs, were also working for Compass Lexecon, the FTI subsidiary.FTI monitored Ms. Minow after she publicly said Main Street Investors was using “inflammatory language, unsupported assertions, and out-and-out falsehoods” to spread its message. Internal memos show FTI employees compiled reports on her background, noting, among other things, that she was once dubbed “the C.E.O. killer” by Fortune magazine for her record of ousting underperforming executives. FTI also tracked her tweets in a spreadsheet.FTI’s Mr. Bashalany said that no attempt had been made to hide any of the report authors’ affiliation. He said neither FTI through its Compass Lexecon subsidiary nor its clients “had any influence whatsoever over the form or direction” of the reports. FTI staff conducted “some basic biographic research” of Ms. Minow, he said, “but that’s it — we did nothing else.”This month, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the oil and gas lobby group, announced it had launched a major initiative to support oil and gas companies looking into adopting environmental, social and governance strategies. In its announcement, the group stressed the importance of efforts that were “authentic and effective.”Its partner in the endeavor is FTI.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">===</div>