FF CEO bak

see BIG 4 FF

see tax dodge / subsidies

bak here, much new

see shareholder bak

see engine no one

see greenwash ccs algae

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LOTS OF INFO CCI

Slippery Six

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AN PRO P 3 25

Dave Nershi was finalizing a report he’d worked on for months when an ominous email appeared in his inbox.

Nershi had worked as a general engineer for the Internal Revenue Service for about nine months. He was one of hundreds of specialists inside the IRS who used their technical expertise — Nershi’s background is in chemical and nuclear engineering — to audit byzantine tax returns filed by large corporations and wealthy individuals. Until recently, the IRS had a shortage of these experts, and many complex tax returns went unscrutinized. With the help of people like Nershi, the IRS could recoup millions and sometimes more than a billion dollars on a single tax return.

But on Feb. 20, three months shy of finishing his probationary period and becoming a full-time employee, the IRS fired him. As a Navy veteran, Nershi loved working in public service and had hoped he might be spared from any mass firings. The unsigned email said he’d been fired for performance, even though he had received high marks from his manager.

As for the report he was finalizing, it would have probably recouped many times more than the low-six-figure salary he earned. The report would now go unfinished.

Nershi agreed that the federal government could be more lean and efficient, but he was befuddled by the decision to fire scores of highly skilled IRS specialists like him who, even by the logic of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, were an asset to the government. “By firing us, you’re going to cut down on how much revenue the country brings in,” Nershi said in an interview. “This was not about saving money.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his billionaire top adviser Musk have launched an all-out blitz to cut costs and shrink the federal government. Trump, Musk and other administration leaders not only say the U.S. government is bloated and inefficient, but they also see it as a bastion of political opposition, calling it the “deep state.”

The strategy used by the Trump administration to reduce the size of government has been indiscriminate and far-reaching, meant to oust civil servants as fast as possible in as many agencies as possible while demoralizing the workers that remain on the job. As Russell Vought, director of the Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget and an architect of Project 2025, put it in a speech first reported by ProPublica and Documented: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

One tactic used by the administration is to target probationary workers who are easier to fire because they have fewer civil service protections. Probationary, in this context, means only that the employees are new to their roles, not that they’re newbies or underperformers. ProPublica found that the latest IRS firings swept up highly skilled and experienced probationary workers who had recently joined the government or had moved to a new position from a different agency.

In late February, the Trump administration began firing more than 6,000 IRS employees. The agency has been hit especially hard, current and former employees said, because it spent 2023 preparing to hire thousands of new enforcement and customer service personnel and had only started hiring and training those workers at any scale in 2024, meaning many of those new employees were still in their probationary period. Nershi was hired as part of this wave, in the spring of last year. The boost came after Congress had underfunded the agency for much of the past decade, which led to chronic staffing shortages, dismal customer service and plummeting audit rates, especially for taxpayers who earned $500,000 or more a year.

The administration doesn’t appear to want to stop there. It is drafting plans to cut its entire workforce in half, according to reports.

Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12, depending on how much income the taxpayer declared. A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

John Koskinen, who led the IRS from 2013 to 2017, said in an interview that the widespread cuts to the IRS make no sense if Trump and Musk genuinely care about fiscal responsibility and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. “What I’ve never understood is if you’re interested in the deficit and curbing it, why would you cut back on the revenue side?” Koskinen said.

Neither the IRS nor the White House responded to requests for comment. Last month, Musk asked his followers on X, the platform he owns, whether they would “like @DOGE to audit the IRS,” referring to the U.S. DOGE Service team of lawyers and engineers led by him. DOGE employees have sought to gain access to IRS taxpayer data in an attempt to “shine a light on the fraud,” according to a White House spokesman.

For this story, ProPublica interviewed more than a dozen current and former IRS employees. Most of those people worked in the agency’s Large Business and International (LB&I) division, which audits companies with more than $10 million in assets and high-income individuals. Within the IRS, the LB&I division has the highest return on investment, and the widespread cuts there put in stark relief the human and financial cost of the Trump administration’s approach to slashing government functions in the name of saving money and combating waste and fraud.

According to current and former LB&I employees, the taxpayers they audited included pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies, construction firms and major technology corporations, as well as more obscure private corporations and high-net-worth individuals. None of the IRS employees who spoke to ProPublica would disclose specific taxpayer information, citing privacy laws.

With the recent influx in funding, employees said, the leadership of LB&I had pushed to hire not only more revenue agents and appraisers but also specialized employees such as petroleum engineers, computer scientists and experts in corporate partnerships. These employees, usually known internally as general engineers, consulted on complicated tax returns and helped determine whether taxpayers properly claimed certain credits or other tax breaks.

This work happened in cases where major companies claimed a hefty research tax credit, which is a legitimate avenue for seeking tax relief but can also be improperly used. Highly skilled appraisers have also recouped huge savings in cases involving notorious tax schemes, such as what’s known as a syndicated conservation easement — a break abused so often that both congressional Democrats and Republicans have criticized it, while the IRS has included it on its list of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams.

“These are cases where revenue agents don't have the technical expertise,” said one IRS engineer who is still employed at the agency and who, like other IRS employees, wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. “That’s what we do. We are working on things where expertise is absolutely necessary.”

Current and former IRS employees told ProPublica that the agency had expended a huge amount of resources to recruit and train new specialists in recent years. Vanessa Rollins, an engineer in the IRS’ Chicago office who was recently fired, said probationary employees in LB&I outnumbered full-time staffers in her office. Much of her team’s work centered on training and mentorship for the waves of new employees — most of whom were recently fired. “The entire office had been oriented around bringing us in and getting us trained,” Rollins said.

These specialists said they earned higher salaries compared with many other IRS employees. But the money these specialists recouped as a result of their work was orders of magnitude greater than what they cost. The current engineer told ProPublica that they estimated their team of less than 10 people had brought in $5 billion in adjusted tax returns over the past four years. (By contrast, a Wall Street Journal analysis published on Feb. 22 found that DOGE had found savings of $2.6 billion over the next year, far less than the $55 billion claimed by DOGE itself.)

A former LB&I revenue agent added that their work didn’t always lead to the IRS recouping money from a taxpayer; sometimes, they audited a return only to find that the taxpayer was owed more money than they had expected.

“The IRS’ mission is to treat taxpayers fairly so they pay the tax they legally owe, including making sure they’re not paying any more than legally required,” the former revenue agent said.

Notwithstanding its return on investment and the sense of duty espoused by its employees, LB&I was hit especially hard by the most recent wave of firings, employees said. According to the current IRS engineer, the Trump administration appears to have eliminated the jobs of about 120 LB&I engineers out of a total of roughly 260. The person said they had heard more terminations were expected soon. The acting IRS chief and a longtime agency leader, Doug O’Donnell, announced his retirement amid the firings.

Several LB&I employees told ProPublica that the mass layoffs had been ordered from a very high level and that several layers of managers had no idea they were coming or what to expect. The cuts, employees said, did not appear to distinguish between employees with certain specialties or performance levels, but instead focused solely on whether they were on probationary status. “It didn't matter the skill set. If they were under a year, they got cut,” another current LB&I employee told ProPublica.

The current and former IRS employees said the firings and the administration’s deferred resignation offer led to situations that have wiped out decades of experience and institutional knowledge that can’t easily be replaced. Jack McCumber was an LB&I senior appraiser in Seattle who got fired about six weeks before the end of his probationary status. He said not only did he lose his job, but the veteran appraiser who was his mentor took early retirement. McCumber and his mentor often worked on syndicated conservative easement cases that could recoup tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. “They’re pushing out the experienced people, and they’re pushing out people like me,” McCumber said. “It’s a double whammy.”

The result, employees and experts said, will mean corporations and wealthy individuals face far less scrutiny when they file their tax returns, leading to more risk-taking and less money flowing into the U.S. treasury.

“Large businesses and higher-wealth individuals are where you have the most sophisticated taxpayers and the most sophisticated tax preparers and lawyers who are attuned to pushing the envelope as much as they can,” said Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner. “When those audits stop because there isn't anybody to do them, people will say, ‘Hey, I did that last year, I'll do it again this year.’”

“When you hamstring the IRS,” Koskinen added. “it’s just a tax cut for tax cheats.”

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executives-due-at-gas-price-hearing-gave-1-million-to-parties-candidates

APR 2022

The six oil and gas executives scheduled to testify on price gouging before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday morning have together given more than $1 million in personal contributions to candidates and political parties since the 1990s, skewing heavily toward Republican causes, federal records show.

A CQ Roll Call review of Federal Election Commission filings on the six executives found Scott Sheffield, who is CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources and a board member of the Williams Companies, a natural gas company, has given the most of the group: about $469,000 to political campaigns and committees since 1993.

Of that total, he gave approximately $346,000 to Republican candidates for offices or GOP-aligned committees, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Chevron CEO Michael Wirth gave about $255,000 since 2003, while Exxon CEO Darren Woods donated roughly $197,000 since 2014 and Richard Muncrief, the president and CEO of Devon Energy, contributed approximately $115,000 to federal candidates and political campaigns since 2012.

Donations from the other two witnesses, BP America Inc. Chairman and President David Lawler (about $25,700 since 2017) and Shell USA President Gretchen Watkins ($6,700 since 2012), are far smaller than what the other four witnesses gave.

All six are witnesses in a hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday on price gouging and gasoline prices, a subject that has drawn significant Capitol Hill attention following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and multiple planned sales of U.S.-held crude oil from the country’s national reserve of petroleum.

Four of the six executives — Woods of Exxon, Lawler of BP, Wirth of Chevron and Watkins of Shell — appeared in October before a House Oversight subcommittee to answer questions about the role of large oil companies in muddling the science of climate change.

President Joe Biden unveiled a series of steps Friday that he said would lower gasoline prices, including the release of 1 million barrels of oil a day on average for 180 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the full committee, said Monday afternoon that H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, will appear as a GOP witness at the Wednesday hearing.

Spokespeople for Democrats on the committee did not respond when asked what criteria were used to call these six witnesses.

Taken together, the executives have given about $1.10 million since the 1990s, CQ Roll Call found in its review, which used all available FEC data.

Personal contributions

CQ Roll Call reviewed only personal contributions and did not consider donations the executives’ companies made through political action committees, or PACs, in federal campaigns.

While none of the executives appear to have donated to members of the subcommittee, some have donated to several of the election campaigns of members of the full Energy and Commerce Committee.

Shell’s Watkins has given $5,700 to Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Texas, since 2020, while Lawler gave $2,000 to committees associated with Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., in 2018.

“Shell does not make political contributions,” said company spokesman Curtis Smith. “Any contributions made by Gretchen Watkins to an individual candidate would be considered personal in nature, as would her rationale for doing so.”

Josh Hicks, a BP spokesman, declined to comment. Lawler has given about $26,000 since 2017, but about $22,000 of that went to his parent company’s political action committee.

“Chevron employees at all levels of the company are free to participate in the political process, including through donations to candidates of both major U.S. parties,” Chevron spokesperson Braden Reddall said.

Representatives of the other three companies did not respond to emails and a voicemail seeking comment.

In 2015, Sheffield gave $10,800 to a joint fundraising committee established by Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, a high-ranking Republican on the full committee, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Sheffield also gave $5,400 to Upton’s reelection in 2016.

In 2020, Sheffield gave $5,000 to Texas Reloaded, a joint fundraising effort for Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, R-Texas, and $833 to Crenshaw’s campaign. Crenshaw is a full committee member.

Sheffield also donated $12,700 to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Total donations from the oil and gas industry in the 2022 election cycle, including money from individuals, PACs and what’s known as “soft money,” are skewing sharply toward Republicans, drawing 76 percent of donations versus 24 percent for Democrats, according to campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.

That percentage is higher for Democrats than it was in the election cycles of 2014, 2016 and 2018, when Republicans drew 87 percent of the donations, and 2020, which saw GOP candidates and causes get 84 percent of cash from this industry.

Soft money is the term for contributions meant to support general political parties rather than a specific candidate.

While many of the group’s donations went to Republicans, oil-state Democratic senators and House members, including former Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, were on the receiving end of some donations.

Sheffield donated to all three, as well as to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., who got $5,800 in donations in 2021 for his campaign.

Out of all of Woods’ donations, none went to Democrats and about $156,300 went to Republican campaigns or committees.

Since 2013, Woods has donated $42,500 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which raises money for Republican House candidates and describes itself as “a political committee devoted to increasing the number of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

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amy w email 12 15 22

many pulldown docs no lnx

Highlights from the House Climate Disinfo Documents

BY AMY WESTERVELT – 15 DEC 2022 – VIEW ONLINE →

This fall the House Oversight Committee held its third hearing on climate disinformation. You can read more about the hearing itself here, but today I want to talk about a complement to it: the two rounds of documents the Committee has made publicly available from its subpoenas.

The New York Times published a story on the first batch that coincided with the hearing, and then a whole bunch of outlets published stories on the same documents the NYT mentioned, but there are more than 200 pages of internal emails and strategy memos here, and not all of it ended up in that one story! Last week, the second batch dropped and this time the Washington Post had the exclusive. But there were even more documents in that batch (more than 1000), so again, it's impossible to capture all the findings in a single news story. Or newsletter for that matter! I have a piece coming out in The Intercept this week with some analysis of these docs, but couldn't even come close to fitting it all in, so am sharing my notes on all 1500-ish pages with you here.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time reading PR strategy documents from 20, 50, even 100 years ago one thing these documents just scream to me is that this industry has not come up with a new idea on this stuff in a long time. In particular I saw echoes of our old friend longtime Mobil VP Herb Schmertz all over these.

Following are the things that jumped out at me, but I encourage folks to read it all for themselves here and here, and to check out Climate Files DocumentCloud for their annotated versions.

The industry's climate "solution" leans on getting the public to accept methane gas as a "green" fuel (or, barring that, at least a "bridge fuel") and building out enough carbon capture to make oil "low carbon."

The fossil fuel industry is once again pushing the idea that methane gas—a fossil fuel—is somehow an alternative to fossil fuels. The plan appears to be to lean on gas and carbon capture (which can magically make crude oil "low carbon,") and call it "transition."

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The API is particularly keen to market "differentiated" or "responsible" natural gas, which includes renewable natural gas. We've covered this before, but renewable natural gas is an interesting one. It's made from captured methane, from either concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) or landfills, so the industry often describes it as "net zero" or "zero emissions," but that doesn't account for the emissions associated with actually using the stuff. The other issue critics of RNG often point to is that by even the most optimistic projections, RNG could only ever supply about 20% of energy demand, but it could help ensure that gas infrastructure stays in place for decades.

In a 2021 memo to the board, API notes:

"Differentiated, or "responsible" natural gas is becoming increasingly important to buyers in both domestic and international gas markets. API proposes supporting the ongoing development of markets for differentiated natural gas, recognizing the significance of these efforts in ensuring natural gas continues to be viewed as a major component of a lower carbon energy future."

A handful of Exxon emails in which company executives are going back and forth with their advertising agencies about what they can and can't say about algae biofuels and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) provide some interesting insights into how viable the company views these technologies to be. Creatives are encouraged to "make the solutions more future focused" as opposed to things that have already been figured out. On biofuels, they're cautioned that we're "still decades away from the scale we need." The feedback on an ad about CCS, a technology that the industry regularly paints as a fully operational tool is:

"replace any lines that imply the technology is live today, and make the solution more future focused (e.g. we're building a plant to test this ... )"

The resulting ads are technically accurate (and, importantly, legal), but nonetheless give the impression that these are real solutions. It's a behind-the-scenes look at how Exxon pulls off what's called "paltering," a technique climate disinfo expert John Cook has written about extensively.

Throughout these documents there's a real sense of urgency around securing a future for gas and scaling up carbon capture before it's too late. In a 2017 document outlining the potential for CCS on the Gulf Coast, for example, Shell notes that "the window for CCS to remain relevant with governments and society is closing quickly and action needs to occur within the next decade."

Once Again, With Feeling: Net Zero Is Not Zero

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In case anyone was still under the impression that "net zero" is anything more than a marketing ploy, discussions amongst Shell execs about the company' Net Climate Footprint campaign should remove all doubt. In one email in particular employees are cautioned: "Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense."

Shell makes it clear that it's not talking about actual emissions reductions, but rather "carbon intensity," a term that, like net zero, means almost nothing and is audited by no one, but sounds like it's doing something.Chevron is also in a hurry to leave "net zero" in its review mirror and embrace "carbon intensity". In an email to CEO Mike Wirth with his initial thoughts on the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emissions 2050 Scenario (released in 2021), Bruce Niemeyer, President of Chevron's Americas Exploration and Production division wrote: "We don't view IEA NZE as any more credible or probable than other net zero 2050 scenarios."

To its credit, Chevron has at least tried to stop making blanket net zero promises in public, preferring instead to only mention net zero with respect to its operational emissions, and to focus more broadly on "carbon intensity." In a document from the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative in which the oil majors are weighing in on how to talk about climate commitments and carbon capture, Chevron suggests changing "net zero" to "reducing emissions," only to be scolded by OGCI that the group has already committed to net zero in the past.

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They Will Pollute Where They Want to Pollute

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An email exchange between Shell executives about which facilities to offload says a lot about where the company thinks it's okay to pollute: anywhere that will let it. "Yes, we finally unloaded that piece of crap in Denmark we've been trying to sell for a decade. I wouldn't necessarily put that in this GHG-sensitivity category. That was just a crappy facility. Pernis, the site in the Netherlands, will be an interesting one to watch. It's right there in the motherland where we are most sensitive and our reputation is mixed.The other pattern to notice is where we DO own high GHG intensive things, it's in areas where they aren't that politically sensitive about such matters: China, Singapore, Malaysia, Louisiana."

And later: "No one in the company has said this, mind you, but the pattern is pretty clear: If you're a major greenhouse gas emitter, and particularly if you operate in a GHG-sensitive area like CA, WA, or CAN, your days in the Shell Family are probably numbered."

Relatedly, in the second document release, there are emails between Shell executives making it clear that these facilities are not being shut down or decommissioned, in other words the emissions associated with them are not being eliminated in general, they're just being removed from Shell's books. When pressured about the fact that selling polluting assets wouldn’t actually reduce emissions, a Shell executive wrote, “what exactly are we supposed to do instead of divesting…pour concrete over the oil sands and burn the deed to the land so no one can buy them?”

There are similar email exchanges between BP executives, in which they admit that offloading fossil fuel assets is an “important part of our strategy” even though these “divestments may not directly lead to a reduction in absolute global emissions.”

ExxonMobil Still Plays a Leadership Role in the American Petroleum Institute

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The American Petroleum Institute receives more of ExxonMobil's lobbying dollars than any other entity, and it shows. In an email updating members about the implementation of the API's new "Climate Action Framework," for example, former VP of Public Affairs Rhonda Bentz lists off the various things her team is promoting, including several expected, industry-wide items like "collaboration with the Biden administration," "rise in oil demand," and "energy security," but right in the middle is an item that really only Exxon cares about: Guyana MoU, a reference to the contract between ExxonMobil and the government of Guyana, home to one of Exxon's largest drilling projects, which could be producing close to 25% of its global oil barrels by 2030.

Oil Companies Gave Up on 1.5C as a Goal Way Before Anyone Else Did

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While the rest of the world has only just begun to acknowledge this year that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is unlikely to happen, turns out the oil companies—all of which supposedly support the Paris Climate Agreement and its 1.5C limit—were always shooting for 2C. BP was talking about 2C warming as the goal as early as 2017. Chevron had officially skipped past 1.5C as of 2020.

Partners = Pawns

Whether it's Princeton University or the Environmental Defense Fund, when a fossil fuel company invests in a partnership, they're not nearly as interested in your knowledge or research as they are in your power to influence others. And their power to influence you. An email from BP's former Vice President & Head of Regulatory Advocacy & Policy Bob Stout, about the company's funding of research at Princeton University, lays out the real benefit of the partnership: "I would only add that in addition to the value in informing our understanding of climate science and policy," he writes. "These relationships (along with those we have with Harvard, Tufts and Columbia) are key parts of our long-term relationship-buildingand outreach to policy makers and influencers in the US and globally….We do not always agree on matters of policy, but we do get valuable intel on the evolving perspectives and priorities of the environmental community and are able to tell the story of what we are doing and why in a more personal and compelling way."

On the NGO side, a dust-up between Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp and Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden makes it clear what sorts of strings a big donation from an oil major comes with.

The Art of "Creative Confrontation" Is Alive and Well

Back in the 1970s, legendary Mobil VP Herb Schmertz pioneered the art of bullying journalists or, as he called it, "creative confrontation." If journalists weren't covering Mobil's point of view, or he thought they were being too critical of Mobil, he called them up and let them know. And he let their bosses, and their bosses' bosses know too. Sometimes he threatened to pull advertising. Once he cut The Wall Street Journal off from any information at all—press releases, comments from executives, even quarterly earnings reports.

It looked exactly like what the American Petroleum Institute and Shell tried to do to Hiroko Tabuchi, the New York Times's climate accountability reporter,once in response to a (now-deleted) tweet in which she referenced the shared history of the fossil fuel industry and white supremacy, and again in response to a story about theAmerican Chemistry Council, which counts several oil majors as members, lobbying against regulations in Kenya that would limit the ability of American companies to sell single-use disposable plastic there. If it were only a group of smug flaks congratulating themselves for sending "nastygrams" and saying things like "Let's work on taking away their birthdays next," it would be easy to dismiss as clownish theatrics. But there's quite a bit of evidence that it works. Not just in the 70s and 80s, but today. After telling Tabuchi, in response to her tweet, "we're done," Shell publicist Curtis Smith forwarded his email to her colleague, Clifford Kraus, who he obviously considers a friend, with a note, to which Kraus replied "I obviously can't comment, but you wrote what you felt and that is good."

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Rep Ro Khana (D-Ca), who co-chairs the committee and helped spearhead the investigation, thinks it also worked to pull Tabuchi off of certain types of climate stories. After covering the Committee's hearings on climate disinformation for a year, he says, "Hiroko's not covering it anymore. She's been taken off. So, you know, unfortunately, Big Oil succeeds sometimes when they engage in this kind of bullying."

What this exchange also reveals is the extent to which the API coordinates not just messaging strategy, but also execution, for the industry. After instructing the communications directors for all the oil majors not to engage with Tabuchi on Twitter, Meg Bloomgren, API's senior vice president of communications, explains that she has sent emails to three of Tabuchi's bosses, as well as to the Associate Managing Editor of Standards, about her conduct.

"I encouraged them to do the right thing in addressing Ms. Tabuchi's completely baseless link and offensive accusation," Bloomgren writes. "I also noted that in the meantime, any calls from Ms. Tabuchi to our industry, its executives, or the 10 million workers it supports will likely go unreturned." It's a move straight out of the Schmertz playbook.

Social license to operate is still a big priority

It often seems as though the fossil fuel industry thinks of itself as above the law and endlessly powerful, but several of these emails highlight how much the industry still invests in maintaining a "social license to operate," a tacit acknowledgement from the public that it delivers enough benefit to society to warrant putting up with things like air pollution and spills and climate change. "While this patchwork of policies and markets creates challenges for a coordinated US energy transition," one document reads, "it also creates opportunities for an integrated, respected and credible energy company like Shell to take on an increased leadership role to shape effective policy at multiple levels in the transition, while maintaining a strong societal license to operate."

Another notes:

"While Shell is a leader amongst its US peers, our industry continues to have low credibility and trust with specific stakeholder groups (Energy Engaged audiences), amidst rising societal expectations on climate action."

And one of the key parts of Shell's U.S. Reputation Plan: is to secure partnerships "with credible external influencers and commercial entities that support and strengthen societal license to operate and grow at country and asset level;"

One such influencer they suggest by name is Paul Barrett, a former columnist for Bloomberg Businesweek who's now

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"He's the fellow who wanted to do a deep dive in our archives to prove Shell was a good actor in the climate space for a long time," one email notes. "We sort of chickened out but if we are willing to call out the tension between Shell and the Merchants of Doubt, we could have something."

It's entirely possible Barrett was framing his request to access the archive in this way solely to gain access, but irrespective of what was going on there, it's interesting that Shell seeks to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack on climate. This comes up in emails about whether or not to partner with ExxonMobil as well, given the "reputational risk."

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12 22 press release

Internal Documents Reveal the Industry Is Making Long-Term Fossil Fuel Investments As They “Resist and Block” Climate Regulation

:{Washington, D.C. (Dec. 9, 2022)—Today, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Ro Khanna, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment, released a new memo and documents showing how the fossil fuel industry engages in “greenwashing” to obscure its massive long-term investments in fossil fuels and failure to meaningfully reduce emissions. The new documents are part of the Committee’s :{:{:{:{ongoing investigation}::{:{:{ into the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate change. }:

“Even though Big Oil CEOs }:}:admitted to my Committee that their products are causing a climate emergency, today’s documents reveal that the industry has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come,” said Chairwoman Maloney. “Today’s new evidence makes clear that these companies know their climate pledges are inadequate, but are prioritizing Big Oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change. It’s time for the fossil fuel industry to stop lying to the American people and finally take serious steps to reduce emissions and address the global climate crisis they helped create.”}:}:}:}:

“We cannot tackle the climate crisis until we tackle the climate disinformation crisis. Big Oil has misled the American public for decades about the reality of the climate crisis. It’s past time to hold the entire industry accountable for its role in funding and facilitating that disinformation. As Chair of the Subcommittee on the Environment, I partnered with Chairwoman Maloney to hold historic hearings forcing CEOs from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to testify under oath about efforts to mislead the public and subpoena them for explosive internal documents. The hearing testimony and documents released will stand the test of time and further our understanding of how these companies operate. Going forward, I will ensure our work to hold Big Oil accountable continues,” said Rep. Khanna.

The Committee’s investigation found:[verbatim memo intro]

Despite public promises that fossil fuels are merely a “bridge fuel” to cleaner sources of energy, Big Oil has doubled down on long-term reliance on fossil fuels with no intention of taking concrete actions to transition to clean energy.

A strategy slide presented to the Chevron Board of Directors from Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mike Wirth explains that while Chevron sees “traditional energy business competitors retreating” from oil and gas, “Chevron’s strategy” is to “continue to invest” in fossil fuels to take advantage of consolidation in the industry.

Even as it publicly announced support for Paris Agreement goals, BP continues to invest in a future dependent on fossil fuels. In an internal Q3 2017 Operational Performance Review for the lower 48 states, BP described its intent to “[s]ignificantly increase development in regions with oil potential,” and to “focus primarily on projects in current basins that generate the highest rate of return.”

An internal email from the American Petroleum Institute (API) shows thatAPI’s 2021 Climate Action Framework was organized around the purpose of “the continued promotion of natural gas in a carbon constrained economy.”

The industry’s inadequate climate pledges and commitment to emissions reductions are intended to provide cover for Big Oil to continue raking in billions of dollars by selling fossil fuels for decades to come.

In a March 2021 memorandum to API’s Board of Directors, CEO Mike Sommers explained that API strategically supports certain efforts to reduce climate pollution to secure legitimacy to continue produce fossil fuels, noting that reducing emissions from flaring presented “an opportunity to further secure the industry’s license to operate.”

In an internal presentation created for BP, a public relations firm suggested advocating for methaneregulation to “advance and protect the role of gas – and BP – in the future of energy conversation.”

In May 2019 notes labeled “Chairman’s Report to BPA Board,” BP America’s Chairman admitted, “We continue to balk at taking accountability for the emissions of our products.” The Chairman was discussing shareholder resolutions regarding climate change initiatives presented at that year’s shareholder meeting. At the time, BP’s climate pledge did not include emissions from the burning of BP’s products—a position BP has since changed, but that Exxon continues to hold.

Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden complained that an environmental advocate’s public speech at an industry event was “disingenuous” for “pointing out in front of the international press that if you burden the gas value chain with all the emission of the oil industry, it would put gas on a par with coal.”

Fossil fuel companies admit privately that they have pursued a strategy to “resist and block” climate regulations, and that they will only cut emissions “where it makes commercial sense,” and that a key part of their climate plans—selling assets to other oil companies—will not actually reduce emissions.

In a 2016 email from a BP executive to John Mingé, Chairman and President of BP America, and others, about climate and emissions trading, an employee assessed that the company often adopted an obstructionist strategy with regulators, noting, “we wait for the rules to come out, we don’t like what we see, and then try to resist and block.”

One BP executive asserted in an internal email that BP had “no obligation to minimize GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions” and that the company should only “minimize [GHG emissions] where it makes commercial sense.” The same BP executive concluded that “the benefits of any proposal to adopt a lower GHG option needs to be balanced against the cost to do so.”

A Shell executive admitted privately: “True, we transfer CO2 liability when we divest. And now we’ve been called on it.” In response, a second company executive defended the practice, writing, “what exactly are we supposed to do instead of divesting … pour concrete over the oil sands and burn the deed to the land so no one can buy them?”

One BP executive privately admitted that divesting fossil fuel assets is “an important part of our strategy” even though “these divestments may not directly lead to a reduction in absolute global emissions.”

Fossil fuel entities have fought to hide the truth about their practices by refusing to fully comply with the Committee’s subpoenas and attacking journalists who revealed the industry’s conduct.

The Chamber of Commerce has withheld internal documents from the Committee, despite being required to produce them by subpoena. The American Petroleum Institute has improperly withheld documents from its Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Exxon inappropriately redacted responsive documents from its Board of Directors, while Chevron, Shell, and BP each withheld responsive information without valid justification.

In 2015, Exxon baselessly accused a journalism student and her instructor of misrepresentations and ethical violations after her work contributed to press reporting on the fossil fuel industry—but internal company documents obtained by the Committee show that Exxon’s allegations were false.

Click :{:{:{here:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline-style:none !important"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline-style:none !important"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline-style:none !important"):}: to read the Committee memo.

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https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2022-12-09.COR_Supplemental_Memo-Fossil_Fuel_Industry_Disinformation.pdf

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...Despite the companies’ obstruction, the Committee has obtained evidence that the oil and gas industry is working to protect and entrench the use of fossil fuels, long past the timeline scientists say would be safe to prevent catastrophic climate change. Documents obtained by the Committee show: • Despite public promises that fossil fuels are merely a “bridge fuel” to cleaner sources of energy, Big Oil is doubling down on long-term reliance on fossil fuels with no intention of taking concrete actions to transition to clean energy. o A strategy slide presented to the Chevron Board of Directors from Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mike Wirth explains that while Chevron sees “traditional energy business competitors retreating” from oil and gas, “Chevron’s strategy” is to “continue to invest” in fossil fuels to take advantage of consolidation in the industry. o Even as it publicly announced support for Paris Agreement goals, BP continues to invest in a future dependent on fossil fuels. In an internal Q3 2017 Operational Performance Review for the lower 48 states, BP described its intent to “[s]ignificantly increase development in regions with oil potential,” and to “focus primarily on projects in current basins that generate the highest rate of return.” o An internal email from the American Petroleum Institute (API) shows that API’s 2021 Climate Action Framework was organized around the purpose of “the continued promotion of natural gas in a carbon constrained economy.” • The industry’s inadequate climate pledges and promised emissions reductions are intended to provide cover for Big Oil to continue raking in billions of dollars by selling fossil fuels for decades to come. o In a March 2021 memorandum to API’s Board of Directors, CEO Mike Sommers explained that API strategically supports certain efforts to reduce climate pollution to secure legitimacy to continue produce fossil fuels, noting that reducing emissions from flaring presented “an opportunity to further secure the industry’s license to operate.” o In an internal presentation created for BP, a public relations firm suggested advocating for methane regulation to “advance and protect the role of gas – and BP – in the future of energy conversation.” o In May 2019 notes labeled “Chairman’s Report to BPA Board,” BP America’s Chairman admitted, “We continue to balk at taking accountability for the emissions of our products.” The Chairman was discussing shareholder resolutions regarding climate change initiatives....

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ff ceo memo, not just br fuel

https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2022-12-09.COR_Supplemental_Memo-Fossil_Fuel_Industry_Disinformation.pdf

p 11

...In line with this plan, Chevron included “deliver higher returns and lower carbon” as part of its strategy to double down on oil and gas and reported to board members that, unlike other companies, Chevron’s strategy is to “grow production.”37 This document suggests that even if other companies ultimately agree to reduce oil and gas production or substantially diversify into non-emitting energy, Chevron is prepared to swoop in and expand its own fossil fuel business. If it executes this strategy, Chevron would jeopardize carbon reductions other companies may pursue, as their emissions effectively shift to Chevron’s ledger.38 B.

BP’s Mixed Record on Climate

BP’s most recent climate promises and investments are more ambitious than Chevron’s and include investments in clean energy and reduced output of oil and gas.39 Despite its relative ambition compared with its American counterparts, top environmental, social, and governancerating firm MSCI notes that BP’s current climate plans are aligned with global warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius, meaning it “is misaligned with global climate goals and is in line with a business-as-usual scenario.”40 Internal documents reveal BP’s continued emphasis on its fossil fuel business. In July 2017, an internal position paper was distributed to BP employees, including John Mingé, thenChairman and President of BP America, to proactively use in communications about the energy transition. In the memo, BP acknowledged the “urgency of the climate challenge,” noting that to address climate change, “reductions are required across the board” and “consumers need to change [their] behavior.”41 While the company promised to help “advance the transition” “towards lower carbon sources, driven by technological advances and growing environmental concerns,” BP also noted, “we will shift our focus towards gas,” and touted new technologies that help “produce more oil, more efficiently from existing resources.”42 Talking points prepared for Mr. Mingé to use at a conference on October 12, 2016, cite BP’s own energy transition projections in support of this assertion, stating, “according to the most likely scenario outlined in BP’s latest Energy Outlook report” fossil fuels will still make up

...

...BP is boosting oil and gas supplies in the short-term in response to the global energy crisis.47 Continued oversight will be necessary to ensure that BP sticks to its long-term climate pledge to cut its oil and gas production by 40% by 2030.48

II. THE INDUSTRY’S INADEQUATE CLIMATE PLEDGES AND ACTIONS ARE INTENDED TO PROVIDE COVER

TO CONTINUE SELLING FOSSIL FUELS FOR DECADES TO COME

A. Touting Climate Mitigation Efforts as a “Social License” to Prolong Fossil Fuel Reliance Industry documents indicate that Big Oil supports some climate mitigation efforts— including carbon capture technologies and flaring management—as a means to secure a “social license” to continue producing fossil fuels. In a March 4, 2021, memo from API CEO Mike Sommers to API’s Board of Directors, Mr. Sommers presented a “5-point climate change proposal.” A series of internal emails and draft proposals show that this proposal was drafted by a team of policy staff in early 2021 and presented at board of directors and executive committee meetings, culminating in the public release and dissemination of API’s Climate Action Framework on March 25, 2021.49 The Climate Framework represented API’s first-ever climate action plan to incrementally lower the industry’s emissions. Reports indicate the Framework followed years of negotiations among API’s roughly 600 members, who significantly differ in their approach to climate change, and partially resulted from concerns that API’s oppositional approach to climate policy “won’t be relevant anymore.”5

....

In 2021, natural gas contributed to 34% of U.S. energy-related emissions and 22% of emissions globally. 62 Documents obtained by the Committee show fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups seek to publicly position natural gas as a clean source of energy and part of the transition to renewables, even as the industry is privately planning for expanded natural gas production over the long term. In November 2017, a group of major oil companies, including Exxon, Shell, and BP, announced “Methane Guiding Principles.” The group acknowledged, “Since natural gas consists mainly of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, its part in the transition to a low-carbon future will be influenced by the extent to which the oil and gas industry reduces it methane emissions.” 63 Yet internal Shell documents suggest that the companies initially intended this document to serve as a defense of the long-term use of natural gas well beyond a mere “transition.”

In a September 29, 2017, email, Dick Francis, Manager of Regulatory Policy for Shell Exploration & Production Company, distributed the first draft of the Guiding Principles document to his Shell colleagues, writing: Also included in the document is an important preamble that clearly makes the case for natural gas and identifies the need to address methane emissions. Linking the natural gas preamble to the principles is an important element. Because supporting the principles will also signal acknowledgment of natural gas’s place in a low carbon future. Internal BP documents from 2017 and 2018 reveal that the company engaged a public relations firm—the Brunswick Group—to develop an advocacy campaign for gas and methane.64

A PowerPoint presentation prepared by Phil Drew, a Partner at the Brunswick Group, was presented to Robert Stout,BP’s Vice President & Head of Regulatory Affairs, and Mary Streett, BP’s Senior Vice President, U.S. Communications and External Affairs, describing the campaign that the Brunswick Group developed for BP. The overall goal of the campaign was to “Advance and protect the role of gas—and BP—in the future of energy conversation.”

62 Energy Information Administration, Where Greenhouse Gases Come From (online at www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php) (accessed Nov. 9, 2022).

63 Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Reducing Methane Emissions Across the Natural Gas Value Chain – Guiding Principles (Nov. 2017) (online at www.ccacoalition.org/en/resources/reducing-methane-emissions-acrossnatural-gas-value-chain-guiding-principles). 64 BPA_HCOR_000246

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IV. BIG OIL HAS TRIED TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY BY BULLYING

JOURNALISTS AND OBSTRUCTING THE COMMITTEE’S INVESTIGATION

A. Bullying Journalists Who Expose the Truth

Emails obtained by the Committee show Exxon privately pressured journalists about

unfavorable news stories implicating the industry. In October 2015, the Los Angeles Times

published two articles written by students as part of the Energy and Environmental Reporting

Project at the Columbia Journalism School. The articles, which drew on historic documents and

more recent interviews and statements from current and former Exxon employees, showed that

Exxon’s work to prepare its facilities for climate change belied its public statements

downplaying or denying climate science.89

Documents uncovered by the Committee suggest that Exxon baselessly accused a

Columbia Journalism instructor and a post-graduate fellow of wrongdoing in connection with

these stories. On November 20, 2015, Exxon sent a letter to Columbia University’s President

Lee Bollinger, criticizing the articles and alleging ethics violations by the students and the

instructor. Exxon claimed that the journalists were made aware of “significant factual errors” in

the articles and gave the company “less than 24 hours” to respond to a request to comment on the

second story, published on October 23, 2015. 90

The letter singled out the team’s instructor

Susanne Rust for alleged inaccuracies and for not giving the company ample time to respond.

However, internal emails indicate that Exxon was given approximately a month to

comment on essential questions and facts of the story prior to the October 23, 2015, publication,

and that the company had resisted multiple requests by the team of journalists to provide detailed

responses.

Exxon also accused a post-graduate fellow, Sara Jerving, of “misrepresenting herself as a

Columbia Arctic researcher and [making] no mention of the fact that she was affiliated with the

89 Columbia Journalism School, Two-Year Long Investigation: What Exxon Knew About Climate Change

(online at https://journalism.columbia.edu/two-year-long-investigation-what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change)

(accessed Nov. 22, 2022). The first two articles in the series were published in October 2015. The first article,

What Exxon Knew About the Earth’s Melting Arctic, details how between 1986 and 1992 Exxon was already

planning for the impacts that global warming would have on its operations in the Artic, for example by hardening

infrastructure. The second article, How Exxon Went from Leader to Skeptic on Climate Change Research, reveals

how the company, contrary to its own research, “poured millions” into a public messaging campaign to sow doubt

about the science of climate change. The article asserted that, despite being a leader in climate research, the

company was publicly skeptical of climate change because it “feared a growing public consensus would lead to

financially burdensome policies.”

School of Journalism or that the research might eventually be published in a newspaper.”93

Internal Exxon emails contradict these claims as well. These emails show that the company

knew that Ms. Jerving had represented herself accurately as a journalism student at Columbia

University to the people she interviewed for the stories. 94

These exchanges also show industry insiders communicating with Exxon employees

about their skepticism and denial of the science of climate change. For example, Peter Noble, a

longtime oil and gas industry executive and consultant, wrote to Ken Croasdale, a former Exxon

employee and then-consultant for Exxon:

I see nothing inconsistent twitch [sic] your quote from 1991 when we didn’t knw [sic]

much about global climate change to Exxon’s current position in 2015 when we still

don’t know much about climate change even if our politicians claim it is “settled

science.” This is a cross we have to bear for our oil industry connections I guess? 95

Another oil and gas industry insider,Dan Masterson wrote to Mr. Croasdale:

The murky part of global warming and climate change seems to be whether it is

anthropogenic or related to other very long term [sic] changes not related to human

activity. I think the latter is the case and that the Exxon executives were correct in stating

that the science was “murky.”96

Shell’s internal documents similarly display a marked discomfort with press inquiries

into the company’s past and present climate efforts, even with journalists from whom they

expect positive coverage. In October 2016, David Hone, Shell’s Chief Climate Change Adviser,

and Curtis Smith, Media Manager for Shell, discussed how to deal with a damaging story about

climate denialism in the oil industry. Mr. Smith suggested reaching out to Paul Barrett from

Bloomberg Businessweek, describing him as “the fellow who wanted to do a deep dive in our

archives to prove Shell was a good actor in the climate space for a long time.” However, Mr.

93 Letter from Mr. Kenneth Cohen, Vice President, ExxonMobil, to Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia

University (Nov. 20, 2015) (online at www.politico.com/f/?id=00000151-5a8a-d6a2-a155-dbca213c0000).

94 In a series of emails, Exxon consultant Ken Croasdale asked his contacts about their interactions with

Ms. Jerving. In response, his contacts indicated they knew she was a journalist. For example, in an email from

Peter Noble to Ken Croasdale on October 14, 2015, Mr. Noble confirmed meeting with Ms. Jerving and that she

“[s]eemed like a nice young lady, a student of journalism at Columbia, I think she said but that just shows that I am

a poor predictor of character?” EM-HCOR3-00943385-90. Moreover, in emails from October 15, 2015, from Anne

Barker and Bob Frederking, a current employee and retired employee at the National Research Council of Canada,

both acknowledged they knew Ms. Jerving was affiliated with Columbia and that their interviews with her came

through the National Research Council’s communications group. EM-HCOR3-00943393-94. In an email from

October 15, 2015, Dan Masterson, another oil and gas industry contact of Mr. Croasdale’s, wrote that, according to

his diary entry, he “Met with Sara Jerving, a post-grad student in journalism at Colombia [sic] University. We

talked for about 1.5 hours re what I did in my career and what took place in the 1970’s, 1980’s and thru the 90’s to

now.” EM-HCOR3-00943410-11.

95 EM-HCOR3-00943388.

96 EM-HCOR3-00943411; see also BPA_HCOR_00029193-94 for BP’s treatment of later reporting from

the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.

Smith ultimately explained that the deep dive never happened because “we sort of chickened

out” and chose not to give him access. 97

Despite an extensive public relations campaign detailing their clean energy strategy, Shell

executives were reluctant to engage with press questions comparing their investments in clean

energy to continued investments in fossil fuels. On October 8, 2021, Mr. Smith received an

inquiry from a Teen Vogue reporter who asked for comment on an op-ed “criticizing

publications for working with fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups.” The journalist

explained the disconnect between marketing and the fact that “fossil fuel companies’ clean

energy investments account for a small percentage of their total capital expenditure, compared to

investments into finding new pockets of oil and gas.” Mr. Smith responded internally to other

Shell employees, “Not with a ten foot pole.”98

B. Obstructing the Committee’s Investigation

The Committee launched its investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long

climate disinformation and greenwashing campaign in September 2021, requesting documents

from Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, API, and the Chamber of Commerce.99

On October 28, 2021, the Committee held a hearing with top executives from all six of these entities. At the hearing,

executives acknowledged the dire threat to humanity posed by climate change and the central

role played by burning fossil fuels, but they refused to pledge meaningful actions to avert the

ongoing climate catastrophe.100

At the Committee’s October 2021 hearing, Chairwoman Maloney announced her intent to

issue subpoenas to the six fossil fuel entities in the Committee’s investigation, each of which had

failed to comply with the Committee’s voluntary requests for documents.101

The Committeeissued subpoenas to the fossil fuel entities on November 2, 2021. The Committee held another

hearing on fossil fuel company pledges on February 8, 2022. Members of the boards of Exxon,

Chevron, Shell, and BP were invited to testify, along with climate scientists and advocates, but

they declined to appear. Board members were again invited to testify at a rescheduled ...

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The American Petroleum Institute also improperly withheld documents from the Committee, including materials prepared for its Executive Committee and Board of Directors and relating to API’s activities surrounding major federal climate policy proposals. For example, API redacted emails to representatives of other oil and gas trade associations, including the American Gas Association and Independent Petroleum Association of America with the subject line “reconciliation coordination,” referring to the budget reconciliation bill that culminated in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.114 API also redacted communications regarding pending Securities and Exchange Commission regulations that would require companies to disclose their climate impacts, and documents describing meetings with Administration officials, including a document outlining industry’s priorities for a March 22, 2021, meeting with President Biden’s then-National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy.115

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• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been especially obstructive and evasive in its response to the Committee’s subpoena. The Chamber excluded almost all internal documents from its production, preventing the Committee from evaluating whether external positioning and internal rhetoric are aligned. Instead, the Chamber produced documents that it knew were tangential to the Committee’s investigation, including mass mailer publications, newsletters, mass letters to Congress, mass emails to congressional staff, and press releases. The Chamber also produced printouts from its website, comment letters to federal agencies and departments, widely distributed event invitations, and daily news clippings— while refusing to produce the internal documents that are required by the Committee’s subpoena. The Committee continues to seek full compliance with its subpoenas in this investigation. Despite obstruction from Big Oil over the last year, the Committee’s investigation has uncovered troubling evidence of a long-running greenwashing campaign by the fossil fuel industry—all while doubling down on long-term production of oil and gas and reaping record profits at the expense of American consumers. The evidence obtained by the Committee shows the vital importance of the Committee’s investigation to uncover the truth about Big Oil’s role in the climate crisis and the industry’s inaction and misinformation that continue to exacerbate the crisis.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/oil-companies-doom-global-efforts-climate-change-house-committee-finds-rcna59443

Major oil and gas companies have little intention of taking concrete actions to transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy solutions despite their public efforts to be seen as working to address climate change, according to a report released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The committee said it found Shell, Chevron, BP and the American Petroleum Institute all made major investments in projects that would “protect and entrench the use of fossil fuels, long past the timeline scientists say would be safe to prevent catastrophic climate change” despite making climate pledges.

“They’re basically saying, ‘we’re going to increase production, we’re going to increase emissions, but we’re also going to be able to claim being this clean tech company, this green company, because we can take some symbolic actions that make it look like we’re in the climate fight,’” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of the committee.

“The cynicism was breathtaking, and unfortunately, it was quite successful,” he said, “It’s been a successful PR strategy.”

The committee’s Democratic members all signed on to the report, but no Republicans put their name on it.

When reached for comment, a press representative for the Republicans on the committee pointed to statements Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., made during a hearing in October in which he said the investigation was “to deliver partisan theater for prime-time news."

according to internal documents released to NBC News as part of the report, oil companies forecast sizable returns on their fossil fuel investments. One internal document from Chevron touts up to a $200 billion return over the next 40 years after upscaling oil production off the coast of Australia.

Exxon Mobil and Chevron recently disclosed plans to increase investment in oil projects.

The companies mentioned in the report did not return requests for comment.

the report also found that the companies intentionally misled the public about their plans and also attempted to “obstruct the Committee’s investigation and withhold key documents.”

“These documents demonstrate how the fossil fuel industry ‘greenwashed’ its public image with promises and actions that oil and gas executives knew would not meaningfully reduce emissions, even as the industry moved aggressively to lock in continued fossil fuel production for decades to come — actions that could doom global efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change,” the committee wrote in the report.

Internal documents also showed oil executives privately admitting that divesting, or moving around the accountability of emissions, will not have a meaningful impact on overall emissions levels. “What exactly are we supposed to do instead of divesting ... pour concrete over the oil sands and burn the deed to the land so no one can buy them?” one media relations person at Shell wrote in an email to a colleague.

The report went further to say that the big oil companies have avoided accountability and obstructed the committee’s investigation, which was originally launched in September 2021, after not complying with subpoenas for documents issued by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y, the chair of the committee.

“It was like pulling teeth,” Khanna said. Exxon blacked out complete pages of its documents and the Chamber of Commerce withheld internal documents, and the report did not provide any reasons for the redactions.

The report comes after Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, and with it the ability to direct House Oversight investigations. Khanna said the millions of documents acquired by the committee will be handed over to those with more resources who can act on the information.

“That’s the only way we’re going to have accountability,” he said. “You can’t expect a House subcommittee to go up against oil companies that have been misleading American public for 40 years and all of a sudden have accountability.

Lucas Thompson

https://www.desmog.com/**2022/10/**18/new-jersey-sues-shell-exxon-api-oil-public-deception-climate/

the state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against five oil companies and the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group for covering up and misleading the public about climate change, the latest round of state and municipal-led climate litigation seeking accountability from the oil industry.

Thelawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public.

The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit names ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Company, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group in which the five oil companies were members.

The case comes just ahead of the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New Jersey and other parts of the eastern seaboard, and the storm “previews the grave climate-related consequences New Jersey faces as a direct result of Defendants’ tortious deception,” the lawsuit argues.

As it happens, nearly 25 years ago, Shell predicted with remarkable accuracy the events that would broadly unfold.In a 1998 internal document that laid out future climate scenarios, Shell described a hypothetical catastrophic storm that would ravage the U.S. East Coast in 2010 — one that sounds unmistakably like Hurricane Sandy — which sets off a society-wide backlash that would engulf the oil industry. The result would be a legal and policy reckoning. From Shell’s 1998 forecast:

“Following the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings aclass-action suit against the US government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done. Asocial reaction to the use of fossil fuels grows, and individuals become ‘vigilante environmentalists’ in the same way, a generation earlier, they had become fiercely anti-tobacco. Direct-action campaigns against companies escalate. Young consumers, especially, demand action.”

Today, a long list of major climate accountability cases are proceeding in state courts, each with extensive documented evidence demonstrating that the oil industry, including Shell, covered up internal climate science and instead chose to fund climate denial and greenwashing campaigns.

“Based on their own research, these companies understood decades ago that their products were causing climate change and would have devastating environmental impacts down the road,”New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkinsaid in a statement. “They went to great lengths to hide the truth and mislead the people of New Jersey, and the world. In short, these companies put their profits ahead of our safety.”

Shell knew about the risks and reality of climate change at least as far back as the 1980s. A 1988 internal Shell document called “The Greenhouse Effect,” detailed Shell’s knowledge that climate change was real, that fossil fuels were a principal cause, and that 1.5 to 3.5 degrees Celsius warming was possible. The document also warned that society could turn against fossil fuels if they learned about how serious the threat was.

The New Jersey legal campaign, like the others, seeks compensation from the oil industry for the large and growing destructive cost of the worsening climate crisis.

“The lawsuit by New Jersey adds to growing momentum to hold Big Oil accountable for its decades of deception and harm,” Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “As the tobacco control movement has demonstrated, litigation is a powerful tool that can and should be used to hold bad actors accountable and protect people and the planet over profit" [twt]

in response to questions from DeSmog, Anna Arata, a spokesperson for Shell, stated: “The Shell Group’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades. We agree that action is needed now on climate change, we fully support the need for society to transition to a lower-carbon future and we’re committed to playing our part by addressing our own emissions and helping customers to reduce theirs.”

Arata went on: “We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government, supported by action from all business sectors, including ours, and from civil society, is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress.”

But Shell’s misdirection continues through to the present. The company, like its peers, heavily advertises its clean transition plans and investments in renewable energy, but analysts say Shell is expected to spend four times as much on oil and gas development compared to renewables. Indeed, despite the glossy ads and rhetoric, Shell’s plans to grow oil and gas production in the years ahead mean that it is on track to produce more greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 than it does today.

And as DeSmog reported last month, Shell is acutely aware of how its communications on the energy transition can open it up to further litigation, warning employees in internal emails and presentations not to confuse the oil major’s net-zero talk with the company’s actual business plan.

“It’s long overdue that the facts be aired in a New Jersey court, and the perpetrators of the disinformation campaign pay for the harms they’ve caused,” New Jersey Attorney General Platkin said.

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/ahead-of-hearing-committee-releases-memo-showing-fossil-fuel-industry-is

Ahead of Hearing, Committee Releases Memo Showing Fossil Fuel Industry is Misleading the Public About Commitment to Reduce Emissions

Sep 14, 2022

Press Release

Documents Show Big Oil Is Devoted to a Long-Term Fossil Fuel Future and ‘Greenwashing’ Its Record Through Deceptive Advertising and Climate Pledges

“As we face more deadly, extreme weather around the globe, fossil fuel companies are reaping record profits and ramping up their misleading PR tactics to distract from their central role in fueling the climate crisis,” said Chairwoman Maloney. “My Committee’s investigation leaves no doubt that, in the words of one company official, Big Oil is ‘gaslighting’ the public. These companies claim they are part of the solution to climate change, but internal documents reveal that they are continuing with business as usual. I call on the big fossil fuel companies to stop their deception and cut their emissions now—before it is too late.”

“The documents I released today as part of my investigation into Big Oil’s efforts to deceive the American public about the climate crisis are explosive,” said Subcommittee Chair Khanna. “Internal emails and messaging guidance show that Big Oil’s climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks and misleading language to hide the reality. The documents also show a culture of intense disrespect towards leading climate activists like Bill McKibben and influential climate groups like the Sunrise Movement. Big Oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it.”

The Committee’s memo found:

Contrary to their pledges, fossil fuel companies have not organized their businesses around becoming low-emissions, renewable energy companies. They are devoted to a long-term fossil fuel future.

Despite BP previously rebranding itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” internal documents highlighted how carbon capture and storage (CCS), one of the energy technologies touted by the company, could “enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond.”

An internal Shell email discussing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) warned an executive, “We want to be careful to not talk about CCUS as prolonging the life of oil, gas or fossil fuels writ large.”

Chevron pays lip service to a “just transition” to cleaner fuels but provided talking points to an executive asserting that “[o]il and gas” are the “lower carbon solutions that ensures a just transition.”

Big Oil’s climate pledges and green advertising focus on unproven technologies the companies admit are decades away from implementation.

Although Exxon spent at least $68 million advertising its research into algae-based biofuels, notes from an investor presentation obtained by the Committee show this technology is “[s]till decades away from the scale we need.”

One Exxon public affairs manager warned that implying in an advertisement that algae can be deployed on a mass scale would be misleading, and “might create some angst with the research folks who know that.”

Oil and gas companies have tried to create the impression that they are taking ambitious steps to reduce emissions—without actually doing so.

Internal documents show that Exxon and Chevron sought to water down statements by the industry-led Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) to “remove language that potentially commits members to enhanced climate-related governance, strategy, risk management, and performance metrics and targets” and to avoid any “explicit commitment for OGCI companies to align their advocacy with their climate related positions”—including advocacy for the Paris Agreement.

Shell has touted its “Sky scenario” as an ambitious path to achieve net-zero emissions, but internal emails emphasize this is “not a Shell business plan” and has “nothing to do with our business plans.”

Internal Shell messaging guidance—which was developed to “insulate Shell” from lawsuits about “greenwashing” and “misleading investors” on climate change—calls on employees to emphasize that net-zero emissions is “a collective ambition for the world” rather than a “Shell goal or target.” The guidance urges Shell employees, “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

Big Oil relies on accounting gimmicks, tricky language, and delay tactics to claim the mantle of climate leadership while continuing to be a primary cause of an ongoing climate catastrophe.

Internal documents show that in 2019, Exxon scrubbed a public statement about an executive’s speech at a private conference to remove a reference to a plan to increase production in the Permian basin by “1000% within 5 years.”

After Shell posted on Twitter asking others what they would do to reduce emissions, a communications executive wrote privately that he agreed this could be seen as “gaslighting” the public, explaining: “We are, after all, in a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on ourselves.”

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/grotesque-greed-destroying-only-home/

UN gutierrez

https://oversight.house.gov/

https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittees/environment-117th-congress

Fueling the Climate Crisis: Examining Big Oil’s Prices, Profits, and Pledges

4 hrs no ceo showed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4exyXG-Gg1c&t=32s

09.14.22

Committee Staff Release New Hearing Report: The Role of Public Relations Firms in Preventing Action on Climate Change

Washington, D.C. – At today’s Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee hearing, Subcommittee Chair Katie Porter (D-Calif.), announced a new Committee Staff Hearing Report titled, :{**The Role of Public Relations Firms in Preventing Action on Climate Change**:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. The report presents select findings and 98 pages of evidentiary documents from the Committee’s investigation into public relations (PR) firms’ work with fossil fuel companies.

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

The full Hearing Report is available here: :{https://bit.ly/3QKLGsH:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}:

For decades, the oil and gas industry denied or downplayed climate change and fossil fuels’ role in causing it. As outright climate change denial has become less accepted by the public, the industry has funneled millions of dollars into PR firms to execute subtler and more sophisticated campaigns.

The Hearing Report presents evidence—some of which is being released to the public for the first time—detailing some of the many tactics these PR firms use to misinform the public and block meaningful solutions to climate change. Their strategies generally fall into three categories.

Corporate image promotion. This tactic includes portraying the fossil fuel industry as more environmentally friendly than it is in reality. For example, the Hearing Report presents an in-depth case study describing how PR firm Singer Associates created an entire “community news site” in Richmond, California to spread pro-Chevron propaganda to the communities harmed by its 2012 refinery fire. Singer Associates is using that model again with a new online platform in Texas.
Third-party mobilization. This tactic includes engineering phony spokespersons or “citizen groups” to advocate for industry interests and defeat genuine climate change policy solutions. For example, the Hearing Report details pro-industry emails sent directly to Committee staff and other policymakers after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The email campaign was orchestrated by the Consumer Energy Alliance, an industry front group accused of “astroturfing” on behalf of major extractive industries.
Delegitimization of opposition. This tactic includes targeting individuals and organizations that oppose the fossil fuel industry and attacking their reputations or credibility. For example, the Hearing Report describes how PR firms deployed multiple attack strategies—“astroturf” groups, “guerilla marketing” teams, and direct interference with activists’ signature collection efforts—to successfully defeat policy initiatives in 2016 and 2018 to limit fracking in Colorado. One of today’s hearing witnesses, Anne Lee Foster (testimony here), described her experience being stalked and harassed while running the 2018 ballot measure campaign.

Chair Porter pointed out in her opening statement that three of the PR firms involved in the investigation declined to respond to the Committee’s invitation to testify:

“We invited the PR Firm Pac/West to testify and help us understand their tactics and why they engaged in them during the Colorado ballot initiative. They declined. We invited Story Partners, another PR firm that was implicated in that Colorado ballot initiative. They declined. We invited Singer Associates to tell us about their fake news web site that was created to improve Chevron’s standing in the community after their negligence caused a massive refinery fire that sent 15,000 community members to the hospital. They declined. At this point, we might ask what these firms are trying to hide. But thanks to documents this committee has obtained and released, we know some of the answers.”

Tomorrow, the Committee on Oversight and Reform will be holding a hearing to examine Big Oil’s record-breaking profits and their continued funding of climate change disinformation.

Press Contact

Media Contact: Lindsay Gressard

202-225-6065 | cell: 202-740-4715

icn 9 22

Congressional Democrats presented fresh evidence Thursday which they say proves that oil companies are continuing to mislead the public on climate change and undercut global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, lawmakers read from newly released documents obtained from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP as part of an ongoing investigation into the fossil fuel industry and its role driving climate change.

Among the documents was an internal memo sent to ExxonMobil’s chief executive, Darren Woods, that apparently sought to weaken the climate commitments of an international oil industry group, as well as internal emails from Exxon and other companies showing employees appearing to question the speed or seriousness of their efforts to pivot their businesses to focus on cleaner products.

Democrats say the documents also show that the companies’ climate pledges depend on “unproven technologies whose future success and commercialization are not assured.”

The hearing came as the oil companies are sitting on some of their biggest profits ever—Exxon reported $17.9 billion in profit over just three months this year—with the war in Ukraine having sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing. Democrats accused the companies of maximizing financial returns while Americans suffer from rising costs and the increasingly damaging impacts of extreme weather, rather than using their revenue to follow through on their pledges to reduce emissions.

“These companies used these windfall profits to enrich investors and boost salaries of top executives,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, the committee chairwoman. “Their clean energy investments, however, were a drop in the bucket.”

Republicans on the committee largely defended the oil companies and criticized the Democrats’ energy policies, saying Democrats should be trying to increase oil and gas production in the face of high prices, rather than targeting the energy industry.

“This investigation is part of the Democrats’ war on America’s energy producers,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky and the committee’s ranking member.

Democrats had invited directors from the major oil companies to testify, but they declined to appear. The hearing, which was originally scheduled for March but was rescheduled after Russia invaded Ukraine, was the third held by the committee as part of its investigation into efforts by oil companies to sow doubt about climate science and derail or delay efforts to address warming.

At the first hearing last year, top executives from each of the four companies testified by video conference and rejected accusations that they had misled anyone about climate change. Instead, they said, their companies recognize climate change as a threat and are helping to address the problem by investing in low-carbon fuels, carbon capture technology, renewable energy and by lowering their own direct emissions.

Maloney said the companies have obstructed the committee’s investigation since then, refusing to turn over some documents while releasing massive volumes of press releases and other public documents. But, she argued, the documents that they have turned over, some of which the committee released on Wednesday night, already show contradictions with the company’s public statements.

One August 2019 memo, addressed to Exxon’s Woods and written by Peter Trelenberg, the company’s manager of environmental planning and policy, detailed concerns about a planned announcement by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry group of which Exxon is a member. The memo pointed to a drafted statement on “responding to the climate challenge,” saying: “Need to remove reference to Paris Agreement as support for Paris Agreement goals and member company advocacy are separate concepts and are not directly related. Creating a tie between our advocacy/engagements and the Paris Agreement could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” It noted that support for the Paris Agreement was mentioned elsewhere in the pending announcement by the group.

Notes on a 2018 Exxon presentation say that even though the company had been researching algae-derived biofuels “for a long time,” the technology was still “decades away from the scale we need.” Exxon has long promoted its research into algae biofuels as part of its efforts to help lower emissions.

Democrats also pointed to internal emails at Shell which they say reveal that the company “did not plan to take meaningful independent action” to reach net-zero emissions, as some of its public messaging has suggested, but was instead stating vague ambitions.

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group that works to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change, said the documents could help make the case that oil companies are continuing to mislead the public. The release of the documents, he said, “went a long way to establishing the fact that all their current posturing on net-zero and investments in renewables is just the latest form of lying they have come up with.”

Todd Spitler, an Exxon spokesman, said in an emailed statement that “We have supported the Paris Agreement from its start in 2015 and continue to support the U.S. government’s participation in the framework. The selective publication of dated emails, without context, is a deliberate attempt to generate a narrative that does not reflect the commitment of ExxonMobil—and its employees, to address climate change and play a leading role in the transition to a net-zero future.”

Curtis Smith, a spokesman for Shell, said in an email, “Of the nearly half-million pages provided to the Committee, the small handful they chose to highlight are evidence of Shell’s extensive efforts to set aggressive targets, evolve its portfolio and meaningfully participate in the energy transition. Within that pursuit are challenging internal and external discussions that signal Shell’s intent to form partnerships and share pathways we deem critical to becoming a net-zero energy business.”

The hearing comes at a challenging time for oil companies. While they are enjoying soaring profits, they are also facing accelerating global efforts to limit emissions. In August, Congress passed its most substantial climate legislation ever, which could reduce domestic demand for oil and gas in coming years.

Still, the industry won several major concessions in the legislation, including a requirement that prevents the federal government from developing renewable energy on federal lands unless it continues leasing those lands for oil and gas drilling. The climate law also included a substantial increase in a tax incentive for carbon capture and storage, which could funnel billions in public money to oil majors if they follow through on their stated goals to deploy the technology. Many environmental advocates have condemned that support, saying carbon capture is unlikely to reduce emissions at a meaningful scale, and that it could instead extend the life of fossil fuels.

The companies also face a growing number of lawsuits that pose perhaps a more acute threat.More than 20 municipalities and states have sued major oil companies, accusing them of misleading consumers or the public about the risks posed by climate change. Most of the lawsuits seek damages from the companies that could run into the many billions of dollars, to help pay for the costs imposed by rising seas, heat waves and extreme weather. At least two of those cases, in Hawaii and Massachusetts, are progressing closer to discovery, a stage in which the plaintiffs could demand potentially damning internal documents from the companies.

Chevron filed a lengthy motion earlier this week in a lawsuit brought by the city and county of Honolulu, in which it responded to the plaintiffs by saying the public and policymakers “have long been aware of voluminous scientific research on these important issues,” but decided to continue buying and promoting fossil fuels anyway. To support its case, Chevron’s lawyers pointed to decades of widespread discussion of climate change, including in television shows “such as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Cheers, Beverly Hills, 90210, Frasier, Alf, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers.”

At the hearing Thursday, Democrats also looked to raise pressure on the companies by focusing on the impacts of warming on frontline communities. They heard from Thomas Joseph, of the Hoopa Valley Tribe of California, who spoke about the wildfire smoke that has inundated his community in recent weeks. As the fires have worsened in recent years, he said, they have stripped bare the hillsides, which have then fallen as mudslides into rivers, killing the salmon on which his people depend. He told of old-growth trees so weakened by extreme weather that they have snapped under heavy winter snows.

“We must hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the atrocities they have caused,” Joseph said.

Roishetta Ozane, of Sulphur, Louisiana, spoke about having to evacuate ahead of a series of hurricanes last year, after which, “everything was destroyed.” A legal advocate from Kentucky recounted the damage caused by flooding there this summer, and the devastating impact it had on poor residents.

Earlier in the hearing, Maloney had said the committee would continue to press the oil companies to turn over more documents, and suggested the investigation could have more to come. Maloney herself has only a few months left in her position, after she lost to a colleague last month in a primary election for her newly-redrawn district. And, if Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives in November, the committee’s investigation would likely end with her departure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/oil-industry-documents-disinformation.html

no lnx

Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

By Hiroko Tabuchi

Sept. 14, 2022

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

At a hearing last year, oil industry executives stressed their support for a transition to clean energy and denied that they have misled the public. They acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay.

The committee’s subpoena has sought documents related to companies’ role in contributing to climate change, their marketing and lobbying efforts on climate, and the funding of third parties accused of spreading climate disinformation. Several of the companies and organizations subpoenaed — which include Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — have yet to produce some of the key documents that have been requested, according to committee staff members.

According to the staff, a significant part of the material submitted so far includes news clippings and other materials that were already public. Still, the documents gathered so far show that the companies’ internal discussions in recent years haven’t always matched up with their public statements and marketing campaigns, and that some of the companies’ leading climate strategies rely on unproven technologies.

In the Exxon memo describing the edits it sought in the oil industry policy statement, which was drawn up ahead of the 2019 United Nations global climate talks, Peter Trelenberg, Exxon’s manager of environmental policy and planning, wrote: “Need to remove reference to Paris Agreement” from the statement because “Creating a tie between our advocacy/engagements and the Paris Agreement could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.”

[The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods

Election Fraud Claims: A new report says that major social media companies continue to fuel false conspiracies about election fraud despite promises to combat misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.

Russian Falsehoods: Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming the West for disrupting the global food supply have bled into right-wing chat rooms and mainstream conservative news media in the United States.

Media Literacy Efforts: As young people spend more time online, educators are increasingly trying to offer students tools and strategies to protect themselves from false narratives.

Global Threat: New research shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents across 19 countries with advanced economies are very concerned about false information online.]

The memo, addressed to Exxon chief executive, Darren Woods, and other top executives, went on to indicate that Chevron had “expressed that they are generally aligned with these edits.”

Exxon and Chevron did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative did not comment on the advocacy document but said that “advocacy for Paris goals underpins everything that O.G.C.I. does.”

Separate files from Exxon show the company grappling with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign promoting the potential for fuels made from algae. The campaign focused on the promise of the technology and featured images of vast pools of algae, along with a scientist looking forward to calling herself an “energy farmer.” (Versions of the ads have appeared in The New York Times.)

A set of presentation notes that had been prepared for a September 2018 engineering talk by one of its executives stated that the technology is “still decades away from the scale we need.” And in a November 2016 email, an Exxon employee said that an early draft for the ad, prepared by the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide, needed to “replace any lines that imply the technology is live today.”

BBDO did not respond to a request for comment.

The Shell internal documents discussing the company’s “net zero” pathway also included guidelines for employees that stated, “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

[Algae at a greenhouse in La Jolla, Calif., in 2010. The operation was sponsored by Exxon Mobil.Credit...Sunday Huffaker for The New York Times

Curtis Smith, a spokesman for Shell, said in a statement that the company had provided nearly a half-million pages of documents to the committee and that “the small handful they chose to highlight are evidence of Shell’s extensive efforts to set aggressive targets.” Included in those documents are “challenging internal and external discussions,” he said.

He added that it was widely understood that Shell’s net zero scenarios “are not prescriptions, predictions or meant to represent Shell’s current business plan” and instead represent “the scale of the challenge and levers policymakers might pull.”

The committee’s work comes as Democrats’ climate agenda has been re-energized by the passage of a climate and tax bill that includes nearly $370 billion in tax incentives and programs intended to speed up the nation’s transition from an economy based on oil, gas and coal to one powered by wind, solar and other renewable forms of energy.

A number of cities and states have sued oil companies, alleging that they misled the public about fossil fuels’ role in warming the planet, with detrimental effects on local communities. Last year, a Dutch court ruled that Shell must substantially accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Shell has appealed the ruling.

The House committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday to examine recent record-breaking oil industry profits, hear from industry experts and from people affected by recent extreme weather events. It had also requested board members from the oil companies to attend. The companies declined.

At Thursday’s hearing, members also plan to highlight emails that appear to show oil executives making light of climate extreme-heat records. In an August 2017 email exchange, for example, two BP executives found humor in the news at the time that scientists had reported Earth’s warmest year on record.

“I’ll buy the first round Monday night before we say our goodbyes,” Joe Ellis, then BP vice president and head of U.S. government affairs, wrote to colleagues.

“A ‘hot toddy’ maybe?” Bob Stout, then vice president and head of regulatory affairs, wrote back.

The former BP executives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

J.P. Fielder, head of U.S. communications at BP, described the exchange as “inartful attempts at humor that do not reflect the values of BP and should not distract from our actions.” He noted that BP has committed to a net zero emissions target across its sales, operations and production by 2050 or sooner.

Hiroko Tabuchi is an investigative reporter on the Climate desk. She was part of the Times team that received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. @HirokoTabuchi • Facebook

https://www.desmog.com/2022/09/14/house-committee-pr-climate-disinformation/

On September 14, a congressional committee probed the history that PR firms have played in creating and spreading climate disinformation in order to block climate policy and promote fossil fuel interests.

The hearing, held by the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee Oversight & Investigations, invited several firms, including Singer Associates, Story Partners, and Pac/West Communications. None of them showed up.

Instead, the hearing heard from several witnesses, including experts in the PR industry. One of them was Christine Arena, a former VP at Edelman who now researches and exposes greenwashing and industry obfuscation. Arena laid out three overarching campaign strategies that PR firms use on behalf of their fossil fuel clients, citing a study from Brown University researchers Robert Brulle and Carter Werthman. Those strategies are corporate image promotion, third-party mobilization (astroturf groups), and delegitimization of the opposition.

“The U.S. oil and gas sector has always pushed for policies that allow for new fossil fuel expansion, and against policies that would reduce demand,” Arena said in a prepared testimony. “But what has changed recently is the intensity of the industry’s pursuits, and the vast resources it deploys through public relations and lobbying efforts meant to crush potential regulatory obstacles in its path.”

The oil industry and its hired PR hands continue to deploy these strategies. A recent example Arena cited was the oil industry’s effort to opportunistically seize on Russia’s war in Ukraine to promote long-standing policy wishes, while misleading the public by blaming climate policy for causing higher energy prices.

These tactics are especially aggressive at the state and local level, where “brute financial force” is used to kill off climate initiatives, Arena added.

That power imbalance was on vivid display in Colorado in 2018 when grassroots activists succeeded in getting a ballot initiative put to voters that would have imposed greater setback distances on fracking operations, limiting how close to homes and schools new oil and gas wells could be drilled. A year earlier, two deadly oil and gas infrastructure explosions had rocked Firestone, Colorado.

The industry poured money into that election, outspending community and environmental groups by a factor of more than thirty to one. Noble Energy, a large fracking company (now owned by Chevron), hired DC-based PR firm Story Partners, to help defeat the measure. Story Partners created two astroturf campaigns, based on the firm’s research that showed that support for setback distances declined when voters heard about the “devastating consequences” that it would have on the state’s economy. The campaign ran ads to promote “clean” natural gas, warn of damage to Colorado’s economy, and positioned Noble Energy as a responsible partner. Story Partners still displays its campaign to defeat the ballot initiative on its website as a successful “case study” of how it protected its client’s assets.

The House committee also heard from Anne Lee Foster, who held an unpaid position in 2018 for Colorado Rising, a grassroots group supporting the ballot measure to establish drilling setback distances. She spoke about the multiple instances in which people would harass her and her colleagues as they tried to gather signatures.

Around that time, Colorado Public Radio reported that an internal Anadarko Petroleum document, leaked to Colorado Rising, asked employees to report the locations of signature gatherers via a phone texting system. Once the location was identified, counter-protesters appeared at a moment’s notice, shouting and harassing the signature gatherers and passersby who considered signing on to the ballot initiative effort.

According to a report produced by the House committee, oil companies including Anadarko Petroleum, Noble Energy, and Chevron, had set up two front groups, “Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy and Energy Independence” (Protect Colorado), and “Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development” (CRED). Those two groups then funneled most of their proceeds to an Oregon-based PR firm called PAC/West. The two front groups offered a “buffer” between the oil drillers and the PR campaign, the committee report said.

Although it was later deleted from its website, PAC/West described how it was paid by Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy to “lead a statewide education campaign” to defeat the ballot measure. Ultimately, the ballot measure was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2018.

“I personally suffered from what I feel is stalking or harassment in a number of other circumstances throughout this campaign,” Anne Lee Foster told the committee on Wednesday in her prepared testimony.

That was one small example of a web of influence between a handful of PR firms and the oil and gas industry. “Let me be clear: There is nothing standard or ethical about these practices. They are deceptive communications practices that mislead our citizenry and undermine our democracy,” Arena said.

The work that PR firms do goes far beyond simply promoting the image of their clients, according to Melissa Aronczyk, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s School of Communications & Information, another witness at the congressional hearing.

“Public relations firms often present themselves and their work in terms of facilitating or amplifying ideas or information. In fact, public relations is not only communicating ideas and information but coming up with those ideas and creating that information,” Aronczyk said in her testimony. PR firms provide long-term strategic planning, set up front groups, manufacture the illusion of support, and monitor and target opponents. She said the work goes back many decades.

PR firms also operate a broad network of influence out of public view, sharing information among multiple clients and trade groups, which allows companies to “minimize the reputational and financial risk of speaking out against climate action,” Aronczyk said.

“Because this coordinated infrastructure of anti-environmental action is operating behind the scenes, members of the public and lawmakers have no way of knowing if the campaigns operating on behalf of fossil fuels are real or manufactured,” she added.

But the growing pressure on the PR industry is having an effect. Clean Creatives, a climate campaign targeting the advertising industry, says that nearly 400 PR firms have signed a pledge to not work with coal, oil, and gas companies.

“We’re seeing the beginning of a transformation of the PR and Advertising industry when it comes to climate,” Duncan Meisel, executive director of the Clean Creatives campaign, said in a statement. “Oil and gas companies used to be seen as prestige clients, now agencies are embarrassed to admit that they work for them. But this dirty work is still going on in the shadows, making the spotlight of this House hearing and investigation all the more important. The future of creativity is clean and it’s time for agencies to step into the light.”

One PR firm was not at Wednesday’s hearing: FTI Consulting. The House committee is investigating FTI, which has refused to turn over documents requested by the congressional investigators.

“We initiated the subpoena process for FTI Consulting, which has one of the worst reputations in the business. The negotiations are ongoing. The trajectory is sadly not good,” Rep. Katie Porter said in her closing comments on Wednesday. “What are they trying to hide? Is it their creation of fake grassroots groups for their clients to hide behind? Was it the creation of fake social media profiles to track plans of activist groups? Or is there something worse? The harder FTI Consulting fights, the more it appears that they have a lot to lose by having their tactics exposed through oversight.”

She added: “We are just getting started.”

heated email 9 22

hurricane Fiona is on a deadly rampage through the Caribbean, and the horrors may be only beginning. The storm has knocked out electricity and clean water service for more than 4 million people in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic; is pummeling the British-owned Turks and Caicos islands as a Category 3 hurricane; and is expected to strengthen once more before hitting Bermuda on Friday.

But also, the Queen died! Have you heard that the Queen died?[matt g twt]

...

I can’t, for legal reasons, say U.S. cable news cares more about a British woman’s funeral than the suffering of Americans. But I can say the tweets containing this perception speak to a larger problem. The fact is, it is still very difficult to get television news networks to tell climate change stories—especially ones that place the blame on fossil fuels. Hurricane Fiona is not the only recent example.

The House Oversight Committee’s ongoing investigation into Big Oil, and its role in misleading the American public about climate change, is another. This is an objectively big-deal climate accountability story with major potential repercussions for the fossil fuel industry. Last week, there was a big development in the investigation: the committee released a trove of documents obtained through subpoenas issued toExxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute. Those documents, the New York Times reported, “show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.”

According to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who is leading the investigation with committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), it’s been tough to get television news to cover this—but not because it’s not an important story. “I've been told by bookers who have me on their television shows that climate is hard to get ratings for,” he told HEATED in an extensive interview about the investigation. “They say climate is a tough thing to cover on television.”

Khanna declined to name the specific networks or producers that have told him this, but said it was a sentiment he’s encountered frequently in the last year when trying to get media coverage. Though the committee’s October hearing with Big Oil executives garnered 41 minutes of combined coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, he said, follow-ups have been difficult.

Television news networks were “very close to covering the documents,” Khanna said, but didn’t. “The timing, I think, was difficult with the Queen's passing and all that was going on.”

So Khanna is vying for attention from other sources. In our interview, we discussed the investigation’s challenges—from media coverage, to the fierce backlash from Republicans and the oil industry, as well as resistance from some Democratic colleagues. We also talked about the successes of the last year, where the investigation goes from here, and what interested citizens can do to help.

A transcript of our interview, edited for e-mail length, is below the jump. For the full interview, you can listen to the podcast file I’ll be sending out later today. Enjoy!

Emily Atkin: It's been one year since you and Congresswoman Maloney launched the House Oversight Committee investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to spread disinformation about climate change. What has that year accomplished so far?

Rep. Ro Khanna: The hearings have been historic. A lot of other people had tried to get the oil company executives [to testify before Congress] before, and they had not succeeded because they didn't threaten subpoena power. We did, and the oil companies were in front of our committee for almost 6 hours.

The hearing [with oil executives] clearly established that the oil companies had misled America and the world about the impacts of climate change for decades. But what I think is more striking, and more unfortunate, is that the culture of these companies has not changed much. Instead of having introspection about their past mistakes, they were defensive about it. They were unwilling to criticize anything that their company did.

And then the hearings last week showed us that they're continuing to mislead. They're continuing to laugh at those who take climate science seriously. They're continuing to greenwash their actions. They're talking to industry groups [in private] about not committing to the Paris Accord, even though publicly they're saying they're for the Paris Accord. It just goes to the culture of these companies. They still are denying the seriousness of climate. They still think it’s a laughing matter.

EA: These hearings have been likened to the hearings 30 years ago on whether Big Tobacco misled the American public about the health effects of cigarettes. Those hearings led to litigation by the Justice Department which resulted in restitution to the public of about $10 billion. I assume that the purpose of these hearings is to raise public support for a similar type of litigation, and also to provide evidence to ongoing legal attempts to hold the industry accountable. What new evidence has the oversight committee uncovered that could aid in these legal attempts to hold the industry accountable?

RK: I think it'll have a huge evidentiary record of the industry's deception and misleading practices. We will have the testimony of these oil executives, where they are defending statements that are indefensible. Like where the Exxon CEO said “No one has ever in the past misled the country,” but then doesn't have an explanation for why past CEOs said that burning fossil fuels hasn't caused climate change.

We're also going to release an explosive report documenting and detailing everything sometime in October. We're going to have even more documents, even more shocking than what's already been released. And that report will be looked at by a lot of people who have an interest in holding Big Oil accountable.

EA: During the Big Tobacco hearings, Congress was able to get tobacco company CEOs to testify in person. In this case, the Big Oil CEOs had to testify remotely because of COVID protocols. What do you think was the effect of having to have them testify over Zoom instead of in the room?

RK: I wish they were in person. I think the Zoom allowed them to hide a bit.

I'll tell you a moment which I think would have been very powerful in person. I showed that The American Petroleum Institute was running disingenuous ads against every member of Congress who was for a methane fee. At the time, some of these CEOs had come out and said “We’re fine with a methane fee, we support doing something on climate.” So I read what the American Petroleum Institute was doing, and I said, “Do you condemn this?” And everyone said, “Yes, we condemn it.” And then I said, Who is willing now to say that they will withdraw their funds from API if they don’t pull these ads? Not a single hand went up. And it was sort of pin drop silence.

If that had happened in a live room with the CEOs–them staring at each other, not raising their hand, basically saying “We're going to still fund this group that we know is doing something wrong,” that would have been a powerful moment and gotten more attention. And my sense is that had it been in-person, a number of networks would have covered it live, and that would have exposed the oil industry in a bigger way.

EA: Speaking of the networks and the coverage of the hearings, I wonder what your assessment of the media coverage of these hearings has been. Are you happy with it?

RK: No. There hasn't been enough. And it's a challenge, because I've been told by bookers who have me on their television shows that climate is hard to get ratings for. So we tried to frame this as not just about climate, but about companies lying to the American people. And there was some interest; we got a lot of print coverage. But it was hard, candidly, to break in on television.

EA: So you're telling me bookers actually said, “it's going to be tough because the ratings don't work for climate change stories?”

RK: Yeah. In private, they do. They say climate is a tough thing to cover on television. They liked that this wasn't just about climate, but about exposing an industry that was misleading people. They thought the angle of Big Oil companies making record profits and still not having any relief for ordinary Americans could be something of interest. But climate is hard sell. And that is a challenge for those of us who care deeply about it.

EA: I've heard that excuse many times. But I think people are very interested in the accountability side, in naming an actual villain.

RK: In candor, we had a couple of networks very close to covering the hearing when it was virtual, and a couple of networks very close to covering the documents we released [last week]. But the timing, I think, was difficult with the Queen's passing and all that was going on.

EA: Oh, yeah. The Queen's passing definitely takes precedence over the oil industry lying about climate change.

RK: But I’m hopeful the October report will break through on television. Because there are so many ordinary Americans, particularly people over 50, who still get their news by television. And that's really the oil companies’ strategy, to take the blows and move on and hope it doesn't penetrate the popular consciousness.

EA: I have to ask you this, otherwise I wouldn't be doing my job well. Which networks didn't cover the hearing because of the Queen's death or because climate change doesn't get ratings?

RK: I can’t tell you that on the record. And the reason is partly because they may cover it in Octoberand I don’t want to be negative with them. But at least they were considering it. So it's almost positive that they were considering it.

EA: You give them way more credit than I do. But I get it.

EA: I feel like another reason it might be tough to get TV coverage for these hearings is because holding the fossil fuel industry accountable is very triggering for a lot of people on the right of the political spectrum. At least in the Big Tobacco hearings, there was some Republican buy-in that perhaps tobacco companies misled people. It doesn't seem that there is any buy-in from your Republican colleagues that the fossil fuel industry has done anything harmful to humanity.

RK: No. If you look at all the Republican statements in the beginning of the hearing with oil executives, it's like a tribute to the oil executives. Their statements are as laudatory as the statements you're now hearing about the Queen. It was staggering. Not one of them said, “Well, maybe you need to have some accountability. Maybe you need to own up to the past. Maybe you need to have some compensation for the lies.”

They make it about this so-called “War on energy.” But as I said to my Republican colleagues, how can it be a war on energy when Exxon profits are up $20 billion? It’s an awfully ineffective war. And the other point is, no one is saying that the world suddenly, as of today, doesn't need fossil fuels. You can have the view that we need to move towards renewable energy and still need fossil fuels, while still believing that the fossil fuel companies should not have lied.

So it's impossible to have a thoughtful conversation. They basically just say, “Oh, you don't want any fossil fuels.” No, we’re saying we want to move the world to zero emissions and we want to move towards as much renewable energy as possible. What we're saying is these companies shouldn't be lying to the American public.

EA: Is there anybody on the other side of the aisle who is willing to have an adult conversation about this?

RK: There are people in the Republican Party who are willing to have an adult conversation about climate. But it is about as difficult and dangerous for a Republican to call out Big Oil today as it is for a Republican to call out Donald Trump. Just as cutting corporate taxes is part of the Republican mantra, standing up for Big Oil has become part of the mantra. So even people who you can have a thoughtful conversation about climate with, and who may agree that we've got to do more in terms of building batteries and electric vehicles, are going to be very reluctant to do anything that is going to villainize or hold accountable Big Oil.

EA: The Republicans appear united on that approach. But in the Democratic Party, it seems there are some members who are willing to be very bullish about holding the fossil fuel industry accountable, and others who are less so. Does the Democratic Party need to be more united on climate change?

RK: I think we have some unity on the need for incentives to build clean technology in America. We need much more urgency in scale. Just having tax credits isn't enough–we actually need federal financing. But we're even scared of that because of the Solyndra example in 2012.

There is consensus that we need to do something. There is not consensus that we have to hold accountable those people who got us into this mess. There was consensus in the Democratic Party that we had to name Big Pharma in what they were doing to rip off Americans. There was consensus post-2008 that we had to name some of the Big Banks and what they did to cause the Wall Street crash. There is less consensus in the party that we have to name Big Oil and what they're doing to rip off Americans at the pump, and what they're did to lie about climate change.

And it’s a hard thing to do! There were frivolous complaints against me and Carolyn Maloney when we did this. Articles get slanted against you if you’re going to do something like this. So you’re putting a big dot on your back, and becoming a target for a very powerful industry, and people are reluctant to do that.

EA: You mentioned that you experienced negative consequences for going after the oil industry. Can you talk about that a bit?

RK: Yeah, there were a couple articles planted about us using outside resources for hearings, which we didn't, and frivolous ethics complaints which didn't go anywhere. There were articles looking at all of my donors, articles going as far as looking at my wife who had independent investment assets before marriage.

Look, that's politics. Those things happen. But the point is, when you go out and take on an industry like this and you’re public about it, they're going to punch back. There are a lot of people who don’t want to be punched back. It’s easiest to just kind of go along, get along, not build enemies. And unfortunately, a lot of times that's the way to rise up in Washington.

EA: I have two more short questions for you. The first I almost hate asking because it’s horse-racey in nature. But I do think it's important to know: what will the future of this investigation and the committee’s attempts to hold the oil industry accountable look like if Democrats lose the House?

RK: Well, this is why I'm really putting a lot of stock in the documents we’re releasing in October. We want to get everything wrapped up this term. I'm optimistic and hopeful that we will keep Congress. But politics is unpredictable. And so I think we will get this work done, and once it’s done, depending on the House, we have allies in the Senate. I've worked very closely with Sheldon Whitehouse, who has really been the champion early on on dark money. And I'll continue to work with him, with Senator Sanders and Senator Warren on funding issues.

EA: There's a lot of people in the climate activist community who read my newsletter, and the biggest question I get from them is, “what can I do?” What could they do to help your efforts?

RK: On a very basic level, they can help by sharing some of the documents that we're discovering, and help share the lies that these oil companies have told us. Social media is very, very powerful, and grassroots organizing is very powerful. So they can help get the story out.

They can also continue to demand that Congress prioritize climate and prioritize holding people accountable. We would have never had the Inflation Reduction Act and $300 billion for climate if it weren't for Sunrise, if it wasn't for Food and Water Watch, if it wasn't for the Sierra Club and the NRDC and the League of Conservation Voters and all of the environmental groups saying climate has to be the highest priority.

That's really what it's going to take: a people-centered mobilization around climate. You saw that with Occupy Wall Street which led to Dodd-Frank. You're seeing that with the Inflation Reduction Act. The difference is this is just step one. We have so much more to do on climate.

file:///C:/Users/patmc/OneDrive/Documents/MTA/IMAGES**/Shellenberger**M-20220915.pdf

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20220915/115114/HHRG-117-GO00-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20220915.pdf

Good morning Chairwoman Maloney, Environment Subcommittee Chairman Khanna, and Ranking Member Comer, and members of the Committee. I am grateful to you for inviting my testimony. I share this committee’s concern with climate change and misinformation. It is for that reason that I have, for more than 20 years, conducted energy analysis, worked as a journalist, and advocated for renewables, coal-to-natural gas switching, and nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions. At the same time, I am deeply troubled by the way concern over climate change is being used to repress domestic energy production. The U.S. is failing to produce sufficient quantities of natural gas and oil for ourselves and our allies. The result is the worst energy crisis in 50 years, continuing inflation, and harm to workers and consumers in the U.S. and the Western world. Energy shortages are already resulting in rising social disorder and the toppling of governments, and they are about to get much worse. We should do more to address climate change but in a framework that prioritizes energy abundance, reliability, and security. Climate change is real and we should seek to reduce carbon emissions. But it’s also the case that U.S. carbon emissions declined 22% between 2005 and 2020, global emissions were flat over the last decade, and weather-related disasters have declined since the beginning of this century. There is no scientific scenario for mass death from climate change. A far more immediate and dangerous threat is insufficient energy supplies due to U.S. government policies and actions aimed at reducing oil and gas production. The Biden administration claims to be doing all it can to increase oil and natural gas production but it’s not. It has issued fewer leases for oil and gas production on federal lands than any other administration since World War II. It blocked the expansion of oil refining. It is using environmental regulations to reduce liquified natural gas production and exports. It has encouraged greater production by Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other OPEC nations, rather than in the U.S. And its representatives continue to emphasize that their goal is to end the use of fossil fuels, including the cleanest one, natural gas, thereby undermining private sector investment. If this committee is truly concerned about corporate profits and misinformation, then it must approach the issue fairly. The big tech companies make larger profits than big oil but have for some reason not been called to account. Nor has there been any acknowledgement that the U.S. oil and gas industry effectively subsidized American consumers to the tune of $100 billion per year for most of the...

last 12 years, resulting in many bankruptcies and financial losses. As for

misinformation about climate change and energy, it is rife on all sides, and I question

whether the demands for censorship by big tech firms are being made in good faith,

or are consistent with the rights protected by the First Amendment.

Efforts by the Biden administration and Congress to increase reliance on

weather dependent renewable energies and electric vehicles (EVs) risks undermining

American industries and helping China. China has more global market share of the

production of renewables, EVs, and their material components than OPEC has over

global oil production. It would be a grave error for the U.S. to sacrifice its hard-won

energy security for dependence on China for energy. While I support the repatriation

of those industries to the U.S., doing so will take decades, not years. Increased costs

tied to higher U.S. labor and environmental standards could further impede their

development. There are also significant underlying physical problems with

renewables, stemming from their energy-dilute, material-intensive nature, that may

not be surmountable. Already we have seen that their weather-dependence, large

land requirements, and large material throughput result in renewables making

electricity significantly more expensive everywhere they are deployed at scale.

The right path forward would increase oil and natural gas production in the

short and medium terms, and increase nuclear production in the medium to long

terms. The U.S. government is, by extending and expanding heavy subsidies for

renewables, expanding control over energy markets, but without a clear vision for the

role of oil, gas, and nuclear.

We should seek a significant expansion of natural gas and oil production,

pipelines, and refineries to provide greater energy security for ourselves, and to

produce in sufficient quantities for our allies. We should seek a significant expansion

of nuclear power to increase energy abundance and security, produce hydrogen, and

one day phase out the use of all fossil fuels. While the latter shouldn’t be our main

focus, particularly now, radical decarbonization can and should be a medium- to

long-term objective within the context of creating abundant, secure, and low-cost

energy supplies to power our remarkable nation and civilization.

...

Climate Risk

Anthropogenic climate change is real and is something that governments, big

oil companies, and other corporations should do much more to address. All else

being equal, we would rather not change global temperatures at all, given that we

have built a civilization of cities, farms, and protected nature areas within a specific

temperature band. My own concern over climate change led me to co-found, in

2002, the New Apollo Project, now the Blue-Green alliance, an environmental-labor

coalition, which successfully advocated for President Barack Obama’s historic

investment in renewables in his 2009 stimulus package

; advocate for the transition to

natural gas from coal starting in 2011

; and advocate for a significant expansion of

nuclear energy alongside climate scientists Tom Wigley and James Hansen, since

2013.

3 Since then, I have played an active role in keeping nuclear plants operating in

Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and California.

At the same time, climate advocacy grounded in flawed and misleading

science has been self-defeating, since it has repressed natural gas production in the

United States, which has resulted in a recent reversion to dirtier fuels. Between 2005

and 2020, U.S. carbon emissions declined by 21.5 percent, which is 4.5 percentage

points more than what the U.S. promised as part of its United Nations Paris Climate

Change commitments.

5 Emissions also declined by 4.5 percentage points more than

what was promised had Congress passed Waxman-Markey “cap and trade”

legislation, which died in the U.S. Senate, back in 2010.

6 Of that emissions reduction,

61 percent was due to the shift from coal to natural gas and electricity production,

and the 39 percent reduction that came from intermittent renewables back-stopped

by natural gas, which is required in most situations to provide power when the sun is

...y Short Summary,” June 2009,

https://www.c2es.org/document/waxman-markey-short-summary/

5 Kate Larsen et al., “Preliminary U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimates for 2020,”

Rhodium Group, January 12, 2021, https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-us-emissions-2020/

4 Uri Berliner, “Why even environmentalists are supporting nuclear power today,” August 30,

2022; Debra Kahn, “The environmental apostate who backed nuclear energy before it was cool,”

Politico, June 8, 2022; James Freeman, “Is this man talking California into nuclear power?” Wall Street

Journal, April 29, 2022.

3 Thom Patterson, Climate change warriors: it’s time to go nuclear,” CNN, November 3, 2013;

“Crossfire: Nuclear Energy: Ralph Nader and Michael Shellenberger are in the Crossfire,” CNN,

November 8, 2013.

2 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, “A boom in shale gas? Credit the feds,”

Washington Post, December 16, 2011; Kevin Begos, “Fracking boom: help or hurt climate change

fight,” Washington Post, April 29, 2013.

...not shining and the wind is not blowing.

7 But today, thanks to natural gas shortages,

coal-fired electricity increased 22 percent in the U.S. in 2021, as compared to 2020,

and will reach an all-time high, globally, this year.

Moreover, widespread alarmism is contributing to anxiety and depression,

particularly among young people, even though most environmental trends are going

in the right direction. Today, 36 percent of Americans surveyed believe climate

change will make Earth uninhabitable for all life and 31 percent believe climate

change will lead to human extinction, claims that are causing severe anxiety in some

children.

9 And yet neither the IPCC nor any other reputable scientific body makes

such apocalyptic claims. Indeed, the best-available science finds: global carbon

dioxide emissions were flat over the last decade

; U.S. landfalling hurricanes have

declined since 1900

; there is no overall trend in U.S. heat wave frequency or

magnitude since 1900

; and there is no increase in flooding, decreasing flood

mortality, and decreasing flood costs as a proportion of GDP around the world.

The IPCC has “low confidence” of climate change influence on flood events. Sonia I.

Seneviratne, et al., “Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate,” IPCC, Climate

Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment

Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Shiqiang Du, “Brief communication:

Rethinking the 1998 China floods to prepare for a nonstationary future,” Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.,

19, 715–719, 2019; Muhammed Yaseen et al., “Contemporary Trends in High and Low River Flows in

Upper Indus Basin, Pakistan,” Water Journal, January 24, 2022; Roger Pielke, Jr. “US Flood Damage as

12 U.S. Global Change Research Program, “Chapter Six: Temperature Changes in the United

States,” Fourth National Climate Assessment, 2017; https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/

There is evidence that heat waves, temperature extremes, and heavy precipitation are

increasing at a global scale, but heavier rainfall does not necessarily mean more flooding, and IPCC

expresses low to medium confidence in changes to meteorological and hydrological droughts, and to

agricultural and ecological droughts, respectively. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change, Assessment Report 6, Working Group I, 2021.

11 Philip J. Klotzbach et al, “Continental U.S. Hurricane Landfall Frequency and Associated

Damage: Observations and Future Risks,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, July 2018.

10 Zeke Hausfather, “Global CO2 emissions have been flat for a decade, new data reveals,”

Carbon Brief, April 11, 2021,

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-co2-emissions-have-been-flat-for-a-decade-new-data-reveals/

9 YouGovAmerica, “Nearly two in five Americans say it’s likely climate change will make the

Earth uninhabitable,” April 13-19,

2022,https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2022/04/22/americans-say-climate-chan

ge-earth-uninhabitable; Jason Plautz, “The Environmental Burden of Gen Z,” Washington Post,

February 3, 2020; Reuters, “One in five UK children report nightmares about climate change,” March

2, 2020; Michael Shellenberger, “Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All,” Forbes, December 4, 2019.

8 U.S. EIA, “Annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation will increase for the first time since

2014,” October 18, 2021; International Energy Agency, “Global coal demand is set to return to its

all-time high in 2022,” July 28, 2022.

...

While some extreme weather events are increasing globally, namely heat

waves and extreme precipitation events, data collected by EM-DAT in Belgium, the

main source for data on global disasters, show that weather-related disasters declined

by at least 10 percent between 2000 to 2021.

14 The reason for this is because

EM-DAT, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the

U.S. National Climate Assessment, and every other reputable scientific body

measures disasters as deaths and economic costs relative to GDP, both of which have

been declining as societies have become more resilient and less vulnerable.

Again, all things being equal, we should want to reduce temperatures and

emissions as much as possible. But we should also acknowledge the progress that

has been made protecting ourselves, and our ecosystems, from the consequences of

higher temperatures. Deaths globally from natural disasters declined from an average

of 550,000 per year in 1920, when the global human population was less than 2

billion, to 8,200 in 2020.

16 We prevent flooding through flood management. We

survive droughts through water storage, water recycling, and desalination. And we

prevent high-intensity fires through forest management, such as through selective

mechanical cutting and prescriptive burns.

Energy Security

Having established that climate change is a matter of public concern, but not

an apocalyptic threat, we should place it within a broader framework within which to

think about energy. The security of energy supplies, and reducing energy prices, are

urgent priorities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows the serious danger of nations

17 Michael Shellenberger, “Forests that survive megafires prove good management trumps

climate change,” Forbes, September 13, 2020.

16 Munich Re, “Natural Catastrophes in 2020,” January 2021,

https://www.munichre.com/content/dam/munichre/mrwebsiteslaunches/natcat-2021/2020_Jahresuebe

rsicht_Welt_e.pdf/_jcr_content/renditions/original./2020_Jahresuebersicht_Welt_e.pdf; Hannah Ritchie

and Max Roser, “Natural Disasters,” Our World in Data, accessed September 14, 2022; Giuseppe

Formetta et al., “Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate related hazards,”

Global Environmental Change, July 2019.

15 Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Natural Disasters,” Our World in Data, accessed September

14, 2022. As the authors of a major 2019 paper note, “Improved protection against hazards has

counter-balanced the effects of increasing exposure on disaster risk, with the global average

2007–2016 multi-hazard human mortality and loss rates dropping of about 6.5 and nearly 5 times as

compared to the period 1980–1989, respectively.” Giuseppe Formetta et al., “Empirical evidence of

declining global vulnerability to climate related hazards,” Global Environ

....

becoming overly dependent on hostile foreign powers for their energy supply.

Europe not only became over-dependent on natural gas, it over-invested in

weather-dependent renewables, which cannot replace fossil fuels, and under-invested

in nuclear. People think Europe depends on Russia for energy because it lacks its

own, but 15 years ago Europe exported more natural gas than Russia did before its

invasion of Ukraine. Now, Russia exports three times more gas than Europe

produces.

Why? Because European policymakers in the grip of environmental alarmism

blocked fracking.

19 Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former secretary

general of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen both blamed Russia for funding the war on

natural gas in Europe. “Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and

disinformation operations,” said Rasmussen in 2014, “engaged actively with so-called

nongovernmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale

gas—to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas.”

20 That same year, former

Secretary of State Clinton said “phony environmental groups” funded by Russia led

the campaign against fracking in Europe.

The crisis in Europe makes clear that climate change cannot be our sole

concern when it comes to developing energy policy, that energy independence must

be understood as a national security priority, and that energy as the lifeblood of the

economy, the master resource unlike any other commodity, must be cheap, reliable,

and abundant, if the United States is going to insure its future prosperity. Moreover,

it’s clear that the U.S. must do much more to supply its energy-poor allies in Europe

and Asia, who we are treaty-obligated to protect militarily. Had those allies been

more energy-independent of Russia, Ukraine would have been significantly less

vulnerable to attack, since Russia would have suffered even greater consequences for

its aggression.

And, indeed, today there is a broad bipartisan consensus that the U.S. must

export much more natural gas to Europe. The Washington Post reported on

September 11, 2022, that the Biden administration is reviewing efforts to increase

liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe. “The administration officials emphasized that

the White House has for months been seeking any possible way to increase natural

gas exports to Europe.” Said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, “We’re doing

everything we can on the LNG front to be helpful.” And, indeed, U.S. LNG exports

[cites wsj]

...

have increased significantly, with over twice the amount of LNG going to Europe this

year over the same period of time last year.

But by the time Biden had announced the Task Force to reduce Europe’s

dependence on Russian fossil fuels, in March, the additional flows of U.S. LNG to

Europe had already occurred.

23 The reason was because the U.S. LNG industry

created a new model of exports which allowed for ships to change their destinations

in real-time based on changing market demands, which is a break from how Qatar

and other LNG exporters had managed LNG exports. It was thanks to this model that

the U.S. was able to supply natural gas to Brazil in 2021 after its drought reduced

hydroelectricity production. Reallocation of LNG exports had already been occurring

since Europe’s energy crisis began in the summer of 2021, six months before Russia’s

invasion of Ukraine. The US increased LNG exports to Europe by 0.8 billion cubic feet

per day (Bcfpd) in January and February 2022 as compared to January and February

Nothing that the Biden administration has done was responsible for the shift of

U.S. LNG to Europe.

The Biden administration claims that it is limited in what it can do when in

reality it could do much more to expand natural gas production and exports. It’s true

that it takes roughly three years to build an LNG export terminal and two years to get

it approved by government regulators. But Biden could, if necessary, invoke the

Defense Production Act to expedite the permitting of LNG export terminals,

pipelines, and drilling. The regulation of new LNG terminals could occur concurrently

with their construction. Expedited regulation might reduce obstacles in the way of

expanding the size of liquefaction units, or trains. And Biden could announce trade

agreements with other nations to supply them with LNG, which would incentivize

natural gas production domestically.

It’s true that the U.S. is already the largest LNG exporter in the world, but

recent increases were underway before Biden took office and are a tiny fraction of

what the U.S. could be producing.

25 U.S. natural gas production will increase from

95.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in October 2021 to 97.5 Bcf/d by December

2022, a record high.

26 U.S. exports increased by 12 percent in the first half of 2022.

26 US EIA, “EIA forecasts U.S. natural gas production will establish a new monthly record high

in 2022,” December 16, 2021.

25 US EIA, “The United States became the world’s largest LNG exporter in the first half of

2022,” July 25, 2022.

24 Scott Disavino, “Could the US ship more LNG to Europe?” March 25, 2022.

23 White House, “US and EU announce task force to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian

fossil fuels,” March 25, 2022; US EIA, “U.S. liquefied natural gas export capacity will be world’s largest

by end of 2022, December 9, 2021.

22 Jeff Stein, “White House alarm ri...

But the largest U.S. natural gas producer, EQT, calculates that the U.S. could produce

four times more LNG, 569 billion cubic meters (Bcm) per year.

27 The U.S. government

estimates that the United States has 464 Tcf of proved reserves and 2,460 Tcf of

technically recoverable reserves of dry natural gas.

28 As such, the U.S. could export an

amount of natural gas (60 bcfd) that would be equivalent to the oil production of

Saudi Arabia, calculates EQT.

Not only is the Biden administration not taking the extraordinary measures it

could take to produce and export more natural gas, it is actively preventing the

expansion of natural gas production and exports. On September 8, three days before

The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration was doing all it could to

expand LNG exports, Treasury Secretary Yellen reaffirmed in Detroit the commitment

by the Biden administration to end the use of fossil fuels.

29 Two days earlier, the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a request from LNG exporter

Cheniere Energy, which accounts for half of US LNG exports, to exempt two turbines

at its Gulf Coast terminals from a pollution rule, which means Cheniere may have to

reduce exports of LNG in order to install new pollution control equipment. Cheniere

said that the installation of the new pollution controls could take years.

The Biden administration has issued fewer leases for oil and gas production on

federal lands and off-shore areas, which produce one-quarter of all US production,

than any other administration since World War II. The Interior Department distributed

just 203 leases — just 126,228 acres — for oil and gas development during President

Biden’s first 19 months in office. By contrast, former presidents Obama and Trump

approved 10 times as many leases during the same period. And no president since

Richard Nixon has leased out fewer than 4.4 million acres during his first 19 months in

office.

It’s true that the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requires the

Interior Department to offer a minimum of 60 million offshore acres and 2 million

acres of federal lands to oil and gas producers, annually, in order for the

administration to issue permits to wind and solar developers, but the Biden

31 Timothy Puko, Federal oil leases slow to trickle under Biden,” Wall Street Journal,

...

dministration, or future administrations, could simply offer for lease federal lands

unlikely to have much oil and gas on them. And, further reducing the incentive to

expand production, IRA increased royalty fees on drilling.

American Oil Policy

The Biden administration has similarly blocked expanded oil production,

refining, and exports, even though many American allies are being forced to burn

more fuel oil from petroleum given natural gas shortages. Japan’s imports of fuel oil

are at a four-year high because it can be used to generate electricity in the face of

natural gas shortages, while Bangladeshi and Taiwanese purchases of fuel oil have

doubled.

Instead of expanding oil production to help meet U.S. and global demand, the

Biden administration is urging oil companies to export less. In late August, Energy

Secretary Jennifer Granholm urged U.S. oil refiners to export less. “Given the historic

level of U.S. refined product exports, I again urge you to focus in the near term on

building inventories in the United States, rather than selling down current stocks and

further increasing exports,” she wrote. “It is our hope that companies will proactively

address this need. If that is not the case, the Administration will need to consider

additional Federal requirements or other emergency measures.”

Since taking office, President Biden and his Administration have followed

through on Biden’s campaign promise, made in September 2019, to “end fossil

fuel.”

In January 2021, Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone oil pipeline from

Canada to the United States.

In March 2021, the Biden Administration revoked a

permit for a massive expansion of a refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands,

36 and in May

2021, shut the refinery down.

In May 2022, the Biden Administration scrapped three

major off-shore oil and gas lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

38 “U.S. scraps three offshore oil and gas drilling auctions,” Reuters, May 12, 2022.

37 Laura Sanicola, “U.S. halts operations at Caribbean oil refinery after breakdowns,” Reuters,

May 14, 2021.

36 Valerie Volcovici, Biden White House blocks Virgin Islands refinery expansion permit over

pollution concerns,” Reuters, March 25, 2021.

35 Rod Nickel, “Biden revokes KXL permit in blow to Canada's oil sector,” Reuters, January 20,

2021.

34 Steve Peoples, “In intimate moment, Biden vows to ‘end fossil fuel,” Associated Press,

September 6, 2019.

33 “Granholm to Europe: Tough Luck,” Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2022.

32 “Dirty-oil hoarding for winter begins in Asia as gas woes deepen,” Bloomberg, September

...[p13]

appears warranted given that: China has, since 2020, been importing oil from

Venezuela, in direct violation of U.S. sanctions;

47 Chinese and Indian imports of

Russian oil have almost entirely offset western cuts;

48 and China has said it would not

respect the proposed G7 price cap.

The Biden administration’s posture has confused the public since June. “Are

you telling me you want them drilling for more oil?” CNN host John Berman asked

Secretary Granholm in mid-June. “You want the refineries putting out more gasoline

in five or ten years?” Said Granholm, “What we’re saying is today we need that

supply increased. Of course, in five or ten years — actually in the immediate — we

are also pressing on the accelerator, if you will, to move toward clean energy, so that

we don’t have to be under the thumb of petro-dictators like Putin, or at the whim of

the volatility of fossil fuels. Ultimately America will be most secure when we can rely

on our own clean domestic production of energy through solar, through wind —”

Said CNN’s Berman, “But that’s the problem for these companies. These companies

are saying, ‘You’re asking me to do more now, invest more now, when, in fact 5 or 10

years from now, we don’t think that demand will be there, and the administration

doesn’t even necessarily want it to be there.’”

I have discovered something similar. A senior executive at a major U.S. bank

that finances oil and gas exploration told me in June, “If you were an oil company,

why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity

if you thought the federal government or investors would shut you down in the next

few years?”

All of this raises a question for this committee. Is your concern really with the

high profits of American corporations? If so, then why have you not held hearings

demanding lower profits by high-tech companies such as Meta (Facebook), Apple,

and Google? Their earnings last year were $39 billion, $30 billion, and $76 billion,

respectively, as compared to $23 billion, $21 billion, and $16 billion for Exxon, Shell,

and Chevron, respectively. And does your concern only extend to profitable years or

unprofitable ones? From 2010 to 2020, U.S. shale frackers lost $300 billion. From

2002 to 2012, industry leader Chesapeake never had positive cash flow and lost $30

billion. From mid-2012 to mid-2017, the 60 largest fracking companies lost an

50 John Berman and Secretary Jennifer Granholm, CNN, June 15, 2022.

49 Reuters, “China foreign ministry urges dialogue, not price cap, on Russian oil,” September 5,

2022.

48 Andy Lin et al, “India and China undercut Russia’s oil sanctions pain,” Financial Times,

September 7, 2022.

47 Chen Aizhu et al., “Chinese defence firm has taken over lifting Venezuelan oil for deb

offset,” Reuters, August 26, 2022.

Shellenberger Testimony p...

average of $9 billion every quarter. From 2006 to 2014, they lost $80 billion. Even

when oil was $100 a barrel, in 2014, they lost $20 billion.

The economic benefit to American consumers for the losses of the oil and gas

industry were enormous. From 2010 to 2020, lower energy prices thanks to cheaper

natural gas from fracking resulted in $100 billion being added to the U.S. economy

every year, for a total benefit of $1 trillion between 2010 and 2020.

52 “The real story

to be written,” noted a Bloomberg reporter, “is about the massive subsidy to

consumers from everyone who financed Chesapeake and all the companies that lost

money fracking last decade.”

53 The fracking revolution showed how energy security,

economic growth, and environmental progress go hand-in-hand. The same cheap

natural gas that drove American prosperity is also what allowed for the low-cost

replacement of coal and the decline in carbon emissions by nearly 22 percent

between 2005 and 2020.

But now, the decline in oil prices appears to be coming to an end, and neither

the Biden administration nor Congress have a plan for dealing with it. A growing

number of states are seeing the price of gasoline increase; 15 reported an increase in

the last week, which is more than three times the number that saw gains at the end of

the prior week. Nymex gasoline futures have been increasing, which suggests an

increase in gasoline costs is coming. The worst price spikes have been in California,

which has the most expensive gasoline in the U.S. at $5.42 per gallon. This is

straining low-income consumers especially, who have also been hurt by electricity

prices that rose seven times faster than in the rest of the U.S. over the last decade,

due to our heavy use of weather-dependent renewables.

Misinformation

Now would be a good time for the Biden Administration and Congress to host

an open and honest conversation about how to deal with our energy future. Yet some

members of the administration and Congress appear to be more interested in

scapegoating oil and gas companies for behaviors that are entirely predictable given

the policy environment within which Congress has asked them to work. “We have

54 Sophie Caronello, “Pumpprice declines in US show signs of coming to an end,” Bloomberg,

September 13, 2022.

53 David Wallace-Wells, “Hardly anyone talks about how fracking was an extraordinary

boondoggle,” New York Times, July 27, 2022.

52 Robert M. Ames, “The Arithmetic of Shale Gas,” SSRN, June 26, 2012; Ed Hirs, “The

arithmetic of Fracking,” Forbes, Feb 21, 2020.

51 David Wallace-Wells, “Hardly anyone talks about how fracking was an extraordinary

...

tried to expand production and processing capacity throughout the years, but

constantly get sued by environmental groups or the government,” said the oil and

gas banker I spoke to in June. “Now that the consequences of that come to roost, we

get blamed for ‘price gouging’?”

As troubling are the efforts by the Biden administration and some members of

Congress to label as “misinformation” opinions with which they disagree, and to

demand that the Big Tech companies censor them. In April, the Biden Administration

proposed a “disinformation bureau” to be housed at the Department of Homeland

Security. Then, in June, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said,

“The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again

to spread disinformation,” pointing to those who criticized the failure of

weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021.

But many of those criticisms were factual. Over the last decade in Texas,

investors spent over $53 billion on weather-dependent energy sources, mostly wind

turbines, which alongside frozen fossil fuel plants were largely unavailable during the

cold snap in February.

56 That was only partly because of the cold and mostly because

of low wind speeds.

McCarthy claimed that the critics of renewables are funded by “dark money”

fossil fuel companies, which she compared to Big Tobacco, but offered zero evidence

for this claim. Instead, she demanded that Google, Twitter, and Facebook censor

views with which she disagrees. “We need the tech companies to really jump in,” she

said, because criticizing renewables is “equally dangerous to denial because we have

to move fast.”

58 Notably, McCarthy’s interview with Axios was sponsored by 3M, a

major supplier to the solar industry that has lobbied directly for climate and energy

legislation that would benefit 3M.

I would like to know if this committee is headed in a similar direction. Is it the

intention of this Committee, at the time of the worst energy crisis in 50 years, to shut

down public debate, or widen it? In its press release, the Committee wrote that this

59 “About 3M Solar Energy,”

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/power-generation-us/solutions/solar-energy/, accessed September

14, 2022; “Bills lobbied by 3M, 2021,” Open Secrets,

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?cycle=2021&id=D000021800 , accessed

September 14, 2022.

58 Ben Geman, “Top Biden Aide prods big tech to crack down on climate change

misinformation,” Axios, June 9, 2022.

57 Michael Shellenberger, “Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Energy

and Natural Resources,” March 11, 2021,

https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/B3F496B5-ADF4-457F-94C8-4257680DCB32

56 Powering Texas, accessed September 14, 2022,

https://poweringtexas.com/#revenue-generator

55 Ben Geman, “Top Biden Aide prods big tech to crack down on climate change

misinformation,” Axios, June 9, 2022

...

hearing “is part of the Committee’s investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s

long-running campaign to spread disinformation about climate change and

greenwash its role in causing global warming.”

However, as the committee also noted, the big oil companies have long

acknowledged that fossil fuels contribute to climate change, to which the Committee

appears to be coping with by widening the scope of what counts as “disinformation,”

noting that the big oil companies “refused to stop spending money to block climate

action.” Is the suggestion here that disagreement over policy now constitutes

“misinformation” that Big Tech companies should censor? If not, then what is the

committee seeking to achieve with this line of argumentation?

If the concern is genuinely with misinformation, then the committee should

expand its scope to the claims of the Biden administration and renewable energy

advocates. On June 21, Biden claimed, “We need more refining capacity,” and said,

“This idea that [oil and gas companies] don’t have oil to drill and to bring up is simply

not true.” In fact, as noted, Biden’s EPA killed a refinery on May 14 and killed a one

million acre oil and gas lease in Alaska on May 12, and has issued fewer leases than

any other president since Truman. If Biden and his aides are going to demand that

Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies censor “misinformation,” those

companies should start by censoring Biden’s claim that he has issued sufficient oil and

gas licenses. He hasn’t. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed to request that Saudi

Arabia and Venezuela increase production.

If we are going to ask Facebook and Twitter to censor misinformation, they

would need to censor Biden’s claim that he killed the Alaska oil and gas lease due to

“lack of industry interest.” “Citing a 'lack of industry interest' is nothing more than

fantasy from an administration that shuns U.S. energy production,” responded Sen.

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). "I can say with full certainty, based on conversations as

recently as last night, that Alaska's industry does have interest in lease sales in Cook

Inlet. To claim otherwise is simply false, not to mention stunningly short-sighted.”

But is it really the intention of this committee to get into the job of policing

political debates in society, or demand that big tech play that role? Doing so would

seem to be a significant drift of mission at a time of the worst energy crisis in 50

years.

61 Sarah Cook et al, “Biden Administration cancels Alaska oil and gas lease sale,” CBS News,

May 18, 2022.

60 House Committee on Oversight and Reform, “Chairs Maloney, Khanna to Hold Hearing on

Big Oil’s Profits and Climate Disinformation,” September 12, 2022,

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairs-maloney-khanna-to-hold-hearing-on-big-oil-s-p

...

electricity supply because wind speeds in cold snaps are so low. It is for that reason

that grid operators do not rely on wind turbines to provide more than trace amounts

of power during those periods. And, indeed, while wind turbines north of Texas

functioned more or less as intended, during the cold snap, they produced very little

power for their grids.

While the switch from nickel-cadmium to lithium-ion batteries allowed for the

proliferation of cell phones, laptops, and other electric appliances, it has not allowed

and will not allow for the cheap storage of the grid’s electricity. One of the largest

lithium battery storage centers in the world is in Escondido, California. But it can only

store enough power for about twenty-four thousand American homes for four hours.

And storage does not easily solve the problem of long-term, seasonal

variability. In January and February of this year, Germany’s renewables produced just

two-thirds of the electricity they produced in January and February of 2020, despite a

four percent increase in solar panel and wind turbine capacity, simply because of

annual variability of wind and sun.

70 Germany has only been able to manage the

seasonal fluctuations from intermittent renewables by maintaining a large and diverse

fleet of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Germany added 150 percent of

its total capacity in coal, natural gas, and nuclear in the form of new wind and solar

capacity, which was part of why Germany’s electricity prices have risen to the highest

levels in Europe.

One study by a group of climate and energy scientists found that when taking

into account continent-wide weather and seasonal variation, for the United States to

be powered by solar and wind, while using batteries to ensure reliable power, the

battery storage required would raise the cost to more than $23 trillion.

Most proponents of variable renewable energy thus look elsewhere for storage

solutions. The most influential proposal for 100 percent renewable energy in the U.S.

was created by a Stanford professor who relied on the conversion of existing

72 Matthew Shaner, “Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the

United States,” Energy and Environmental Science 11, no. 4 (2018): 914–925,

https://doi.org/10.1039/c7ee03029k.

71 Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE,”Net installed electricity generation capacity

in Germany” and ”Electricity Price Statistics”. Eurostat. Accessed March 7, 2021.

70 Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, ”Net electricity generation capacity in

Germany," Eurostat, accessed March 7, 2021; Kerstine Appunn, "What's New in Germany's Renewable

Energy Act 2021," Clean Energy Wire, last modified January 6, 2021,

69 Julian Spector, “California’s big battery experiment: a turning point for energy storage?”

Guardian, September 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com. In 2018, according to the US Energy

Information Agency, 134 million residential electricity accounts used about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per

year, or 1.25 kilowatts on average throughout the year.

68 Bill Magness, “Review of February 2021 Extreme Cold Weather Event,” Presentation before

the Texas House Joint Committee on State Affairs and Energy Resources ERCOT, February 25, 2021,

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/226271/Texas_Legislature_Hearings_2-25-2021.pdf

...

hydroelectric dams into giant batteries.

73 But in 2017, scientists writing in the

Proceedings of the National Academies of Science observed that the 100 percent

renewable proposal rested upon the assumption that we can increase the amount of

power from U.S. hydroelectric dams ten-fold when, according to the Department of

Energy, the real potential is just one percent of that. Without all that additional

hydropower, the 100 percent renewables proposal does not work on its own terms.

California is a world leader when it comes to renewables and has a major

network of dams but hasn’t converted them into batteries because you need the right

kind of dams and reservoirs, and even then, it’s an expensive retrofit. In addition,

there are many other uses for the water that accumulates behind dams, namely

irrigation and water supply for cities. Without large-scale ways to back up solar

energy, California has had to curtail electricity coming from solar farms when it’s

extremely sunny, or pay neighboring states to take it, in order to avoid adding too

much energy on the grid during hours of peak solar production.

Germany will have spent $580 billion on renewables and related infrastructure

by 2025, according to energy analysts at Bloomberg,

76 and Germany generated 37.5

percent of its electricity from wind and solar in 2020, as compared to the 70 percent

France generates from nuclear.

77 Had Germany invested the $580 billion it’s spending

on renewables and their grid upgrades into new nuclear power plants instead, it

could be generating 100 percent of its electricity from zero-emission sources and

77 Fridolin Pflugmann et al., “Energy Transition Index,” McKinsey & Company, November 2019,

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/germanys-energy-tran

sition-at-a-crossroads; BP Energy Economics, “BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019, 68th

Edition,” BP, June 2019, accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/businesssites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-full-rep

ort.pdf.

76 William Wilkes et al., “Germany’s failed climate goals a wakeup call for governments

everywhere,” Bloomberg, August 15, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com;

Mark Nelson et al.,”With Nuclear Instead of Renewables, California & Germany Would Already

Have 100 percent Clean Electricity,” Environmental Progress, September 11, 2018,

http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/9/11/california-and-germany-decarbonization-with-alt

ernative-energy-investments.

Ivan Penn, “California invested heavily in solar power. Now there’s so much that other states

are sometimes paid to take it,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2017, https://www.latimes.com.

74 Christopher Clack et al., “Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100

percent wind, water, and solar,”PNAS 114, no. 26 (2017): 6722–6727,

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1610381114; Chris Mooney, “A bitter scientific debate just erupted over

the future of America’s power grid,” Washington Post, June 19, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com.

73 Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark A. Delucchi, Mary A. Cameron, Bethany A. Frew, “Stabilizing the grid

with 100% renewables 2050,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec.

...[p 20]

have sufficient zero-carbon electricity to power all of its cars and light trucks (if

electrified) by 2025, as well.

From this information we can gain a clearer picture of electric reliability,

resiliency, and affordability. What tends to make electric grids more reliable, resilient,

and affordable is the generation of electricity by a few large, efficient plants with the

minimal amount necessary of wires and storage. What tends to make grids less

reliant, resilient, and affordable is significantly increasing the number of power plants,

wires, storage mechanisms, people, and organizations required for operating them.

As a result, places with heavy renewables penetration are reaching their limits.

On August 30, five days after California regulators passed a bill banning the sale of

internal combustion engines by 2035, the state’s grid operator urged residents to not

charge their electric vehicles from 4 pm to 9 pm for fear of blackouts.

79 The amount

of zero-carbon electricity California generated has declined by 10 percent over the

last decade, because of less hydroelectricity from drought, and the 2011 closure of

San Onofre nuclear plant, which was 9 percent of the state’s total electricity

generation.

80 To generate sufficient electricity to fuel 30 million electric cars and

trucks, California will need nine nuclear power plants the size of its last nuclear plant,

Diablo Canyon, and that assumes no increase in population, and no increase in

electricity use, including for cooking and heating, even though the state is trying to

encourage the latter.

The impact of variable renewable energy sources on electricity prices can be

seen in the more than two-dozen states that have had in place renewable energy

mandates. “Cumulatively,” wrote the authors of a University of Chicago report on the

impact of variable renewables on electricity prices, “consumers in the twenty-nine

states studied paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the

absence of the policy.” The study authors concluded that higher variability was the

81 Of California's 30,398,249 motor vehicles, just 1.9% (563,070) are electric. The California

Energy Commission calculates that the state will require 4.6 GW (minimum) of electricity to fuel 7.5

million EVs. Hence, to power 29 million more EVs it will need a minimum of roughly 17 GW of

additional power and perhaps much more. California Energy Commission, “Report Shows California

Needs 1.2 Million Electric Vehicle Chargers by 2030,” June 9, 2021

80 California Energy Commission, “California Electrical Energy Generation,” April 2022,

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/california-electricalenergy-generation

79 California Air Resources Board, “California moves to accelerate to 100% new zero-emission

vehicle sales by 2035,” CARB, August 25, 2022;

Caiso, “Excessive heat starting tomorrow will stress energy grid, August 30, 2022.

78 Mark Nelson and Madison Czerwinski, “With Nuclear Instead of Renewables, California and

Germany Would Already Have 100 percent Clean Electricity,” Environmental Progress, September 11,

...

main driver of higher costs.

82 Like food, energy cost increases are regressive, and so

higher electricity costs impose a higher burden on lower-income American

consumers.

New research makes clear that far higher material demands for solar panels,

wind turbines, and electric cars raise serious questions about their ability to substitute

for fossil fuels. Solar and wind energy projects require roughly 300 percent more

copper and 700 percent more rare earths than fossil fuels, per unit of energy. Wind,

solar, and batteries require 1,000 percent more steel, concrete and glass; 300 percent

more copper; and 4,200 percent, 2,500 percent, 1,900 percent, and 700 percent

more lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths, respectively, than fossil fuels, to

produce the same amount of energy, according to International Energy Agency, and

other analysts.

Last week, 40 CEOs of European metal companies warned of the “existential

threat” to their industries due to energy shortages and the "extra raw materials

needed to shift away from fossil fuels.” They noted that “50 percent of the EU’s

aluminum and zinc capacity has already been forced offline due to the

crisis….Producers face electricity and gas costs over ten times higher than last year,

far exceeding the sales price for their products. We know from experience that once a

plant is closed it very often becomes a permanent situation, as re-opening implies

significant uncertainty and cost.”

China’s share of the global market for renewables and EV minerals is already

twice OPEC’s share of the global oil market. The U.S. is dependent on imports for 100

percent of 17 renewables and EV-critical minerals; for 28 others, imports account for

more than 50 percent of domestic demand. China already dominates solar and

battery production. Minerals are 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost to produce

84 Eurometaux, “RE: Europe’s non-ferrous metals producers call for emergency EU action to

prevent permanent deindustrialisation from spiralling electricity and gas prices,” September 5, 2022.

https://eurometaux.eu/media/qnhn5k30/non-ferrous-metals-ceo-letter-on-energy-crisis-06-09-2022.pdf

IEA, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” 2021,

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions; Mark Mills, “The

“Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset,” Manhattan Institute, August 30, 2022

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/the-energy-transition-delusion,

82 Michael Greenstone et al., Do Renewable Portfolio Standards Deliver? (Chicago: Energy Policy

Institute at the University of Chicago, 2019); “Renewable Portfolio Standards Reduce Carbon

Emissions—But, at a High Cost,” Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, April 22, 2019,

https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/renewable-portfolio-standards-reduce-carbon-emissions-but-at-a-hig...

solar panels and lithium batteries.

85 China produces 95 percent of the world’s

polysilicon, solar wafer, and ingots and 80 percent of all components for solar panels.

And it is home to the 10 top suppliers of solar panel manufacturing equipment.

Meanwhile, the capital costs of solar, wind, and batteries have been rising

since 2017 and are going to rise much more. Energy today only uses 10 percent to 20

percent of total global minerals. The IEA says its share must rise to 50-70 percent for

the world to transition to renewables, which would be prohibitively inflationary.

And there are human rights concerns and environmental concerns with

renewables. The Associated Press reported on August 9 that rare earth mining in

Myanmar is resulting in “environmental destruction, the theft of land from villagers,

and funneling money to brutal militias, including Myanmar’s secretive military

government."

88 On August 17, AP reported that U.S. government scientists have

concluded that the expansion of wind energy would reduce the golden eagle

population by half.

As troubling is evidence that cost declines of solar panels stem in large

measure from the involuntary labor of a persecuted Muslim minority, the Uighurs, in

Xinjiang province. In January 2021, the U.S. State Department deemed China’s

treatment of the Uighurs to be genocide.

90 Ninety-five percent of the global solar

panel market contains Xinjiang silicon. While the Inflation Reduction Act creates

incentives to bring solar manufacturing to the U.S. and Europe, doing so would

significantly increase prices, given higher labor and environmental standards.

91 Aitor Hernzández-Moralies, et al, “Fears over China’s Muslm forced labor loom over Europe’s

solar panels,” Politico, February 11, 2021.

90 Austin Ramzey, “U.S. Declaration of China’s ‘Genocide’ in Xinjiang Explained,” New York

Times, January 20, 2021. Ana Swanson and Chris Buckley, “Chinese Solar Companies Tied to Use of

Forced Labor,” New York Times, January 8 (Updated January 28), 2021.

89 Matthew Brown, “Wind energy boom and golden eagles collide in the US West, Associated

Press, August 17, 2022.

88 Dake Kang, et al., “'The Sacrifice Zone': Myanmar bears cost of green energy,” Associated

Press, August 9, 2022.

IEA, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” 2021,

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions; Mark Mills, “The

“Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset,” Manhattan Institute, August 30, 2022

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/the-energy-transition-delusion,

IEA, “Special Report on Solar Supply Chains,” p. 9, 2022.

IEA, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” 2021,

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions; Mark Mills, “The

“Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset,” Manhattan Institute, August 30, 2022

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/the-energy-transiti...

The underlying problem is that sunlight and wind are energy-dilute and thus

demand 300 times or more land than natural gas or nuclear plants.

92 The result is

growing resistance to the large land use impacts both of renewable energy projects

and with the long new transmission lines they will require. In 2021, 31 communities

rejected wind projects, adding to the 323 U.S. communities since 2015 that have

rejected or restricted wind projects.

93 A federal judge in 2020 blocked a transmission

line proposed to be built straight through whooping crane habitat in Nebraska.

Notably, transmission lines are the number one cause of mortality among whooping

cranes.

If the United States were to try to generate all of the energy it uses with

renewables, 25 percent to 50 percent of its land would be required, according to the

best-available study.

95 By contrast, today’s energy system requires just 0.5 percent of

land in the United States.

A Way Forward

High uncertainties over what will happen over the next 3 to 6 years, and

recognition of fundamental physical and economic realities, suggest a way forward

that emphasizes expanded domestic oil and gas production in the short to medium

term, and nuclear energy along with hydrogen production over the medium to

long-term, with the re-shoring of solar panel, wind turbine, and electric car

manufacturing and materials processing. Such a strategy will help determine whether

the costs of solar, wind, and EVs can come down, or whether they are, for inherently

physical reasons, namely their low power densities and correspondingly high material

intensities, doomed to be too inefficient to substitute for fossil fuels.

Given that the proximate cause of the global energy crisis was Europe's

over-dependence on Russian fuels, we must not repeat that same mistake by

becoming dependent on China for the extraction and processing of the minerals

needed to make solar, wind, and batteries. It is highly unlikely that energy’s use of

total global minerals will rise from 10-20 percent to 50-70 percent, with or without an

energy crisis, given the significant inflationary impact it would have on energy prices.

96 Vaclav Smil, Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses (Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 2015), 247.

95 Vaclav Smil, Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses (Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 2015), 247.

94 Thomas V. Stehn, “Whooping Crane Collisions with Power Lines: an issue paper,” Geography, 2008.

93 Robert Bryce, “Renewable Rejection Database,”

https://robertbryce.com/renewable-rejection-database/, accessed September 13, 2022.

92 Power density slide deck, Environmental Progress,

https://environmentalprogress.org/power-density-slide-deck, accessed September 14, 2022.

...

Governments have always played a heavy role in shaping energy markets

given that they determine, through regulatory permitting, how much oil, natural gas,

and gasoline can be produced. And now, with the continued subsidies of renewables

guaranteed by the Inflation Reduction Act, governments will increasingly be forced to

subsidize all forms of electricity generation, including natural gas generators, which

have already started going bankrupt due to renewables subsidies, as well as nuclear

plants.

If the West is to protect itself, and compete globally with Russia and China, it

must compete with Russia and China on energy. Nuclear power plants must be the

backbone of a high-energy West. Russia’s ability to make Europe dependent upon its

natural gas required that it expand nuclear energy domestically so it could export

more gas. With the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, the U.S. is far better off than

Europe and Asia, but our own energy security means nothing if our allies are insecure.

An organization of Western nations to expand nuclear plant building and oil

and gas production is essential to building the overall strength of the West to

compete with Russia and China. Such a high-energy Western alliance would attract

rather than alienate non-aligned nations in Asia, Latin American, and Africa. Some

worry that more energy exports will make energy more expensive domestically, but

that need not be the case. Piped natural gas within the United States will remain

cheaper than LNG sent to Europe, providing the U.S. with a long-term economic

competitive advantage over European allies.

Expanded LNG exports would mean the U.S. would have surplus energy

above ground already flowing through our pipelines, allowing the U.S. to respond to

high prices rapidly, without having to permit, drill, or connect wells to get supply to

market, which can take up to 18 months. This would reduce price volatility and

insulate the US from price shocks from unforeseen geopolitical events.

Nuclear plants are among the most reliable components of America’s power

grids, and provide over half of America’s zero-carbon power. Nuclear plants operate

as a national fleet at 94 percent annual capacity factor, thanks to tightly

choreographed refueling operations that barely interrupt eighteen-month continuous

uptime at most facilities.

97 The hardening required of nuclear plants first in response

to 9/11 and then in response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011 has further

ensured their contribution to reliability, resiliency, and affordability.

98 U.S. N.R.C., "Post-Fukushima Safety Enhancements," Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

accessed March 8, 2021,

https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/post-fukushima-safety-enhancements.html

97 Office of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy, “Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy

Source and It’s Not Even Close,” April 22, 2020,

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

[nb // BS on NEAR ca blackouts]

Although Texas lost one of four of its nuclear reactors after cold water affected

a sensor, automatically shutting down the reactor, it returned to service within 36

hours, and thus in time to help end the power cuts. Meanwhile, nuclear reactors in

other cold snap states, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota,

Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, operated normally.

Nuclear’s future will likely look like nuclear’s past, given the national security

issues surrounding the dual-use nature of nuclear energy, and the capital-intensive

nature of nuclear power plant projects. Research over decades shows that the

cheapest nuclear plants are large, standardized, and built by the same construction

teams over multiple decades, thus requiring a long-term, bipartisan, and national

commitment.

100

In the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government chose two national

champions, Westinghouse and General Electric, to promote two competing designs.

One obvious national champion would be a consortium of Westinghouse, Bechtel,

and Southern Company, given their experience building AP-1000s in Georgia.

Another might be a partnership with either the French, Japanese, or South Koreans,

all of whom have strong experience building nuclear plants and view nuclear energy

as essential to their national security.

The future of transportation remains open. It may be that electric vehicles are

the future or it may be that hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles will predominate, which have

long held major advantages over electric vehicles. The move from ICEs to hydrogen

fuel cells is more consistent with the trend of past energy transitions than going from

ICEs to EVs, which are material-intensive, heavy, and much worse for the environment

than internal combustion engines. Hydrogen fuel cells are more expensive now but,

over time, will become cost-competitive with gasoline, argued analysts with the

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The electrochemical process of

combining hydrogen gas with oxygen is potentially 20% to 30% more efficient than

today’s gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs). Hydrogen enthusiasts

overly hyped the technology in the past, but that may mean that they were early,

rather than wrong. A short-to-medium term commitment to natural gas (CH4) could

be a pathway to creating hydrogen (H2) first from gas and then eventually from water

(H20), improving the economics of nuclear energy during non-peak hours.

101

101 Jesse Ausubel, “Renewable and Nuclear Heresies,” International Journal of Nuclear

Governance, Economy, and Ecology, November 2007;

https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/HeresiesFinal.pdf

Jesse Ausubel and Cesare Marchetti, “The Future of Transport,” The Industrial Physicist, IIASA,

2001, https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/13557/1/The%20Evolution%20of%20Transport.pdf

100 Michel Berthélemy et al., “Nuclear reactors' construction costs: The role of lead-time,

standardization and technological progress,” Energy Policy, 2015.

99 EIA, “Electricity Data Browser: Hourly Electric Grid Monitor,” EIA.gov, accessed March 08,

2021, https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboar

It is in this context, grounded in energy security, first physical principles, and

thus sound economics, that we can consider the long-term trend of radical

decarbonization. Part of the trouble with climate alarmism is that it encourages

short-term thinking around what is a long-term problem. Radical decarbonization is

possible but it is easier to imagine in a context that involves a significant expansion of

nuclear energy and natural gas, and the phase out of coal before the phase out of oil,

occurs. We have already seen how natural gas can quickly and cheaply replace coal.

Replacing oil will be more difficult, given the superior energy densities of petroleum

over either electric vehicles or hydrogen.

Much of the misinformation that has come from large energy firms, including

the oil and gas majors, has been a reaction to the poorly thought-through vision of

phasing out natural gas and nuclear to achieve 100 percent renewables and electric

vehicles. Such a vision was never warranted by the basic physics of energy

production. Instead of seeking to stamp out disconfirmatory information, I encourage

Congress to widen the debate to include a broader set of perspectives, particularly

those that foresee a wider, not narrower, vision for natural gas and nuclear[end]

he says mostly in poor hoods

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/10/clear-the-air-of-diesel-generators-that-power-californias-shadow-grid/

The oil refinery is based on the island of St. Croix, home to more than 50,000 people. Its previous owner was Hovensa LLC, a joint venture of New York-based Hess Corp. and Petróleos de Venezuela SA. At the time, the refinery was among the 10 largest in the world and also struggled with polluting events, paying a $5.4 million penalty one year for violating the Clean Air Act.

In 2012, Hovensa LLC announced it was closing the refinery in a hit to the tiny island given that some 2,000 people worked there. It was the U.S. territory’s largest private employer and generated some $60 million a year in revenue for the government.

The complex kept operating solely as an oil storage terminal for nearly a decade until Limetree restarted the refinery in February of this year following permission from the Trump administration, announcing it was capable of processing some 200,000 barrels a day. Limetree, which is now run by EIG Global Energy Partners, had bought the terminal and refinery in 2016 for $190 million.

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

rept

The oil and gas industry’s role in spreading climate misinformation to prevent action on climate

change has been extensively studied, but less is known about the critical role of public relations

(PR) firms in that process. The House Natural Resources Committee (Committee) has been

investigating the sophisticated and varied ways in which some PR firms use their considerable

public-influence expertise to help industry mislead the public and block climate change policy

proposals. This report summarizes the investigative findings to date.

The Committee has jurisdiction over management of federal fossil fuel resources with the potential

to drive climate change, and conservation of public lands, public waters, and species harmed by

climate change. Public perception of climate change influences implementation of current federal

policy and informs development of potential legislation within the Committee’s authority.

PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS’ DISINFORMATION AND OBSTRUCTION TACTICS

PR firms go far beyond typical marketing techniques to get results for the fossil fuel industry.

These tactics are misleading or deceptive by design, often making it difficult for outsiders to

discern the full breadth of a PR firm’s campaign.

The Committee’s ongoing investigation into the role of PR firms has uncovered new details about

the inner workings of their campaigns. Documents obtained by the Committee (attached as

appendices) detail a sampling of the strategies and techniques PR firms use to successfully sway

public opinion and stymie climate action. The documents show in raw, clinical detail how the firms

evaluate whether they were successful in helping oil and gas companies avoid having to take real

action on the climate crisis, or stop others from doing so.

Their strategies fall into three major

categories: 1) corporate image promotion, 2) third-party mobilization, and 3) delegitimization of

opposition.1

1. Corporate Image Promotion

People are more likely to accept a corporation’s narratives if they believe the corporation is

behaving in a socially responsible way.

2 By portraying themselves or their products as more

environmentally friendly than they are, fossil fuel companies can maintain their social license to

operate even in the face of strong political headwinds and scientific consensus about the need to

reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Two campaigns byPR firm Group SJR on behalf of ExxonMobil illustrate the kinds of tactics PR

professionals use to remediate the fossil fuel industry’s image in the modern social media era. As

stated in its own PR award application materials (Appendix 1), Group SJR developed a website

called “the Energy Factor to share the untold stories of how the industry is developing safe and ...

p 3

reliable energy sources not only today, but for the future, while also mitigating the risks of climate

change.”4 The ultimate goal of the Energy Factor is not to provide a factual counternarrative, but

to drive “brand favorability.”5 Since 2016, Group SJR has created a wide variety of multimedia

stories focusing on ExxonMobil’s research and development of “emissions-reducing

technologies,” specifically tailored to reach “skeptics of the brand.”6 These messages are

misleading about ExxonMobil’s role in climate change because they falsely depict ExxonMobil as

making significant contributions to fighting the crisis; in truth, the company spends many times

more on touting its climate solutions than actually developing them.

7,8 Additionally, like other

major oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil’s political activities are inconsistent with their declared

commitment to renewable energy, by continuing to lobby predominantly for more oil and gas

development and supporting industry associations that oppose global climate policy initiatives.9

Group SJR’s Energy Factor has been effective in its goal. As shown in its award application

materials, the PR firm conducted a study that showed “site visitors who engaged with the content

rated ExxonMobil higher on key messages that help improve brand reputation versus those that

were not exposed to Energy Factor content.”10 The campaign’s reach has also been substantial:

from 2016 – June 2020, the site had 30 million unique visitors, with 6.4 million unique visitors in

2019 alone

[gen z imitation vids]

Group SJR released the videos on ExxonMobil’ssocial media platforms that had high proportions of Gen Z users. The videos worked. More people watched the videos all the way to the end than the platform average, both for videos released organically (without paid advertisement placements) and as advertisements targeted specifically at Gen Z. This indicates the videos were well received by Gen Z audiences, the demographic most concerned with and actively engaged with climate change activism in the United States.15

Another corporate image promotion tactic used by PR firms is to embed company messaging in sources trusted by target audiences to make their narratives appear more legitimate by association. One example of this is Universal McCann’s (UM) 12-week campaign for ExxonMobil in The New York Times, launching content across all NYT platforms simultaneously(Appendix 3). 16 The campaign objectives were to “drive awareness of ExxonMobil’s commitment to the research and development of lower-emissions energy through next-gen biofuels,” “develop positive brand perception of ExxonMobil through their efforts as a forward thinking and responsible company,” and “increase favorability of primary audiences.”17

UM worked with NYT’s internal T Brand marketing group to create content in a “‘Timesian’ voice” that would feel “native to the publication,” and which “mirrored the award-winning journalism of the world-renowned publication [to ensure] authenticity, credibility and relevance, and [be] ultimately more impactful to the audience.” The sponsored content included “a first-ever consecutive ‘Science Times’ print takeover, an interactive long-form journalistic-style article, CGI print spreads, audio spots in top-rated ‘The Daily’ podcast, online ads, social posts, and, most notably, a pair of one-minute hero videos. This ensured the target audiences would be reached with the same messaging across multiple platforms in an array of creative formats.”18

These repeated messages tried to position ExxonMobil as a company committed to a “breadth and depth” of climate solutions. The messages included a stop-motion production showcasing “the innovation of ExxonMobil’s advanced biofuels agenda.” Despite ExxonMobil’s public statements in support of alternative energy, a recent analysis shows that its investments and activities do not align with that messaging.19 ExxonMobil has not disclosed the amounts it invested in low-carbon technologies, and the study shows ExxonMobil generated no clean energy for the last decade, instead stating an unwillingness to invest in solar and wind.20 But UM’s PR messaging blitz worked: audience perception of ExxonMobil shifted towards thinking of the corporation as an

“energy” company rather than exclusively a gasoline company, and audience brand favorability

increased more than 10%.21

A particularly egregious example of greenwashing is found in a commercial by American

Petroleum Institute (API), a trade group that represents oil and gas companies. Oil and gas

companies are a major driver of the climate crisis, which has caused an increase in the intensity

and frequency of hurricanes. Instead of accepting the blame and responsibility for its members’

contributions to the destruction that is wrought by extreme hurricanes, API released a commercial

that tried to turn hurricanes into a chance to boost its own image by featuring ostensible oil

company employees volunteering to help with hurricane recovery.22

In-depth case study: Industry-Run Local News Sites

Arguably the most comprehensive form of corporate image promotion is the top-to-bottom

creation of entire news sites, designed and operated with the primary goal of improving the sponsor

company’s reputation rather than delivering actual, independent journalistic content. A striking

example of this is The Richmond Standard, a full-spectrum news site Chevron paid PR firm Singer

Associates to build and run to improve the fossil fuel company’s image in the wake of its 2012

Richmond, California refinery fire.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that the accident was preventable

and resulted from failure of Chevron to do its due diligence. Chevron had known the pipe that

ruptured was at risk for failure. A different Chevron facility experienced a nearly identical rupture

10 years prior, which caused them to discover the Richmond pipe was corroding. But Chevron

never replaced or even inspected the pipe afterward. The Board found that “In the weeks following

the incident, approximately 15,000 people from the surrounding communities sought medical

treatment at nearby medical facilities for ailments including breathing problems, chest pain,

shortness of breath, sore throat, and headaches. Approximately 20 of these people were admitted

to local hospitals as inpatients for treatment.”23

Singer Associates’ application to receive a PR industry award for the Chevron news site shows,in

candid language, the success The Richmond Standard has enjoyed in trying to disinform the

community (Appendix 4). The website has achieved regional dominance, with a readership

surpassing “the circulation of the two major daily newspapers in the area, the San Francisco

Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times.”24

While The Richmond Standard provides a wide variety of content, most of which does not overtly

promote Chevron, this broader usefulness to the community is an expressly intended component

p 8

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” groups of 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 only Noble 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 Houstonbased 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 14

...reaffirmed Noble 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.”77 Story 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]

kos an 9 22

Consider the hearings held on Wednesday and Thursday by two House committees as a flashpoint laying bare the blatant desperation with which conservatives are clinging to Big Oil’s success instead of caring about their constituents or the planet. On Wednesday, the House Natural Resource Committee about how fossil fuel companies rely on blatantly misleading language and images to boost their profiles. As I’ve reported before, polluters employ a dangerous playbook designed to oppress frontline communities and those concerned with the climate crisis.

The Natural Resource Committee even released a study logging these tactics ahead of the hearing. But critics claim that supporting “the energy sector” amounts to using free speech and securing the country’s energy resources, worsening crisis be damned. Publicists painted Big Oil as having moved on from denying climate change, equating doing the bare minimum with somehow being leaders in the movement.Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert bashed a witness who was harassed and stalked for an anti-fracking campaign she participated in in Colorado.If y’all think lawmakers behaved any better the next day, just wait for Clay Higgins to speak up during Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Big Oil’s role in the climate crisis.

Higgins, a noted white supremacist, spent his five minutes talking down to an expert witness wholly more qualified to speak on the topic of the hearing’s subject, which was “Examining Big Oil’s Prices, Profits, and Pledges.” Higgins continually called Raya Salter, Esq. “young lady” and outright screamed at her for standing up to people like him on behalf of frontline communities he’s so blatantly ignored. Salter, who is the Founder and Executive Director of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center and a member of the New York State Climate Action Council, implored Higgins to instead reckon with his own actions. [twt vid]

at best, Higgins is a climate change skeptic. He’s also entirely bought and paid for by the oil and gas sector—which is the top industry he receives campaign donations from—and was the lone dissenting House vote who wanted fossil fuel imports from Russia to remain despite the country’s invasion of Ukraine. “I want you to search your heart and ask your God what you are doing to the Black and poor people in Louisiana,” Salter pushed back against Higgins.

Higgins had his supporters, such as fellow monster Jim Jordan and Yvette Herrell, and Salter received support from Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who**slammed Higgins’ conduc**t. “For the gentleman from Louisiana and the comfort he felt in yelling at you like that, there’s more than one way to get a point across,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And, frankly, men who treat women like that in public, I fear how they treat women in private.” To add insult to injury, Michael Shellenberger mispronounced Ocasio-Cortez’s name without caring to correct it.

Shellenberger was considered by some Republicans to be the only “minority witness” who thinks climate change actually isn’t that bad and that mass casualty events simply won’t happen. He’s the comfort blanket to Republicans who call environmental concern a “war on gas” and think climate activists are dehumanizing. Once a Democrat in name, he’s now simply a traitor to the human race who finds more comfort in Fox News appearances than in acknowledging reality. Many GOP lawmakers only spoke to Shellenberger when they did have a chance to address the panel.

What’s revealing about these hearings isn’t the information we already know about how bad Big Oil is or the quite literal Black and white divisions between fossil fuel worshippers and those who believe that any higher power wouldn’t want us destroying the planet. It’s that, at the core of this issue, white comfort is one of the biggest hindrances to addressing the climate crisis. I want Higgins to feel uncomfortable when Roishetta Ozane began her moving testimony on her experience surviving multiple disasters in Southwest Louisiana by calling the lawmaker out. Addressing white supremacy is a key component in dismantling it and foundational to creating a truly just transition.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/15/thats-fraud-explosive-docs-reveal-depth-climate-lies-big-oil-ahead-house-hearing

comm dr 9 22 no twt vid

'That's Fraud': Explosive Docs Reveal Depth of Climate Lies by Big Oil Ahead of House Hearing

"Big Oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it," said Rep. Ro Khanna.

JAKE JOHNSON

September 15, 2022

Ahead of a Thursday House Oversight Committee hearing on Big Oil's central role in driving global climate chaos, congressional Democrats unveiled internal documents spotlighting the extent to which fossil fuel giants such as Chevron, Exxon, and Shell have worked to mislead the public about their contributions to the climate crisis and efforts to mitigate environmental damage.

"The committee's investigation has shown that, rather than outright deny global warming, the fossil fuel industry has 'greenwashed' its record through deceptive advertising and climate pledges—without meaningfully reducing emissions," Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in a memo released hours before Thursday's hearing, which major Big Oil PR firms have refused to attend.

Watch the hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 am ET: vid]

as part of its yearlong probe into the industry's public relations tactics, the panel uncovered documents confirming that oil and gas giants are "devoted to a long-term fossil fuel future," despite their splashy vows to transform their businesses to meet critical climate goals.

"These revelations are the latest evidence that oil giants keep lying about their commitments to solve the climate crisis and should never be trusted."

The committee, which subpoenaed oil and gas firms for internal documents related to their marketing campaigns, said in a summary that "Big Oil relies on accounting gimmicks, tricky language, and delay tactics to claim the mantle of climate leadership while continuing to be a primary cause of an ongoing climate catastrophe."

"Despite BP previously rebranding itself as 'Beyond Petroleum,' internal documents highlighted how carbon capture and storage (CCS), one of the energy technologies touted by the company, could 'enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond,'" the House panel noted. "An internal Shell email discussing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) warned an executive, 'We want to be careful to not talk about CCUS as prolonging the life of oil, gas or fossil fuels writ large.'"

The committee obtained documents from 2019 showing that employees from Exxon and Chevron pushed to water down an oil and gas industry messaging document on the Paris climate accord, which both companies have& https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/insights/partners/commitment-paris-agreement/ publicly claimed to said in a statement Wednesday that "the documents I released today as part of my investigation into Big Oil's efforts to deceive the American public about the climate crisis are explosive."

"Internal emails and messaging guidance show that Big Oil's climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks, and misleading language to hide the reality," said Khanna. "The documents also show a culture of intense disrespect towards leading climate activists like Bill McKibben and influential climate groups like the Sunrise Movement."

One email obtained and released by the House Oversight Committee shows BP communications official Tom Wolf mocking an op-ed by McKibben, a renowned environmentalist and co-founder of 350.org.

"I'm sorry, I live on earth so I don't get what planet this guy lives on," Wolf wrote.

In response, Khanna said that "Big Oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it."

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said that "these revelations are the latest evidence that oil giants keep lying about their commitments to solve the climate crisis and should never be trusted by policymakers."

"First, their own documents showed that oil and gas companies lied about their product's role in causing climate change," said Wiles. "Now, more internal documents reveal that they are lying about their commitment to solving it. If there is one thing consistent about the oil and gas majors' position on climate, it's their utter inability to tell the truth."

"As Americans pay the price for deadlier and costlier climate disasters, it's outrageous that board members from the companies fueling the climate crisis and making record profits refused to attend a hearing to answer questions from members of Congress," Wiles added. "We applaud the House Oversight Committee for its continued work to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for their climate deception."

ref 1

...

pledges—without meaningfully reducing emissions. Documents obtained by the Committee show:

• Contrary to what their pledges imply, fossil fuel companies have not organized their businesses around becoming low-emissions, renewable energy companies. They are devoted to a long-term fossil fuel future. o Despite BP previously rebranding itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” internal documents highlighted how carbon capture and storage (CCS), one of the energy technologies touted by the company, could “enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond.” o An internal Shell email discussing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) warned an executive, “We want to be careful to not talk about CCUS as prolonging the life of oil, gas or fossil fuels writ large.” o Chevron pays lip service to a “just transition” to cleaner fuels but provided talking points to an executive asserting that “[o]il and gas” are the “lower carbon solutions that ensures a just transition.”

• Big Oil’s climate pledges and green advertising focus on unproven technologies the companies have privately admitted are decades away from implementation. o Although Exxon spent at least $68 million advertising its research into algae-based biofuels, notes from an investor presentation obtained by the Committee show this technology is “[s]till decades away from the scale we need.” o One Exxon public affairs manager warned that implying in an advertisement that algae can be deployed on a mass scale would be misleading, and “might create some angst with the research folks who know that.”

• Oil and gas companies have tried to create the impression that they are taking ambitious steps to reduce emissions—without actually doing so. o Internal documents show that Exxon and Chevron sought to water down statements by the industry-led Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) to “remove language that potentially commits members to enhanced climate related governance, strategy, risk management, and performance metrics and targets” and to avoid any “explicit commitment for OGCI companies to align their advocacy with their climate related positions”—including advocacy for the Paris Agreement.

...Shell has touted its “Sky scenario” as an ambitious path to achieve netzero emissions, but internal emails emphasize this is “not a Shell business

plan” and has “nothing to do with our business plans.”

o Internal Shell messaging guidance—which was developed to “insulate

Shell” from lawsuits about “greenwashing” and “misleading investors” on

climate change—calls on employees to emphasize that net-zero emissions

is “a collective ambition for the world” rather than a “Shell goal or target.”

The guidance urges Shell employees, “Please do not give the impression

that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do

not make business sense.”

• Big Oil relies on accounting gimmicks, tricky language, and delay tactics to

claim the mantle of climate leadership while continuing to be a primary

cause of an ongoing climate catastrophe.

o Internal documents show that in 2019, Exxon scrubbed a public statement

about an executive’s speech at a private conference to remove a reference

to a plan to increase production in the Permian basin by “1000% within 5

years.”

o After Shell posted on Twitter asking others what they would do to reduce

emissions, a communications executive wrote privately that he agreed this

could be seen as “gaslighting” the public, explaining: “We are, after all, in

a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on

ourselves.”

I. THE COMMITTEE’S INVESTIGATION

One year ago, on September 16, 2021, the Committee launched an investigation into the

fossil fuel industry’s decades-long climate disinformation and greenwashing campaign.3 On

October 28, 2021, the Committee held a hearing with executives from six major fossil fuel

...

p 7

companies’ pledges rely on unproven technologies and are not aligned with their own operations

and plans to expand production.

A. Climate Pledges Rely on Selling Higher-Emission Assets to Other Fossil Fuel

Companies

Some companies claim that sales of carbon-intensive assets are advancing their net-zero

pledges—even though these same assets are almost certain to be exploited by the fossil fuel

companies that buy them. 15 One study found that the top eight oil companies plan to divest $111

billion worth of assets this decade to meet their climate goals.16 Divestment does not reduce

greenhouse gas emissions—it simply moves those emissions from one company’s balance sheet

to another’s.

Internal documents show that Shell is employing such a strategy. In May 2021, Steve

Lesher, Shell’s U.S. West Coast Manager of Government Relations, wrote in an email to Gavin

McHugh, Principal at the lobbying firm McHugh Koepke & Associates, that “the company is

divesting of most of the really energy intensive carbon emitters.” However, he explained this

was primarily being done in areas where there is political pressure to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions, or GHGs. He explained:

No one in the company has said this, mind you, but the pattern is pretty clear: If you’re a

major greenhouse gas emitter, and particularly if you operate in a GHG-sensitive area

like CA, WA, or CAN, your days in the Shell Family are probably numbered.”17

Mr. Lesher noted that the company was retaining carbon-intensive projects in areas

where there is less pressure to reduce emissions, explaining:

The other pattern to notice is where we DO own high GHG intensive things, it’s in areas

where they aren’t that politically sensitive about such matters: China, Singapore,

Malaysia, Louisiana…. ” 18

Documents show that, like other companies, Shell divests carbon-intensive assets by

selling them to other fossil fuel companies “to enhance our operations’ average energy

intensity...[but] has no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio.”1

p 8

B. Climate Pledges and Advertising Center Around Unproven Technologies and

Methods

Fossil fuel companies’ advertising and climate pledges are heavily focused on unproven

technologies whose future success and commercialization are not assured.20 Climate pledges

that rely on these methods for a substantial portion of a company’s emission reductions are

misleading because there is no guarantee these strategies will be viable.

Exxon’s Algae Biofuel Technology

Exxon’s climate advertisements have focused heavily on algae biofuel and CCS. 21

Exxon touts algae biofuel as a breakthrough technology and has a stated goal to produce algae

biofuels equivalent to 10,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025—amounting to approximately 0.3%

of the company’s current daily fossil fuel production.22

However, internal Exxon documents reveal tension between the company’s public

aspirations and actual technological capabilities. In one email exchange in April 2016, Exxon

public affairs employees discussed a planned television advertising campaign touting Exxon’s

algae research. Exxon employees debated referring to “abundant algae” versus “finding the

algae that will make abundant and cheap biofuels.” One Exxon public affairs manager expressed

concern with using the phrase “abundant algae,” noting that “even though they are abundant, it

will take a ton of them to make biofuels so that might create some angst with the research folks

who know that.” 23

Between April 17, 2017, and July 12, 2017, Exxon ran a television advertising campaign

called “Energy Farmer,” centered around Exxon’s research into algae biofuels. The

advertisement garnered nearly 675 million impressions. 24 The ad featured an electric guitar

rendition of the children’s song, “The Farmer in the Dell,” with shots of sprawling vats of green

...

p 9 no cites

liquid, and scientists examining algae in tubes and under microscopes. A December 2016

mockup for the advertisement obtained by the Committee states:

We move through an ExxonMobil algae facility, but everything we see feels more akin to

farming than science. We see algae ponds that resemble fields, geometric patches of

different kinds of algae that resemble Midwestern farmland from above, and a grow room

that looks more like a greenhouse than a lab.25

Meanwhile, onscreen text reads, “Algae. A renewable source of energy. ExxonMobil is

researching it. To revolutionize biofuels. For more energy. And fewer emissions. In the

future.” 26 An Exxon scientist appears on screen wearing a t-shirt that reads, “I [heart symbol]

Single-Celled Organisms,” standing against a background of bubbling, floating bags of green

algae. She says to the camera, “I’m Dr. Kelsey McNeely, and someday, you may be calling me

an energy farmer. Energy lives here.” 27 An earlier mockup of the ad from December 2016 had a

slightly different a script, with Dr. McNeely saying, “I like to consider myself an energy

farmer.” 28

The Committee has obtained internal discussions between Exxon representatives and

employees of the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide before the “Energy Farmer”

advertisement went live, suggesting Exxon was concerned that the advertisements as prepared

may have implied the technology being promoted was currently viable. One November 2016

email exchange on several algae advertisements under consideration noted that Exxon

representatives had asked BBDO to “replace any lines that imply the technology is live today,”

and instead emphasize “the solution is more future focused (e.g. this could be a biofuel in the

future.).” BBDO further noted, “[N]eed to add more science to underscore point that this is in

the research phase.”29

In another exchange in November 2016, BBDO notes Exxon asked to revise the text of

the Energy Farmer advertisement, emphasizing that Exxon “is researching” algae rather than

“cultivating it,” and that algae biofuel is “for a potential future,” rather than “for a future.”30 The

p 11

Carbon Capture Technology

Fossil fuel companies have similarly relied on the potential of carbon capture technology

to reach net-zero goals. “Carbon capture” describes a set of technologies that remove carbon

dioxide from either an industrial waste stream or directly from the atmosphere. The carbon

dioxide can then either be utilized for industrial processes or stored in underground deposits.37

The four fossil fuel companies in the Committee’s investigation have made investments in

developing and deploying carbon capture and have lobbied in support of government aid to

support the technology. 38 Fossil fuel companies publicly tout carbon capture technology as key

to transitioning away from fossil fuels.39 However, internal documents obtained by the

Committee suggest the companies view this technology as a social license to continue producing

fossil fuels for decades to come.

BP’s website highlights that “CCUS plays a vital role in the transition to a low-carbon

energy system.” 40 However, an internal document prepared to brief BP leadership on

Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative focuses on carbon capture as a way to “enable the full

use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond.”41

Similarly, in January 2018, BP’s Head of Carbon Capture, Use and Storage and BP’s

Director of Climate Change and Sustainability Technology prepared an internal paper on CCUS

for BP employees. The paper provided public messaging points on carbon capture, but the paper

itself was “not for external distribution.”

Under “Key Messages” the paper emphasizes, “Carbon capture use and storage (CCUS)

is a critical tool for meeting the Paris Climate Agreement goals at lowest cost” and asserts,...

“CCUS technologies are proven, reliable, and ready – but scale-up needs to be accelerated.” 42

However, the paper also points out how CCUS enables the continued use of fossil fuels. For

example, it highlights the use of CCUS in “energy-intensive industries that rely on the use of

fossil fuels” and notes, “Long-term growth of gas is partially enabled by CCUS on gas power

and heat.” The paper lists among the “Challenges” for CCUS the “[s]ocietal concerns with

CCUS extending the use of fossil fuels.” The paper also notes that captured carbon can be used

“to enhance oil recovery”—meaning to make oil fields more productive—which undermines the

emission reductions from sequestration. 43

Shell has also pointed to its CCS and CCUS technologies in discussing its net-zero

aspirations, but documents obtained by the Committee show that in private discussions, Shell

executives raised concerns about publicly sharing specifics of Shell’s use of CCS technology to

reach net zero. In an October 2019 email exchange, Jan Sherman, Shell’s then-General Manager

for U.S. Carbon Capture and Storage, asked colleagues for advice on what “not to say” to

environmental groups at an upcoming event in Washington, D.C. Helen O’Connor, Shell’s

Manager for U.S. Stakeholder Relations, suggested that Ms. Sherman should “be cagey about

project specifics” and avoid “traversing far from the CCUS topic regarding Shell and climate

change.” She further noted that one environmental group in attendance, the Natural Resource

Defense Council, “are not friends” of Shell and is “likely closely aligned with those working

hard to litigate against us.” Ms. O’Connor also reminded Ms. Sherman that Shell’s “Sky

scenario” for reaching net-zero emissions—which relies in part on widespread implementation of

CCS—is “not a Shell business plan, but a technically possible, although challenging scenario for

how global society might meet the goals of the Paris agreement.” 44

Currently, Exxon only operates one carbon capture facility, in Schute Creek, Wyoming,

and serves as a partner in a facility in Australia and one in Qatar.45 Over its lifetime, Schute

Creek has only captured and stored 3% of its carbon dioxide underground, either venting or

selling the rest to be injected underground into depleted oil reservoirs, thereby enhancing oil

recovery and generating more emissions.46 The Australia project has repeatedly failed to meet

its storage target by about 50%. 47 A recent report surveying 13 flagship carbon capture projects

around the world, including the Wyoming and Australian facilities, found that ten either

42 BP, Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS)(Jan. 30, 2018) (BPA-HCOR-00017720) (emphasis in

original).

43 Id. (BPA-HCOR-00017720-BPA-HCOR-00017721).

44 Email from Helen O’Connor, ShellOil Company, to Jan Sherman, Shell Oil Company(Oct. 23, 2019)

(SOC-HCOR-308016-308020).

45 ExxonMobil, Climate Solutions: CCS in Action (online at https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/Climatesolutions/CCS-in-action) (accessed Sept. 6, 2022).

46 ExxonMobil to Store CO2 on BLM Lands in Wyoming,Oil City News (Aug. 31, 2022) (online at

https://oilcity.news/community/2022/08/31/exxonmobil-to-store-co2-on-blm-lands-in-wyoming/).

47 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Gorgon Carbon Capture and Storage: The Sting

in the Tail (Apr. 2022) (online at https://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gorgon-Carbon-Capture-andStorage_The-Sting-in-the-Tail_April-2022.pdf).

p 13

underperformed or failed.48 Exxon recently announced ten potential new facilities around the

world. 49

Exxon spent $86 million in 2010 to expand its carbon capture facility in Wyoming and

plans to spend another $400 million on a further expansion of the facility. 50 Exxon claimed $240

million in carbon capture tax credits over the last decade of the facility’s use. However, experts

estimate that Exxon may only be capturing less than 1% of its total emissions through carbon

capture technology.51

In a May 2018 email exchange, Exxon CEO Darren Woods and Exxon’s Vice President

of Corporate Strategic Planning, Mr. Wojnar, discussed “emissions avoided” through carbon

capture technology. Mr. Wojnar wrote to Mr. Woods that he was “[c]oming back on your

question on GHG emissions avoided,” including through carbon capture technology, and

provided “options for how to respond to a query” on this topic. Mr. Wojnar suggested that Mr.

Woods say that “over the last decade, ExxonMobil has taken action to reduce GHG emissions by

approximately 75 million tons.”52 In reality, nearly all the carbon dioxide Exxon has captured

through CCS has been sold to other fossil fuel companies to inject into their depleted oil fields to

help extract even more oil. As a result, the carbon captured by Exxon through CCS technology

likely has not meaningfully reduced total carbon emissions.53

Exxon has heavily advertised its efforts to develop carbon capture technology. Three

carbon capture television ads from 2016 through 2019 aired 9,058 times nationally, generated 4.1

billion impressions, and are estimated to have cost Exxon over $68 million to run. 54 Draft ...

Chevron’s and Exxon’s Attempt to Use OGCI to Greenwash Big Oil

The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) is a voluntary organization co-led by

members from the oil and gas industry and environmental groups. Its stated intent is “to deliver

tangible, transparent and integrated contributions to climate change solutions.”76

Documents obtained by the Committee show that in 2019, employees from Exxon and

Chevron edited a messaging document from OGCI ahead of the annual Conference of Parties to

the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The document was meant to

“serve as the basis for communication & press release as well as talking points for the CEO

event.” The documents suggest that despite several attempts to weaken the language, OGCI

pushed back,saying that Exxon’s and Chevron’s CEOs already committed to the stronger

language. The edits from Exxon and Chevron attempted to weaken OGCI’s ambition on targets

for achieving net-zero emissions, methane emissions, carbon intensity, carbon capture

implementation, among other things. 77

In particular, a memorandum from Peter Trelenberg, Exxon’s Manager of Environmental

Policy & Planning, to CEO Darren Woods highlighted “critical edits” proposed by Exxon and

noted that “Chevron has expressed that they are generally aligned with these edits.” Among

other issues, the memo to Exxon’s CEO addresses the following:

• Avoiding a commitment to advocate for the Paris Agreement. Regarding OGCI’s

“Statement on responding to the climate challenge,” Mr. Trelenberg wrote:

“Need to remove reference to Paris Agreement as support for the Paris

Agreement goals and member company advocacy are separate concepts and not

directly related. Creating a tie between our advocacy/engagements and the Paris

Agreement could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris

Agreement goals.”

• Avoiding a commitment to advocate for climate policies that Exxon and Chevron

claim to support. The memo raised a concern that one OGCI annual report

“includes explicit commitment for OGCI companies to align their advocacy with

their climate related positions. We have raised concerns with this linkage

through previous comments.”

• Refusing to commit to enhanced climate-related governance.The memo

continued, “Need to remove language that potentially commits members to

enhanced climate-related governance, strategy, risk management, and

performance metrics and targets.” ESG?!

• Concern about a commitment to reduce downstream emissions. Discussing an

OGCI “September Announcement package,” the memo states: “The carbon

...

ref 2

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/30/despite-splashy-net-zero-vows-big-banks-dumping-trillions-fossil-fuels

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Despite 'Splashy' Net-Zero Vows, Big Banks Dumping Trillions Into Fossil Fuels

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge, these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all."

JAKE JOHNSON

March 30, 2022

Flouting their public vows to put themselves and their clients on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the world's 60 largest private banks have provided a total of $4.6 trillion in financing for the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016.

That's according to the latest edition of Banking on Climate Chaos, an annual report that tracks the banking industry's funding of oil and gas initiatives that are threatening global hopes of reining in carbon pollution and averting climate disaster.

"Any further expansion of fossil fuels risks locking humanity into generations of climate catastrophe."

Authored by Oil Change International, the Rainforest Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and other groups and endorsed by hundreds of organizations from around the world, the report published Wednesday spotlights the marked contrast between banks' public commitments to net-zero emissions targets and their actions, which reflect a continued stake in fossil fuel development.

In 2021 alone, the report finds, the world's biggest private-sector banks financed oil and gas to the tune of $742 billion.That year, the 60 banks featured in the new analysis poured $185.5 billion into the 100 companies doing the most to expand the fossil-fuel sector worldwide through offshore drilling, fracking, coal mining, liquefied natural gas infrastructure, and more.

The worst offenders in the banking industry, according to the report, are the U.S. financial behemoths JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, which together accounted for 25% of all fossil fuel financing identified over the past six years.

The report highlights a number of specific projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline(funded by JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America), drilling in offshore Guyana (funded by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America), and the Line 3 Pipeline (funded by TD, Scotiabank, and the Bank of Montreal), efforts that have drawn fierce resistance from Indigenous communities.

"Indigenous peoples have long been leading the fight for the sacredness of the land, water, and Earth," Mea Johnson, divestment campaign coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement Wednesday. "Mother Earth has always given us what we need to thrive. We will not back down until our natural balance is restored and anyone helping fund the extractive destruction of our communities will be held accountable."

Alison Kirsch, research and policy manager at the Rainforest Action Network, added that "any further expansion of fossil fuels risks locking humanity into generations of climate catastrophe, yet the top fossil clients of the world's largest banks are still being showered with tens of billions of dollars even as they actively expand drilling, mining, fracking, and other fossil fuel development unabated."

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge," Kirsch added, "these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all and must immediately end their support of any further fossil fuel infrastructure expansion."

[Related Content

Coal plants

Rich Nations Must Cut Off Oil and Gas by 2034 to Keep Climate Hopes Alive: Report]

The banks' financing decisions fly in the face of their own pledges to bring their policies into line with critical climate goals, such as achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a benchmark that 44 of the 60 banks profiled in the new report have backed.

"Despite their splashy climate pledges, big banks have largely continued with business-as-usual."

According to the International Energy Agency, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would mean ensuring "no new oil and gas fields."

"But global banks have massively supported the companies doing the most to open new oil and gas fields," notes the new report. "Banks with net-zero commitments last year... financed the top 20 upstream oil and gas expansion companies, potentially helping to lock the planet into decades of climate-warming emissions."

Adele Shraiman, a representative for the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign,said Wednesday that the analysis "makes it clear that banks must clean up their act and stop funding the expansion of dirty fossil fuel projects like fracked gas exports, tar sands pipelines, and offshore drilling in order to align with what the science demands and what their own commitments require."

"Despite their splashy climate pledges, big banks have largely continued with business-as-usual and actually increased their overall fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement," said Shraiman. "As we look ahead to shareholder season, we'll be keeping up the pressure on the banks and their investors to take these critical reforms seriously and stop bankrolling the fossil fuel industry's reckless expansion plans."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/8/2121649/-Electric-utilities-join-Big-Oil-in-engaging-in-climate-dishonesty-campaigns-to-benefit-polluters

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Electric utilities join Big Oil in engaging in climate dishonesty campaigns to benefit polluters

April Siese

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday September 08, 2022

Findings from a new study, titled "The American electric utility industry's role in promoting climate denial, doubt, and delay" show that utility companies, trade associations, and front groups did their damnedest to downplay climate change over the past few decades.

April Siese

Daily Kos

Big Oil isn’t the only industry using a nefarious playbook to keep profits up along with pollution, according to a new study in Environmental Research Letters. The study examines the ways that utility companies have shifted their rhetoric from aligning with scientific findings to pushing doubt and denial from 1990 to 2000 to then calling for delayed action and shifting the blame to other industries rather than dealing with their own roles in the climate crisis.

This includes electric companies like Entergy, Duke, and Dominion, as well as trade organizations like the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) andElectric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The tactics mirror much of the activity seen by the likes of Exxon and Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and faux coalitions set up by the fossil fuel industry. In fact, the electric utility sector draws a parallel in its game plan to some of Exxon’s own misdeeds, the study authors found.

“After 2000, while EEI and EPRI no longer publicly doubted or denied climate change, these organizations continued to argue for delayed action,” researchers wrote. “This rhetoric deflected focus onto other countries and sectors and uplifted approaches such as CCS that have proven unviable to date in the power sector, distracting attention from the energy transition. This shift from doubt to delay is the same pattern that was identified in ExxonMobil's communications”

Since 2020, electric utilities have found “delay” tactics to be their favorite strategy, with researchers finding that “the 79 utilities that generated a majority of U.S. electricity from fossil fuels [only] pledged to retire a quarter of their coal generation by 2030, while proposing over 36 GW of new gas plants.” You can see these tactics in action with entities like the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s insistence, which recently pushed the false claim that gas must continue flowing in order to generate any gaps in capacity created by retiring fossil fuel plants.

Big Oil, meanwhile, has moved onto a different strategy in its playbook. Oil and gas companies no longer push the so-called positive qualities of their energy sources but rather discuss just how seriously they take the climate crisis, though their actions wholly contradict that.In a new InfluenceMap study, the watchdog found that BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies talked a big game about green initiatives.

In reality, none of those companies’ “forecasted oil production appears in line with the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (as of Q4 2021), with several companies planning to increase oil and gas production between 2021 and 2026.” These companies are shelling out a cumulative $750 million annually to keep from reducing emissions. The utility industry operates similarly and has devoted more than $500 million to lobbying against renewables and climate policy over the past 20 years.

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big Oil isn’t the only industry using a nefarious playbook to keep profits up along with pollution, according to a new study inEnvironmental Research Letters. The study examines the ways that utility companies have shifted their rhetoric from aligning with scientific findings to pushing doubt and denial from 1990 to 2000 to then calling for delayed action and shifting the blame to other industries rather than dealing with their own roles in the climate crisis.

This includes electric companies like Entergy, Duke, and Dominion, as well as trade organizations like the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The tactics mirror much of the activity seen by the likes of Exxon and Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and faux coalitions set up by the fossil fuel industry. In fact, the electric utility sector draws a parallel in its game plan to some of Exxon’s own misdeeds, the study authors found.

2 docs DL

file:///C:/Users/patmc/Downloads/IM_BigOil'sRealAgenda_FinalCopy_Sept2022.pdf

eg BP

file:///C:/Users/patmc/AppData/Local/Temp/Temp1_IM_BigOil'sRealAgenda2022_IntegratedClimateProfile_Final.zip/IM_BigOil'sRealAgenda2022_IntegratedClimateProfile_BP.pdf

https://influencemap.org/report/Big-Oil-s-Agenda-on-Climate-Change-2022-19585

Following up on InfluenceMap's 2019 edition of 'Big Oil's Real Agenda', this latest report compares and contrasts the public communications, business operations, and policy engagement of 5 'supermajor' oil companies: BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies.

Extensive analysis finds that the five supermajors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on a systematic strategy to portray themselves as positive and proactive on the climate change emergency. This is found to be inconsistent with the companies' plans for capital investment in their business.It is also found to be misaligned from the detailed policy engagement activities of the companies and their industry associations on climate change.

Across 3,421 items of public communications materials from the five companies in 2021, 60% contained at least one green claim, while only 23% contained claims promoting oil and gas. Claims highlighting the companies' support of, or involvement with, efforts to transition the energy mix were by far the most popular type of green claim.

None of the companies assessed disclosed the strategies that inform their public messaging on climate change, nor the resources dedicated to related activities. Using cost estimates based on the number of communications and media staff the companies employ, InfluenceMap’s analysis suggests that the companies are spending around $750 million each year cumulatively on climate-related communication activities

In contrast, only 12% of the five companies' 2022 capital expenditure (CAPEX) is forecasted to be dedicated to 'low carbon' activities.Additionally, none of the supermajors' forecasted oil production appears in line with the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (as of Q4 2021), with several companies planning to increase oil and gas production between 2021 and 2026.

At the same time, InfluenceMap found that none of the companies have aligned their climate policy engagement activities with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and retain a dense and global network of industry associations globally, which are highly active in their opposition to Paris Aligned climate policies

The findings raise serious and persistent questions for regulators and the companies’ shareholders, as well as PR and advertising agencies, media, and social media platforms that work with the companies. It is noted that this analysis focuses on the companies’ main corporate communications channels and thus is focused on their North American/European communications. Future research will focus on how the companies communicate in the Global South.

In addition to the report, Integrated Climate Profiles detailing each companies' public communications strategies, policy engagement, and business operations can be downloaded from this page.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/billionaires-gop-congress/

no lnx table grfx

Just 27 billionaires have spent $90 million to buy GOP congress: report

[ brk windows london? ]

Rupert Murdoch receiving the 2015 Global Leadership Award, Wikimedia Commons

Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams July 19, 2022

A few dozen billionaires are spending tens of millions of dollars on the 2022 midterm elections—mostly to support Republican candidates, including many who have parroted the dangerous lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—in a bid to ensure that Congress is full of lawmakers willing "to make their wealthy benefactors even richer," according to a fresh analysis.

Titled Billionaires Buying Elections, the report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) details how "billionaires are increasingly using their personal fortunes and the profits of connected corporations to drown out regular voters' voices and elect hand-picked candidates who further rig the nation's economy—especially the tax system."

A pair of super PACs tasked with securing Republican majorities in the House and Senate—the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) and the [cnp?] Senate Leadership Fund (SLF)—raised a combined $188.3 million through the first 16 months of the 2022 campaign cycle, according to ATF. Nearly half—$89.4 million, or 48%—came from just 27 billionaires. A whopping 86% of the GOP's billionaire money came from "Wall Street tycoons" who are arguably the biggest beneficiaries of glaring loopholes in the tax code.

The Democratic counterparts of those two super PACs—the House Majority PAC and the Senate Majority PAC—raised a combined $154 million over the same time period. A smaller share—$25.8 million, or 17%—came from 19 billionaires. A majority of billionaire contributions to Democratic candidates also came from the finance and investment sector (35%), but other industries were also well-represented, including cryptocurrency (26%), and tech (18%).

"Unlike candidates and party committees, super PACs can raise unlimited donations from individuals and corporations," ATF explained. "In return they are not supposed to coordinate activities with the campaigns they support but instead act independently, though that rule is often flouted."

Top billionaire donors to congressional super PACs include hedge fund magnate Ken Griffin, who has given more than $28.5 million to CLF and SLF, and private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman, who has pumped $20 million into the GOP's two super PACs.

"Anti-democratic vote-buying," ATF wrote, "has been facilitated by—and is facilitating—the accelerating wealth growth of the billionaire class and the record profits of the corporations they own."

The combined net worth of the nation's roughly 750 billionaires surged by $2 trillion, or 70%, during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The collective wealth of the 27 billionaires bankrolling the GOP's super PACs alone soared by $82.4 billion over that time period, meaning that the $89.4 million they have donated to CLF and SLF constitutes less than 0.1% of their overall pandemic-era gains.

Meanwhile, the return on that modest investment could amount to billions of dollars if Republicans take back Congress in November and preserve their 2017 tax cuts or further slash taxes on superrich people and the corporations they own.

Over a recent nine-year period, the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. paid an average effective federal income tax rate of just 8.2% when the increased value of their stock holdings is included in their income. That is a lower rate than the nationwide average of 13.3% in 2019.

As ATF explained, focusing on contributions to congressional super PACs fails "to capture the full political influence of billionaires, who in addition to personal donations also steer money to favored candidates from related corporations and organizations."

Billionaires are among the ultrawealthy Americans who control corporations through their extensive stock holdings. Many corporate giants have been distorting the upcoming midterms, ATF pointed out, by spending tens of millions to help GOP candidates who have vowed to defend special tax breaks for the top 1% get elected, including 144 far-right members of Congress who voted to overturn President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

According to the report, seven powerful corporations—AT&T,Chevron, ExxonMobil,FedEx, GM, Merck, and UPS—have collectively given nearly $1.5 million to dozens of election deniers and various Republican PACs and election committees this campaign cycle. The companies' demonstrated lack of concern for democracy, ATF noted, likelystems from their desire to keep dodging taxes. In 2021, these firms paid an average federal income tax rate of just 2.7% on a combined $78.4 billion in profits.

Notably, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal who is worth about $5 billion and openly opposed to democracy, has been spending big on his preferred Republican candidates but not through the GOP's congressional super PACs.

Thiel "has so far spent almost $30 million through super PACs supporting the 2022 senatorial bids of two former employees who share his anti-democratic and anti-tax beliefs," ATF found. "J.D. Vance won the Ohio Republican U.S. Senate primary thanks in part to Thiel's $15 million in spending. Blake Masters has a fighting chance in Arizona's GOP U.S. Senate primary in August due to Thiel's $13.5 million in contributions."

Another source of "billionaire dominance of campaign financing, especially on the Republican side," wrote ATF, are so-called "dark money" groups, which are not required to disclose the identity of their donors. Some dark money groups—including Club for Growth, which has received $32 million from billionaire Wall Street trader Jeffrey Yass over the years—are "notorious for having bankrolled insurrectionist members of Congress" like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), ATF noted.

According to the report:

Politically active billionaire Charles Koch has not personally donated to either GOP super PAC this cycle, but his corporation—Koch Industries—has so far given them a total of $1.75 million.

Two of the biggest "dark money" groups, which do not disclose their donors, are essentially sister groups to thetwo congressional GOP super PACs. American Action Networkgave at least $26 million to CLF in the 2020 cycle and $18.7 million so far this cycle.One Nation donated $77.5 million to SLF last cycle and has given $16.5 million so far this cycle.

The ability of the nation's wealthiest individuals to translate their disproportionate economic power into political clout has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision eliminated effective limits on campaign contributions.

According to the report:

Billionaires pumped $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections, almost 40 times more than the $31 million they donated in 2010, when the Citizens United rules were first in effect. In the 2020 election cycle, billionaires contributed nearly $1 out of every $10, while making up just 0.01% of all donors contributing more than $200.

Billionaires donated almost $240 million to the combined campaign efforts of Donald Trump's two runs for president. Over half came from just one billionaire household, that of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (who has since died).

"Billionaires, who are used to buying whatever they want, have increasingly dedicated their almost unlimited resources to buying American elections," Frank Clemente, executive director of ATF, said in a statement.

"The problem is what's good for billionaires—including cutting taxes on the rich and corporations—is bad for working families," said Clemente. "We need to rein in billionaire political and economic power through campaign finance reforms and tax reforms such as a billionaires income tax."

Several legislative proposals have emerged to tax the increased value of assets owned by the nation's wealthiest households each year regardless of whether they sell or keep them, which would ensure that income derived from wealth is taxed more like income earned from work.

Biden's plan would raise an estimated $360 billion over 10 years, while Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) plan would raise an estimated $550 billion over a decade, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D-N.Y.) proposal possibly even more.

Billionaire-backed Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), however, has joined Senate Republicans in opposing such a measure.

checks and bal col

rare forbes do the right thing?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson**/2022/04/**08/checks--imbalances-big-oil-big-tech-and-big-fines/?sh=1176c6d919df

no lnx table

big oil companies contributed $383,000 in support of the lawmakers questioning their executives at a committee hearing on Wednesday, 97% of which went to Republicans, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

Executives from six oil companies are scheduled to testify about gas prices before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s sub panel on oversight. PACs for BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, have supported 10 of the committee’s 19 members.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) the largest recipient on the subcommittee, hauled in contributions of $134,000. PACs for all six firms and API have backed her campaign. The senior Republican on the panel, Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, comes in second with $97,000.

Subcommittee Chair Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the entire committee, have each reported accepting $3,500 from the firms.

The breakdown of the donations to other committee members:

Michael Burgess (R-Texas), $97,000

David McKinley (R-W.V.), $58,000

Billy Long (R-Mo.), $32,000

John Joyce (R-Pa.), $7,500

Scott Peters (D-Calif.), $5,500

Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), $4,500

Going back to 1975, the PACs for the six companies and the industry trade group have made $46.8 million in political contributions.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers's (R-Wash.) campaign filings

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) has accepted $134,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION/CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS FOR CONGRESS

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/29/2060917/-Big-Oil-CEOs-Zoom-Into-Congress-To-Deny-Their-Industrial-Climate-Denial

CD roundup

yesterday six heads of oil companies and lobby groups _{testified virtually before Congress}_ in a marathon, all-day hearing in which they, and Republicans, provided examples of how their disinformation has shifted from denial that they’re causing the problem to denial by suggesting their polluting products are actually part of the solution.

The comparison to the tobacco industry hearings, where executives perjured themselves about the risks of smoking, were explicit and frequent, and clearly the CEOs had trained with lawyers to _{avoid (being investigated for) lying under oath}_.

Which means that while the 10am-5pm hearing was full of dramatic moments, despite the CEO’s best attempts to stay on-script and not actually know anything about the companies they run, the biggest news came at the very end: Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York will issue subpoenas to obtain documents the companies refused to voluntarily hand over in advance of the hearing.

In announcing the subpoenas at the end of the hearing, Rep. Maloney, over the objections of Republicans who praised how the companies had voluntarily sent over 100,000 pages, pointed out that most of those pages were useless printouts from their websites, or emails of press releases and other spam the companies turned over in obvious hopes of flooding the Committee with useless garbage.

Which, coincidentally, also seemed to be their strategy for the hearing.

So there may not have been an obvious moment in which CEOs committed a perjury as obvious and straightforward as the tobacco CEOs. (Which means _{that we were wrong to suggest}_ the CEOs would wiggle out of their commitments to attend, but right to suggest that lawmakers should get those subpoenas ready to go!)

But while the Democratic lawmakers presented the CEOs with detailed, well-researched questions about their pollution of the communities in real life and information pollution online, it may end up that the most damning question of the day was supposed to be an easy one. It came from a Republican, and it was one of the only yes or no questions that the CEOs actually answered.

Rep. Comer tried to reverse-gotcha, _{and asked the four oil executives}_ if they’d approved any climate disinformation campaigns in their time as CEOs, _{which of course they all disavowed}_(hmm, wonder if there’s any reason he didn’t ask API or the Chamber’s leadership?)

But if the legally-enforceable Congressional subpoenas show that the companies are still funding climate change disinformation, or if the company’s misleading ads are in fact considered disinformation campaigns, those simple, declarative answers, basically the only direct ones offered all day, would be proof of perjury, and an irony so rich Republicans would try and give it a tax cut.

Click through for a full readout of the questions from Dems and groveling from the GOP!

When giving opening statements, the CEOs rarely looked up from their carefully crafted scripts that _{ducked responsibility}_for the climate crisis and positioned themselves as saviors. Throughout the hearing they remained committed to their talking points, though body language cues like a sudden furious blinking as though they’re trying to signal to “S.O.S.” seemed to signal the occasional discomfort with the tough questions from Democratic lawmakers.

Fortunately for the CEOs, they got a chance to relax once it was the GOP’s turn to lob them some softballs. Republicans like Rep. Comer went beyond that and even defended the polluters and attacked Democrats for daring to inconvenience these CEOs, then pretended to care about inflation and the well-being of the working class by inviting a pipeline welder who was laid off work on the Keystone XL pipeline.

But Comer apparently couldn’t be bothered to actually listen, as he later asked Mr. Crabtree a question about when he lost his job that he had already addressed in his opening statement. Given Rep. Jim Jordan’s history of _{ignoring people he’s supposedly protecting}_, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that he asked Crabtree for a third time when he was laid off. The answer was, once again, just three hours after Biden’s announced cancellation of the pipeline.

One Republican was _{disgusted}_ that Democrats were asking the CEOs to pledge not to fund climate disinformation, which apparently is_{ something Republicans support}_. _{Two Republicans}_ said the CEOs deserved an apology, and a third, GOP Rep. Herrell, would offer such, _{as well as a “thank you,”}_ something that _{Rep. Jim Jordan echoed}_, as did Rep. Gibbs, and at least two other _{fossil-fueled Republicans}_ as the day went on. Rep. Higgins, who’s gotten over a hundred thousand dollars from the industry, _{was particularly incensed}_.

When it came to questions from Democratic lawmakers though, all questions were directed to the CEOs. Chairwoman Maloney started by hitting Exxon for its advertorials downplaying climate change, which CEO Darron Woods simply asserted that if you read the full context it actually was _{consistent with the science}_, despite Maloney describing in detail how even Exxon’s own scientists contradicted those ads.

Throughout the day, Woods would repeat variations on that theme, defending the company by claiming statements were consistent with the science of the time, even though Exxon’s internal documents prove they knew that wasn’t the case. “Historically untrue,” _{tweeted}_ disinformation researcher Robert Brulle of Brown University.

When it was Rep. Ro Khanna’s turn at the mic, he got the Exxon CEO to admit that fossil fuels cause climate change, and pointed out that former CEO Lee Raymond said exactly the opposite of that, decades after their own scientists made the consensus clear. But Woods refused to say that Raymond was wrong at the time, and instead insisted that it was consistent with the context. Rep. Khanna tried to get him to admit that it was a mistake, and Woods would not admit even that much.

Khanna then asked about the importance of electric vehicles in decarbonizing, which Shell and BP have both indicated they think is important. API, however, opposes electric vehicle tax credits, so Khanna asked if they would be willing to ask API to stop those advertisements.

They all refused to tell API to stop that opposition, which they supposedly don’t support, except of course in the literal sense that they financially support API.

They also refused to commit to an independent audit to determine if their companies were funding climate disinformation organizations or _{even a pledge not to fund}_ climate denying organizations, even though they all claim to care deeply about the climate crisis.

While the CEOs claim they support market mechanisms for reducing emissions, they were uniformly incapable of giving a direct number (or even a range) for what price-per-ton a carbon tax should be set at, though Exxon’s CEO suggested that to justify carbon capture it’d need to be at least $100/ton.

They also had no idea how much American taxpayers subsidize their industry (which ranges from $20 billion to $650 billion, depending on what you count as a 'subsidy') and apparently didn’t know their own internal budgets well enough to say how much public support they get. “I can’t answer your question directly,” BP’s CEO responded, which might as well have been the only answer any of them gave, given their evasiveness and training to avoid repeating the tobacco industry’s perjury.

Maryland Rep. Haskins pointed out that “the First Amendment does not protect fraudulent commercial speech” and again, the CEOs were _{unwilling to say anything concrete}_ acknowledging that companies shouldn’t lie — relevant given Exxon’s invocation of the First Amendment in its defense against litigation accusing it of false advertising.

Later, Rep. Sarbanks, also of Maryland, pulled up lobbying records for the companies, of which the CEOs were similarly ignorant. None seemed aware of the fact that despite their supposed commitment to the Paris Agreement and climate action, they rarely, if ever, lobbied for it. Instead, they’d pushed heavily on corporate tax cuts and other real priorities.

According to a _{report the Committee released}_, only 0.4% of their $452.6 million on lobbying since 2011 was about the carbon price they supposedly support. (Now, at this point we were definitely wondering how much these CEOs DO know about the companies they supposedly run, but of course, we're not Very Important Titans Of Industry who need plausible deniability.)

Rep. Rashida Tlaib also asked detailed questions, asking the CEOs and then educating them, (since they of course knew nothing) about the various Alaskan, Coloradan, and other front groups like Energy Citizens that API, Exxon and the others funded in recent years. “Lies, plain and simple” she called it.

Then she pointed out that Chevron owes over $50 billion in settlement fees for all the people and ecosystems harmed by its pollution, and pointedly asked “When are you going to write the checks?” Mr. Worth, of course, demurred. “I’m not exactly following…” he said, in response to how _{Chevron had successfully paid to put a lawyer in jail}_ after he fought for Indigenous communities suffering the harms of industry pollution.

Rep. Katie Porter traded her legendary white board for a jar of M&M’s, using them to portray Shell’s massive investments in oil, gas and chemicals, and paltry expenditures on clean energy. She then turned to API’s Sommers, getting him to admit that developing wells takes time, undercutting the GOP’s argument that the Biden agenda is already having impacts. Porter then _{used a "swagger waggon" full of rice}_ to show how many acres of land they’ve leased to drill on, yet haven’t done anything with (nearly 14 million), further undercutting their argument that recent political moves have constrained oil production.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought it was a “wonderful opportunity” to speak with the oil CEOs, given their influence watering down the ongoing budget reconciliation negotiations, quoting Sommers on CNN saying they’re “leaving everything on the field” to oppose the legislation. Turning to Exxon CEO Woods, AOC asked about Keith McCoy, the Exxon advisor caught in a sting bragging about their lobbying influence, and concluded by telling them that “_{some of us have to live in the future you are setting on fire.}_”

Rep. Cori Bush didn’t pull any punches, either, asking the executives about the disproportionate _{impact of fossil fuel facilities on communities of color}_, if most oil CEOs were Black or white, and asked Shell’s CEO how she felt about the company’s reports showing that Bangladesh “a country of 90 million Brown people” would have to be abandoned, and if Black and Brown communities were “expendable.”

Not getting any good answers, Bush ended her time by calling the environmental injustices their companies commit “a striking example of White supremacy” and _{calling on the CEOs to resign}_ (like the tobacco executives before them).

It wasn’t the end of the hearing, but it might as well...[?]

ref report

Climate & Environment Context

House Oversight report on Big Oil lobbying

Updated Oct 28, 2021

DL: b6f3e5dc-a78c-448f-9226-e4740afe8289_.pdf

MEMORANDUM

October 28, 2021 To: Members of the Committee on Oversight and Reform Fr: Majority Staff Re:

Analysis of the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Legislative Lobbying and Capital Expenditures

Related to Climate Change

In recent years, four major oil companies operating in the United States—ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP—have claimed that action on climate change is a top public policy and investment priority. All four companies have publicly asserted that they support the Paris Agreement and carbon pricing—two key policies to address climate change. However, an analysis of lobbying data indicates this public support has not been matched by meaningful action to advance these policy results. Instead, the companies appear to be using their praise of the Paris Agreement and carbon pricing to bolster their own public image while they continue to produce billions of barrels of fossil fuel and invest in new oil and gas extraction—actions that are making the climate crisis worse.

This analysis confirms the admissions of then-Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy, who explained on video his view that a carbon tax “is not going to happen” but that “it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax.”1 In particular, an analysis of federal lobbying disclosures demonstrates that these four companies, along with an industry group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying on legislative priorities over the past decade—yet only a tiny fraction of that lobbying activity was in support of the Paris Agreement or carbon pricing.

This analysis found: • Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and API have spent a combined $452.6 million lobbying the federal government since 2011. The four oil companies employed an average of around 40 lobbyists per year and spent a combined total of $374.7 ...

p 1 of 8

million on federal lobbying, while API employed an average of 48 lobbyists per

year and spent $77.9 million.

• Almost none of Big Oil’s lobbying on legislation since 2015 was devoted to

the Paris Agreement or related legislation. These five entities reported 4,597

instances of legislative lobbying in this period,

2 yet they reported only eight

instances of lobbying on the Paris Agreement and none on any of the legislation

related to the agreement—an amount equivalent to 0.17% of these entities’ total

legislative lobbying in that period.

 Chevron did not report any lobbying on the Paris Agreement, despite

spending $54 million on lobbying since 2015 and highlighting support for

the Paris Agreement on its website.

 ExxonMobil reported lobbying on the Paris Agreement only once,

compared to 1,543 instances of lobbying on legislation in the same period.

• Less than 0.4% of Big Oil’s legislative lobbying over the last decade was on

carbon pricing legislation. The four oil companies and API have publicly

embraced carbon pricing as a way to address the greenhouse gas emissions that

drive climate change, yet less than 0.4% of their lobbying on specific legislation

since 2011 was on carbon pricing legislation.

• Big Oil devoted far more effort to lobbying to lower its taxes than on either

the Paris Agreement or carbon pricing legislation. Since 2011, these entities

and their outside lobbyists filed 1,670 lobbying reports, 938 of which—over

56%—showed lobbying on tax issues.

 Since 2015, API has filed 153 lobbying reports that disclosed efforts to cut

taxes for oil and gas companies, but just one lobbying report on the Paris

Agreement and none at all on carbon pricing legislation.

Committee staff also found that the four oil companies’ public claims about their efforts

to reduce emissions have often exaggerated the significance of their actions while hiding or

downplaying their continued investments in fossil fuels. For example:

• ExxonMobil reportedly invested only 0.22% of its capital expenditures in

low-carbon projects between 2010 and 2018. In 2018, the company announced

a seven-year, $210 billion investment plan that would increase oil and gas ...

p 8

...Shell’s 2020 annual report claims that the company has a “long-term target to become a

net-zero emissions energy business by 2050.”24 However, Shell also disclosed emissions that

year of 1.38 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, nearly twice that of the entire nation of

Canada. While Shell has stated that its oil production peaked in 2019, the company has also

committed to expanding its production of natural gas by 20% over the next five years.25

V. AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE

API is the largest U.S. trade organization for the oil and gas industry and represents

ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and other companies. API’s Climate Action Framework

promises to “tackle the climate challenge” and includes a pledge that the oil industry will

continue to work to “reach the ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement.”26

API employs an army of 48 lobbyists and has spent over $77 million lobbying the federal

government since 2011. API reported 1,110 instances of legislative lobbying since 2015. Only one of those instances involved lobbying related to the Paris Agreement—equivalent to less than one-tenth of 1% of its total lobbying on legislation over this period. API did not report a single instance of lobbying on any of the 28 bills related to the Paris Agreement.

A “Carbon Price Policy” is a core element of API’s Climate Action Framework, which

states that “an economywide government carbon price policy is the most impactful and

transparent way to achieve meaningful progress.”27

However, API has not reported a single instance of legislative lobbying on any carbon pricing legislation. By contrast, of the 206 quarterly lobbying reports API has filed since 2011, 153 of them—or 74.3%—reporting lobbying on tax issues.

On Earth Day, Greta Thunberg, Experts to Testify at Environment Subcommittee Hearing

Apr 16, 2021

Press Release

Chairman Khanna to Examine the Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis

Washington D.C. (Apr. 16, 2021)— On Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. E.T., Rep. Ro Khanna, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment, will hold the Subcommittee’s first of the Congress on Earth Day entitled, “The Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis.”

Currently, the United States is the largest producer of oil and gas in the world. Under President Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry received between $10.4 billion and $15.2 billion in direct pandemic relief from the federal government.

This hearing will discuss the dire health and economic impacts of fossil fuel subsidies and why the current Administration and the rest of the international community should fulfill their commitments to repeal fossil fuel subsidies.

The hearing will also examine how federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industry disproportionately affects already vulnerable communities.

WHAT:

Subcommittee on Environment Hearing on “The Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis”

WHEN:

Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. E.T.

WHO:

Greta Thunberg

Founder

Fridays For Future

Tara Houska

Founder

Giniw Collective

Joseph Aldy

Professor

Harvard University

Peter Erickson

Climate Policy Program Director

Stockholm Environmental Institute

Jill Antares Hunkler

Seventh Generation Ohio Valley Resident

WATCH:

A livestream will be available on and the Committee on Oversight

and Reform website.

royal dutch Shell (lost ct case --> appeal) Chief Executive Ben van Beurden

oct 25 invite:

https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114185/documents/HHRG-117-GO00-20211028-SD002.pdf

1 Big Oil and Gas Kept a Dirty Secret For Decades. Now They May Pay the Price, The Guardian (June 30, 2021) (online at www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment).

2 Chevron, Chevron Supports Well-Designed Climate Policy (online at www.chevron.com/sustainability/environment/climate-policy) (accessed Aug. 19, 2021); Energy Factor by ExxonMobil, Reaffirming Our Commitment to the Paris Agreement (Jan. 20, 2021) (online at https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/insights/partners/commitment-paris-agreement/);

Shell Sets Emission Ambition of Net Zero by 2050, with Customer Help, Reuters (Apr. 16, 2020) (online at www.reuters.com/article/us-shellemissions/shell-sets-emission-ambition-of-net-zero-by-2050-with-customerhelp-idUSKCN21Y0MW);

BP’s New CEO Pledges Net Zero Emissions By 2050, CNN (Feb. 12, 2020) (online at www.cnn.com/2020/02/12/business/bpnet-zero/index.html).

3 Top Oil Companies Spending Millions to Block Climate Change Policies, Says Report, The Guardian (Mar. 21, 2019) (online at www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/22/top-oil-firms-spending-millions-lobbyingto-block-climate-change-policies-says-report).

4 E.g., See Who’s Spending the Most on Colorado's Oil-Well Setback Ballot Fight, Denver Business Journal (Oct. 10, 2018) (online at www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2018/10/10/colorado-proposition-112-well-setbackdonors.html); Prop 112 Fails as Voters Say No to Larger Setbacks for Oil and Gas, Denver Post (Nov. 6, 2018) (online at www.denverpost.com/2018/11/06/colorado-proposition-112-results/).

5 Committee on Oversight and Reform, Press Release: Oversight Committee Launches Investigation of Fossil Fuel Industry Disinformation on Climate Crisis (Sep. 16, 2021) (online at https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-committee-launches-investigation-of-fossil-fuel-industry).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/28/oil-executives-testimony-live-updates/

Climate & Environment

COP26

COP26 FAQ

Climate Solutions

Invisible project

2C project

Big Oil CEOs testify before House Oversight Committee

LATEST UPDATES

Members of ‘the Squad’ grill executives over harm to communities of color

4:11 p.m.

Rep. Katie Porter uses props to illustrate ‘green-washing’

2:50 p.m.

Democrats, Republicans spar over Big Oil’s First Amendment rights

1:43 p.m.

American Petroleum Institute comes under fire for lobbying

12:59 p.m.

Top Democrat says oil industry is ‘obviously lying like the tobacco executives were’

12:27 p.m.

Shell Oil president pressed on whether warming is ‘existential threat’

12:04 p.m.

Top Republicans question ‘legitimacy’ of Democrats’ hearing

11:18 a.m.

Oversight panel details Big Oil’s lobbying in new report

11:01 a.m.

Republicans to hammer Biden on energy, climate policy

10:54 a.m.

Top Democrat draws parallels between Big Oil and Big Tobacco

10:35 a.m.

Shell Oil president pressed on whether climate change is an ‘existential threat’

Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell Oil Co., on Oct. 28 said "climate change is one of the biggest challenges in the world today." (Video: The Washington Post,]

By Maxine Joselow and Dino Grandoni

October 28, 2021

Top executives from some of the world’s biggest oil companies are testified before Congress on Thursday about the fossil fuel industry’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about climate change.

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform brought in executives from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shellto grill them about what Democrats say is their decades-long history of sowing doubt about the effects their products are having on Earth’s temperature and the stability of its climate system.

‘Become part of the solution’

All four companies have set net-zero goals at varying levels of depth and with varying promises to back them up with capital investment. The two European majors are generally more ambitious and include Scope 3 emissions from the end uses of their products downstream.

Shell has said it will reduce net carbon intensity 100 percent by 2050 and slowly wind down oil production while investing in offsets, renewables and liquefied natural gas. The company was also ordered last year by the Hague District Court in the Netherlands to cut emissions 45 percent by 2030 compared with 2019 levels (Climatewire, May 27, 2021).

BP updated its emissions targets yesterday, with a pledge to halve operational emissions by 2030, moving to net zero by 2050, and to reduce carbon intensity of the products it sells to net zero by 2050.

“We have more to do,” BP spokesperson JP Fielder said in an email ahead of the hearing. “We believe our strategy is working and we are beginning to demonstrate the crucial role that bp and greening companies like ours can play in helping the world get to net zero.”

Exxon and Chevron, meanwhile, have said they want to go net zero in their own operations. Exxon said last month that it is planning for net-zero emissions from its operated assets by 2050, while Chevron in October set a similar “aspiration” for net zero in its operations by 2050.

The problem with all of those commitments, witnesses told lawmakers, is that they often center on emissions intensity — the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of output — rather than absolute emissions.

Mann, a Penn State University professor of atmospheric science, called it a “bait and switch” because it allows them to tout a green image while potentially increasing their overall greenhouse gas footprint.

That’s despite the fact that all four companies support the Paris climate agreement, which calls for holding the global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels or, ideally, 1.5 degrees. To hit the 1.5-degree target and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists say the world would have to halve emissions by 2030 and hit net zero by 2050.

“That’s sort of like your doctor telling you that you need to cut fat from your diet, and so you switch to 40 percent reduced fat potato chips, but you eat twice as many of them,” Mann said. “That doesn’t help. The net amount of fat that you’re taking in actually increases.”

Exxon has also not made any specific commitment to reduce the Scope 3 emissions that make up the vast majority of any oil company’s climate impact. Mark van Baal, founder of the activist investor group Follow This, likened it to a tobacco company that promises to ban smoking in its factories but continues selling cigarettes.

“If you were to believe the advertisement of Big Oil and what their executives told you last October, you would think they are taking adequate action to fight the climate crisis,” van Baal said. “In reality, they are not.”

When Follow This offers shareholder proposals asking for emissions reductions, including Scope 3, the companies oppose them, van Baal said.

“These climate proposals formally request them to set companywide emission reduction targets,” van Baal said. “Every year, the boards of these companies advise their shareholders to vote against these climate proposals and by extension against emissions reductions.”

While the focus through much of the hearing was on the emissions pledges, Khanna also sought to emphasize comments that executives made during the panel’s October hearing.

At one point during the hearing last fall, Maloney accused Exxon CEO Darren Woods of lying to the committee. Woods had said he believed comments made by his predecessor, Lee Raymond, in 1997 casting doubt on climate science “aligned with the consensus of the scientific community” at the time (Greenwire, Oct. 28, 2021).

During an exchange with Khanna yesterday,Mann said Raymond’s statement was “inconsistent with internal reports from Exxon Mobil’s own scientists in 1977 in 1982.”

“We believe in redemption in this country, and I would encourage them to become part of the solution,” Mann said.

GOP: ‘No smoking gun’

[ pix Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), ranking member of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, on Capitol Hill yesterday. | Francis Chung/E&E News

Republicans, as they did during the October hearing, came to the industry’s defense. Instead of asking about the companies’ emissions goals, GOP legislators steered conversation toward high gas prices and the Biden administration’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline.

It made for a spectacle of contrasts, with Democrats haranguing the companies and threatening additional legal action and Republicans directing questions mostly to Katie Tubb, the minority witness and a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.) said the four companies, as well as the U.S. Chamber and API, have already turned over more than 400,000 pages of documents.

“Even after producing hundreds of thousands of documents and answering questions all day, Democrats issued subpoenas after the prior hearing,” Comer said. “Why did they do this? Because their investigation hasn’t turned up anything. No smoking gun because there is not one.”

At one point, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) got into a heated exchange with Mann. Graves noted that his state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land over the last century, then blasted California’s energy policies and finally highlighted U.S. emissions reductions under former President Trump.

“I’ve been working with your data for decades now, and it is amazing to me to think that you would come before this Congress,” Graves said to Mann. “You’ve crossed so far over from science into political theater. It really undermines your credibility.” Graves did not cite any data that he considered erroneous.

Graves, the top Republican on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, does not sit on Oversight but was authorized by the panel to participate yesterday.

Mann later responded during an exchange with Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), calling California a “model” for other states on climate policy.

“I also found it ironic that the congressman from Louisiana, whose people are facing the brunt of the impacts of climate change, would be so dismissive or that [he] would try to point blame at California, which is actually growing their economy and reducing carbon emissions at the same time,” Mann said.

‘Possibility of redemption’

Yesterday’s testimony offered a detailed overview of many of the environmental community’s criticisms of Big Oil climate pledges, but it could also be a preview of the questioning during the planned hearing with board members next month.

Democrats had initially intended to bring in the board members yesterday. They sent out invitations in January to Melody Meyer of BP, Jane Holl Lute of Shell, Enrique Hernandez of Chevron and Alexander Karsner and Susan Avery of Exxon, all of whom are involved in their respective companies’ sustainability efforts.

But in a series of letters last week, Maloney and Khanna said the board members had declined to participate (E&E Daily, Feb. 4). They set March 8 as a deadline for voluntary appearances, a point Maloney reiterated during yesterday’s hearing.

“If they do not agree to appear, the committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information we need,” Maloney said.

Fielder, the BP spokesperson, confirmed yesterday that Meyer intends to appear on March 8. Khanna said in an interview after the hearing that his staff is anticipating that the rest of the board members will be there, as well.

In any case, Khanna said the purpose of the investigation as it was originally conceived was not “to stick it to Big Oil.”

Chevron, Exxon and BP, he noted, have all made or updated their emissions pledges since the probe began last year.

“There is a possibility of redemption,” Khanna said. “We need these oil and gas companies as part of the solution. That is the spirit in which I am holding these hearings.”

The emissions pledges are nonetheless likely to be a major focus for Democrats when they hear from board members on March 8. And Khanna said he ultimately has no problem with the delay — as long as they show up.

“If it’s a few weeks delayed, as long as all five of them come and they’re committed to coming, I think that’s good-faith compliance, and I don’t hold it against them,” Khanna said.

ROUND 2 NEEDS TO INCLUDE CTT:

API PARTIC TONY COX HOLOCAUST/ SECRET SCIENCE

Myron Ebell, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s energy and environment center, said his group “strongly supports EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s sensible and long overdue reforms of the agency’s numerous advisory boards.”

Ebell also led President Trump’s transition team operation at the EPA.

“The fact that some of the EPA’s advisory boards are filled with members whose research receives millions of dollars of funding from the EPA is an obvious conflict of interest that should never have been allowed to develop," he said.

subpoena eboys and horner?!

This story was originally published by The New Republic and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was known as the Great Pea Soup. In 1952, a thick, greenish-yellow fog smothered London, halting traffic and daily life. At the time, when households burned cheap coal for heat, factories spewed unregulated smoke, and buses burned diesel fuel, Londoners were used to a certain degree of greasy haze. But the Great Smog or Big Smoke, as this 1952 pea-souper was also known, was unprecedented. Bitterly cold air “soaked up the pollution and held it like a blanket over the city” for four days straight, according to the *Daily Mail*. Twelve thousand people died.

We now know that short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution can kill people, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.

Sixty-five years later, our scientific understanding of air pollution has advanced immeasurably. We now know—because of events like the Great Pea Soup, but also a :{groundbreaking 1993 :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Harvard University study:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: of smog-ridden U.S. cities and countless research papers since then—that short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution can kill people, particularly those with pre-existing conditions. “The evidence is so large,” said C. Arden Pope, a professor at Brigham Young University world-renowned researcher of air pollution’s impacts on human health. “There are very few people conducting this research and publishing it in the peer-reviewed literature who don’t think fine particles pollution can lead to death.”

There are, indeed, very few people who believe air pollution—specifically “fine particulate” pollution, or PM2.5—doesn’t cause death. Those who do, however, are getting louder and gaining influence in conservative political circles and inside President Donald Trump’s administration. These air-pollution deniers have just one hope: the repeal of clean-air regulations that have long protected Americans’ health.

At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), during a little-noticed panel on climate change and environmental regulation, air pollution denial was rampant and went unchallenged.Steve Milloy,formerly a paid flack for the tobacco and fossil fuel industries and member of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, argued that excessive air pollution is not linked to premature death. “My particular interest is air pollution,” Milloy said, alleging that EPA’s scientists are inherently biased. “These people validate and rubber-stamp the EPA’s conclusion that air pollution kills people.” Milloy also said, baselessly, that EPA scientists are “paying for the science it wants,” and that Trump must change the research process at the agency.....

===

---=

e&e:

Committee to study Big Oil emissions pledges

By Nick Sobczyk | 02/07/2022

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).

House Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). Francis Chung/E&E News

The House Oversight and Reform Committee tomorrow will examine fossil fuel industry emissions pledges after delaying a planned hearing with board members from major oil companies.

Climate scientist Michael Mann will testify alongside Tracey Lewis, policy counsel for Public Citizen, and Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, a climate-focused activist investor group.

The panel initially wanted to hold a hearing this week with members of the boards of directorsfrom Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC, Shell PLC and Chevron Corp. as part of a larger investigation of Big Oil’s climate lobbying tactics and efforts to cast doubt on climate science.

Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who are leading the probe, had invited Alexander Karsner and Susan Avery of Exxon, Melody Meyer of BP, Enrique Hernandez of Chevron, and Jane Holl Lute of Shell.

Maloney said they refused to participate tomorrow, but the companies and board members chalked it up to scheduling conflicts, with most saying they are willing to proceed with the hearing on a separate date(E&E Daily, Feb. 4).

The committee announced last week it would reschedule the board members’ testimony to March 8. Maloney said it would be their “last chance to cooperate.”

The committee’s investigation has been in the works for months, highlighted in October with a high-profile hearing featuring top executives from Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute (Energywire, Oct. 29, 2021).

Democrats are looking to press the board members, who are all involved in their respective companies’ sustainability efforts, on how they are pushing on climate from the inside and whether they agree with statements made by top executives during the October hearing.

But instead, the committee said tomorrow’s witnesses will offer opinions on the four companies’ emissions pledges and whether they are sufficient to curb climate change.

All have promised to go net zero by 2050 but with differing scale and varying levels of tangible action.

Some have made commitments to reduce “scope 3” emissions, which come from the downstream burning of their products as opposed to their direct operations. BP has also planned a 40 percent oil and gas production cut and big investments in renewable energy (Energywire, Aug. 5, 2020).

Exxon, meanwhile, announced a 2050 net-zero pledge in January of this year but was criticized by environmentalists for not including downstream emissions and lagging behind other oil and gas companies on clean energy (Greenwire, Jan. 18).

Maloney said tomorrow’s witnesses would “tell us exactly what these companies need to do to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Republicans are likely to come to the industry’s defense. During the October hearing, GOP lawmakers largely discussed inflation and high gas prices and encouraged company executives to increase oil and gas production.

Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 8, at 10 a.m. via webcast.

Witnesses:

Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science, Pennsylvania State University.

Mark van Baal, founder, Follow This.

Tracey Lewis, policy counsel, Public Citizen.

Others TBA.

===

2 22 NEXT ROUND 3/8

MANN AND

House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment has held hearings on the role of major oil companies in funding and disseminating misinformation about the climate crisis. Board members of Shell, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil refused congressional requests that they testify at Tuesday’s hearing. Instead, lawmakers heard from climate scientists and experts on Big Oil’s public relations efforts. This is Tracey Lewis of the group Public Citizen.

Tracey Lewis: “At least 45 years ago, oil industry scientists privately warned their own company executives that their products would spell doom for the planet. … Yet, instead of taking action, the fossil fuel industry has used its political power and public messaging capabilities to undercut climate policymaking and climate action, misleading the public about its products, and therefore causing well-documented harms.”

2017 Maloney precursor: OCTOBER 23, 2019

massie, comer, mandy g

guk

Oil executives face ‘turning point’ US congressional hearing on climate crisis

The heads of top US oil companies will answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis

For the first time, the executives from the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, as well as Shell, Chevron and BP will be questioned under oath.

Thu 28 Oct 2021

The heads of major oil companies will make a historic appearance before Congress on Thursday to answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis.

For the first time, the top executives from the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, as well as Shell, Chevron and BP will be questioned under oath about the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating.

‘The nation’s worst polluters managed to evade accountability and scrutiny for decades as they helped the fossil fuel industry destroy our planet.’

[The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villains

LAWMAKERS STUDY BIG TOBACCO PERJURY BEFORE BIG OIL SHOWDOWN

October 27, 2021

In The News

Corbin Hiar

E&E News

In April 1994, seven top tobacco CEOs testified to Congress that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive. Two years later, they were all under federal investigation for potentially lying under oath and _{no longer}_ leading their embattled cigarette companies.

Democrats believe the oil industry and trade association leaders appearing tomorrow at a high-profile hearing on climate change disinformation could meet a similar fate.

“The evidence is so incontrovertible that they’re going to really have a strong choice,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), whose Oversight subcommittee is hosting the event. “Do they risk coming close to the line, to committing perjury, and go the way of the tobacco executives? Or do they do a full mea culpa and admit all of the wrongdoing and commit to change?”

But the political landscape today could make it harder for Khanna and Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to have the same swift impact as their counterparts did nearly three decades ago, according to congressional experts.

Maloney and Khanna, whose perjury warningcame during a call this week with the political action group Our Revolution, will face challenges from the unusual nature of the event. While they plan to preside over the hearing from behind the imposing dais of the hearing room, no witnesses will be seated at the table below them.

Because of remote hearing rules instituted at the beginning of the pandemic, the heads of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP America Inc., Shell Oil Co., the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will all testify remotely. That’s despite the fact that API and the Chamber are both based in Washington (:{E&E Daily:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, Oct. 25).

Democrats had initially asked the officials to appear in person. But Republicans on the committee objected, _{accusing}_ the majority of treating the executives differently than other recent witnesses “simply because Democrats do not like them or want a photo opportunity.”

The hybrid format is likely to affect more than optics. For starters, it could ease the pressure on the industry witnesses.

“It’s a pretty different situation, isn’t it, testifying in your office or somewhere with your team around you rather than under the lights and cameras, in front of a live audience?” said Geoffrey Supran, a research associate at Harvard University.

Digital complications could also make it harder for Democrats to effectively cross-examine the executives in the limited time allowed by congressional rules.

“There’ll be delays and you talk over someone and then they didn’t hear the previous thing and then the time’s up,” said Supran, who’s studied the history of climate politics and met with Oversight staffers prepping for the hearing. “I definitely don’t think it will be a walk in the park.”

Then after the event, it may be harder than in the past for any revelations to reverberate widely, experts say. That’s because the U.S. information ecosystem has become increasingly fragmented, with a proliferation of partisan cable news channels and social media echo chambers.

“You wonder whether there’s really many people whose minds would be changed one way or the other by whatever comes out of the investigation,” said Michael Stern, a former Republican congressional lawyer who wrote a _{case study}_ of the tobacco investigation. “The people who support the Democrats will believe the worst about the oil companies, and the people who oppose them won’t care.”

‘RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU’

The oil and gas CEOs — whose companies provide the fuel, heat and power relied upon by millions of Americans — are also likely to be more difficult to villainize than cigarette chiefs.

“There is no redeeming argument to make for tobacco. It is clearly the leading cause of death and disease that is preventable,” said former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who led the 1994 hearing and has been talking with Khanna ahead of tomorrow’s event.

“Oil and other fossil fuels are part of our energy supply, which we depend on for the good of our economy,” he told E&E News. “But for the good of our planet, we’ve got to move away from them.

“What I think Congressman Khanna has got to do isshow that internal discussions by some of the people in the oil industry [aimed] to continue to mislead and deny the facts of what they were trying to do, which was to deny there was a connection between fossil fuels and climate change,” Waxman said.

Inside Climate News and other outlets have reported that Exxon and other oil majors were aware that burning oil, gas and coal is the primary driver of global warming. But the companies didn’t publicly acknowledge that fact for decades and gave tens of millions of dollars to groups that denied climate change or promoted discredited theories of why it is occurring.

It may be difficult for Khanna to shed new light on that history tomorrow. During the Our Revolution call, the Environment Subcommittee chair said the witnesses “have not been very cooperative in producing documents.”

“We’re prepared with a lot of evidence,” he said, but it’s “all frankly in the public record.”

After this story was published, Exxon pushed back on the claims of Waxman and Khanna.

“ExxonMobil has long acknowledged that climate change is real and poses serious risks,”spokesman Casey Nortonsaid in a statement. “We have been in communication with committee staff for months and have cooperated with the request for documents.”

If history is a guide, the hearing could shake loose additional internal documents.

Waxman recalled how, after the tobacco executives claimed they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive, “people within the industry started coming forward to say that they knew better.” Former Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. Vice President Jeffrey Wigand, for example, didn’t publicly reveal how the company had manipulated the nicotine levels in its cigarettes until a 1996 interview with the TV show “60 Minutes.”

It’s also difficult to immediately know which moments in an hours-long hearing will matter in the long run.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who in 1994 was a junior member of Waxman’s Energy and Commerce subcommittee, said he only got tobacco executives to weigh in on nicotine because he realized no one else had done so.

“That really led to the $250 billion tax settlement with Medicaid, which meant millions of people got health care, because that question was asked,” he told reporters yesterday.

“Sometimes the question that really breaks it open is a simple one,” Wyden said. “It’s really right in front of you.”

}:}:

sci am

E&E

Oil Companies Will Be Subpoenaed After Historic Congressional Hearing

A House committee has been investigating the role fossil fuel companies have played in disseminating climate misinformation

By Nick Sobczyk, E&E News on October 29, 2021

Oil Companies Will Be Subpoenaed After Historic Congressional Hearing

Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York and chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.

House Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney said yesterday that she intends to subpoena four major oil companies and two trade organizations for documents and communications as part of her committee’s investigation into climate misinformation.

The subpoenas, expected to be formally issued in the coming days, would be a major step, extending the reach of a congressional probe of the fossil fuel industry that could last well into next year.

“I see no choice but to continue our committee’s investigation until we see the truth,” Maloney (D-N.Y.) said at the end of a high-profile hearing with Big Oil executives and trade groups.

Democrats had requested a massive trove of internal documents from Exxon Mobil Corp., BP America Inc., Shell Oil Co., Chevron Corp., the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose top executives appeared before the committee virtually and offered hours of testimony yesterday.

The committee initially requested documents by Sept. 30 (Greenwire, Sept. 16). When the companies did not fully comply, Maloney said, they were warned that the panel would take further action if they did not produce sufficient paper ahead of yesterday’s hearing.

“Unfortunately, none of the six entities can produce the substantial portion of the key documents the committee requested,” Maloney said. “Instead, they produced reams of other documents, many of which were publicly available.”

The companies, Maloney said, offered up thousands of pages—but not the kind of behind-closed-doors information about climate science and misinformation funding that Democrats had been looking for.

“One entity sent in 1,500 pages printed from their own website, available publicly, along with 4,000 pages of newsletters filled with industry press releases,” Maloney said. “Others sent us thousands of pages of publicly available annual reports and the companies’ postings on Facebook and LinkedIn.”

The companies, generally, have pushed back against the idea that they are not giving lawmakers sufficient information, and during the hearing, they denied any role in promoting misinformation about climate change.

Committee ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.) defended the companies and objected to Maloney’s subpoena announcement, noting that they have produced more than 100,000 documents and calling it “an infringement upon their First Amendment rights.”

“This is the Oversight and Government Reform Committee,” Comer said, referring to the panel’s formal name when Republicans controlled the House. “We’re supposed to focus on waste, fraud and abuse in the federal bureaucracy.”

substack

no lnx twt

2021 in review: Climate accountability in Congress

This was the year that members of Congress stepped up efforts to reign in the fossil fuel industry.

EXXONKNEWS

Dec 16, 2021

Emily Sanders is editorial lead for the Center for Climate Integrity. You can catch up with her on Twitter here.

Graphic design by Tess Abbot

It was a big year for climate accountability as powerful members of Congress took Big Oil to task for its deception.

In 2021, as fossil fuel-driven disasters ravaged communities from coast to coast, Big Oil ramped up campaigns to greenwash its operations and obstruct government action on climate change. But some elected officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government weren’t about to let the industry’s deception go unchallenged.

We’re here with a roundup of top moments in 2021 when Congress took steps to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable.

U.S. Senators urged the Department of Justice to take action against fossil fuel companies.

In February, Senator Richard Blumenthal told then-nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, that “nothing could be as important” as the Department of Justice taking action to hold major oil and gas companies accountable “for lying to the American public about the devastating effects of these products on climate change.”

Blumenthal was one of nine Senators this year to urge the U.S. Department of Justice to “reassess” its Trump-era support of fossil fuel companies in climate liability lawsuits and heed President Biden’s campaign promise to “strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters.”

Disappointingly, Garland’s DOJ has still not weighed in on the issue. But it remains crucial for the Justice Department to make clear whether it stands with people or polluters as seven circuit courts will consider next steps for these cases in 2022.

Members of Congress introduced legislation to make polluters pay and end subsidies for fossil fuel companies.

While the courts continue to consider questions of liability, U.S. Senators proposed a new bill that would make polluters help fund the transition to clean energy sources. The plan, spearheaded by Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, would require fossil fuel majors to pay a fee based on the percentage of their global emissions.

Members of Congress also called for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, which force taxpayers to prop up oil and gas companies to the tune of billions of dollars a year. In August, more than 50 members, led by Representatives Ro Khanna, Carolyn Maloney, and Ilhan Omar, sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pushing for a repeal of fossil fuel subsidies to be included in the Build Back Better Act.

The U.S. government hasn’t put an end to taxpayer-subsidized lifelines for Big Oil yet. In the meantime, Rep. Khanna and others have introduced legislation to repeal one of the more egregious tax giveaways still present in the current version of the House’s Build Back Better bill, which allows fossil fuel companies to receive a credit for using captured carbon to extract more oil.

Twitter avatar for @insideclimate

Inside Climate News

@insideclimate

As the House finalized its climate and social policy bill last month, an ExxonMobil lobbyist told a group of state regulators that a key tax credit could be so generous that some corporations’ income taxes "would be entirely eaten by that.”

Fossil Fuel Companies Stand to Make Billions From Tax Break in Democrats’ Build Back Better Bill - Inside Climate News

With the Senate turning its attention to President Joe Biden’s climate and social policy bill in the coming weeks, lawmakers are poised to expand a key tax credit that energy industry lobbyists and some experts say could unleash an important climate tool. But the legislation, which includes changes …

insideclimatenews.org

December 4th 2021

6 Retweets10 Likes

Exxon's lobbyist got caught bragging about his meetings with senators.

Who could forget when (now-former) federal lobbyist for Exxon, Keith McCoy, was caught on tape spilling the tea about Exxon’s plots to stall government action on climate change and undermine climate science? McCoy was recorded in an undercover interview with Greenpeace UK, where he revealed a list of senators he met with regularly to push Exxon’s anti-regulatory agenda, referred to a carbon tax as a “good talking point” that would never actually happen, and explained how trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute serve a useful purpose as the industry’s “whipping boy.”

The tape confirmed Exxon’s decades-long legacy of deceiving the public about climate change, and McCoy was summoned to cooperate with the House Oversight and Reform Committee as part of its ongoing investigation into climate disinformation. Speaking of which...

Echoing the historic Big Tobacco hearings, members of Congress grilled oil executives at the first Congressional hearing on climate disinformation.

After oil industry CEOs refused to show up to testify at several other Congressional hearings, Rep. Khanna, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Environment, threatened to subpoena the executives to make sure they showed up for a historic hearing on the industry’s climate disinformation campaigns. “We need to expose all of this — we need to hold them accountable so that we can actually get climate legislation,” Khanna told us in an interview before the hearing.

Lo and behold, the Slippery Six — aka the executives of Exxon, Shell, BP America, Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — appeared virtually before Congress at the October 28 hearing. The executives faced tough questions from Khanna, House Oversight Chair Maloney, and a murderers’ row of committee members, including Representatives Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Porter, and Jamie Raskin.

During the hearing, all six executives refused to commit to stop funding disinformation and efforts to oppose policies to address climate change. The executives also denied their companies’ involvement in spreading climate disinformation, and told a few other big whoppers under oath.

The Slippery Six got subpoenaed.

Following the hearing, Maloney issued subpoenas to all six executives for internal industry documents relating to the companies’ communications about climate science, funding of front groups, and intention to influence policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which will be used to aid the committee’s investigation.

“This investigation is critical to informing legislative efforts to address these troubling business practices and to respond to the dire problem of climate change,” Maloney wrote in a corresponding memo. “The six entities have failed to produce key documents the Committee needs, despite the Committee’s efforts to obtain this information voluntarily.”

Next year, we expect Congress to broaden that investigation to include perhaps the biggest enabler in the climate disinformation crisis: social media companies.

Twitter avatar for @RepRoKhanna

Rep. Ro Khanna

@RepRoKhanna

Climate change is an existential threat. It’s past time we held social media companies and the fossil fuel industry accountable for their role in facilitating disinformation.

I’m working with @RepMaloney and our committee to put a stop to it.

Opinion | Social Media Is Polluted With Climate Denialism

Climate misinformation is rampant on social media. Is there anything to be done?

nytimes.com

November 17th 2021

10 Retweets39 Likes

This year’s developments in Congress were hugely important – but much more will be needed to ensure that Big Oil is truly held accountable for its lies and obstruction. We hope to see more come out of the ongoing House Oversight investigation – if the committee’s efforts are successful, the industry’s days of interference may be growing short.

P.S. We’ll be taking a break for the holidays but will be back with regular EXXONKNEWS starting in the New Year. Have a safe, happy and healthy one!

ICYMI News Roundup

Edelman Criticized for Work With Oil Companies

How Big Oil Rigs the System to Keep Winning

Elizabeth Warren asks SEC to investigate compensation at fossil fuel giants

Exxon’s new emissions targets are more smoke and mirrors

Earthworks campaigner Josh Eisenfeld discusses the company’s latest pledge.

EXXONKNEWS

Dec 8, 2021

Emily Sanders is editorial lead for the Center for Climate Integrity. You can catch up with her on Twitter here.

unearthed mccoy

ref

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty/

2x?

no lnx many [docs?]

Exxon Sowed Doubt About Climate Science for Decades by Stressing Uncertainty

Collaborating with the Bush-Cheney White House, Exxon turned ordinary scientific uncertainties into weapons of mass confusion.

By David Hasemyer and John H. Cushman Jr.

October 22, 2015

As he wrapped up nine years as the federal government’s chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science.

His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller’s legal counsel a century earlier. “What I rather imagine he would say is that you are on the wrong side of history, and you need to find a way to change your position,” he wrote.

Addressed to chairman Lee Raymond on the letterhead of the United States Global Change Research Program, his September 2002 letter was not just forceful, but unusually personal.

No wonder: in the opening days of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, Exxon’s chief lobbyist had written the new head of the White House environmental council demanding that MacCracken be fired for “political and scientific bias.”

Exxon was also attacking other officials in the U.S. government and at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), MacCracken wrote, interfering with their work behind the scenes and distorting it in public.

Exxon wanted scientists who disputed the mainstream science on climate change to oversee Washington’s work with the IPCC, the authoritative body that defines the scientific consensus on global warming, documents written by an Exxon lobbyist and one of its scientists show. The company persuaded the White House to block the reappointment of the IPCC chairman, a World Bank scientist. Exxon’s top climate researcher, Brian Flannery, was pushing the White House for a wholesale revision of federal climate science. The company wanted a new strategy to focus on the uncertainties.

“To call ExxonMobil’s position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement,” MacCracken wrote. “To be in opposition to the key scientific findings is rather appalling for such an established and scientific organization.”

MacCracken had a long history of collaboration with Exxon researchers. He knew that during the 1970s and 1980s, well before the general public understood the risks of global warming, the company’s researchers had worked at the cutting edge of climate change science. He had edited and even co-authored some of their reports. So he found it galling that Exxon was now leading a concerted effort to sow confusion about fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect.

Exxon had turned a colleague into its enemy.

It was a vivid example of Exxon’s undermining of mainstream science and embrace of denial and misinformation, which became most pronounced after President George W. Bush took office. The campaign climaxed when Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. Taking the U.S. out of the international climate change treaty was Exxon’s key goal, and the reason for its persistent emphasis on the uncertainty of climate science.

This in-depth series by InsideClimate News has explored Exxon’s early engagement with climate research more than 35 years ago – and its subsequent use of scientific uncertainty as a shield against forceful action on global warming. The series is based on Exxon documents, interviews, and other evidence from an eight-month investigation.

“What happened was an incredible disconnect in people trained in physical science and engineering,” recalled Martin Hoffert, a New York University professor who collaborated with Exxon’s team as its early computer modeling confirmed the emerging scientific consensus on global warming. “It’s an untold story of how we got to the point where climate change has become a threat to the world.”

The Uncertainty Agenda

As the Bush-Cheney administration arrived in the White House in 2001, ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) now had partners for a climate uncertainty strategy.

Just weeks after Bush was sworn in, Exxon’s top lobbyist Randy Randol sent the White House a memo complaining that “Clinton/Gore carry-overs with aggressive agendas” were still playing a role at the IPCC as it prepared its next assessment of the climate science consensus.

MacCracken and three colleagues should be replaced, or at least kept out of “any decisional activities,” he wrote. Meanwhile, U.S. input to the IPCC should be delayed.

Further, two scientists highly critical of the prevailing consensus should be enlisted: John Christy of the University of Alabama should take the science lead and Richard Lindzen of MIT should review U.S. submissions to the IPCC.

Exxon had been circulating a proposal to fundamentally overhaul MacCracken’s global change research program, by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science.

The timing was not coincidental because the administration, as required by law, was about to lay out a new federal climate research strategy. Exxon and its allies wanted the work done during the Clinton-Gore years to be marginalized.

In March 2002, Flannery, Exxon’s science strategy and programs manager, contacted John H. Marburger, the president’s incoming assistant for science and technology, to pitch the company’s favored approach of emphasizing the uncertainty. Earlier discussions, he asserted, “have not sought to place the uncertainty in the context of why it is important to public policy.”

Exxon’s position paper, attached to his letter, took a dig at the work of the IPCC.

“A major frustration to many is the all-too-apparent bias of IPCC to downplay the significance of scientific uncertainty and gaps,” the memo said.

A Seat at the Table

Exxon had not always been so at odds with the prevailing science.

Since the late 1970s, Exxon scientists had been telling top executives that the most likely cause of climate change was carbon pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels, and that it was important to get a grip on the problem quickly. Exxon Research & Engineering had launched innovative ocean research from aboard the company’s biggest supertanker, the Esso Atlantic. ER&E’s modeling experts, by the early 1980s, had confirmed the consensus among outside scientists about the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

“The facts are that we identified the potential risks of climate change and have taken the issue very seriously,” said Ken Cohen, Exxon’s vice president of public and government affairs, in a press release on October 21 addressing the ICN reports. “We embarked on decades of research in collaboration with many parties.”

Exxon has declined to answer specific questions from InsideClimate News.

A 1980 memo proposed an ambitious public-relations plan aimed at “achieving national recognition of our CO2 Greenhouse research program.”

“It is significant to Exxon since future public decisions aimed at controlling the build-up of atmospheric CO2 could impose limits on fossil fuel combustion,” said the memo. “It is significant to all humanity since, although the CO2 Greenhouse Effect is not today widely perceived as a threat, the popular media are giving increased attention to doom-saying theories about dramatic climate changes and melting polar icecaps.”

Most of all, Exxon wanted a seat at the policy-making table, and the credibility of its research had earned that. In 1979, David Slade, manager of carbon dioxide research at the Energy Department, called it “a model for research contributions from the corporate sector.”

Sen. Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, invited Henry Shaw, an early Exxon scientist, to join the policy deliberations. He was the only industry representative invited to an October 1980 conference of the National Commission on Air Quality, newly set up by Congress, to discuss “whether potential consequences of increased carbon dioxide levels warrant development of policies to mitigate adverse effects.”

Shaw’s bosses agreed that he should attend, “both to be informed as to what actions or proposals that result and to bring objective thinking and information to the meeting,” Harold Weinberg, Shaw’s boss in Exxon Research and Engineering, wrote in a memo. But first, he said, Shaw needed to be briefed by public affairs executives “on possible hidden agenda and individual biases of which we may not already be aware.”

When Shaw gave feedback to the commission in December, he noted the uncertainties about carbon dioxide and climate change. At the same time, he wrote that it was “important” to place CO2 on the nation’s public policy agenda, as the commission was recommending, and supported the panel’s suggestion that it was “timely to consider ways of reducing CO2 emissions now.”

He also backed a recommendation that the U.S. “seek to develop discussions on national and international policies.”

In late spring of 1981, Flannery was one of the few industry representatives at a large gathering of accomplished scientists at Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., for a Department of Energy “Workshop on First Detection of Carbon Dioxide Effects.” He sat on a panel with NASA’s James Hansen, who was about to publish a landmark study in Science magazine warning of significant warming even if controls were placed on carbon emissions.

The workshop’s proceedings would declare that “scientists are agreed” that carbon dioxide was building up in the atmosphere, that the effects “are well known” and “will bring about an increase in the mean global temperature,” and that it is “commonly accepted” that warming “will affect the biosphere through a change in climate.”

Working with Hoffert, Flannery wrote a highly technical 50-page chapter to a 1985 Energy Department report. Their modeling projected up to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the 21st century unless emissions of greenhouse gases were curtailed.

Exxon researchers contributed key climate modeling to a 1985 Energy Department study that projected significant global warming, and said some climate change was already locked in. (Credit: DoE)

The influential government report said the models provided a “firm basis” for this kind of projection, and that “we are already committed to some of this warming as a result of emissions over the last several decades.”

The Harper’s Ferry conference was chaired by MacCracken; he also edited the warming report. He recalled recently that “the underlying push was for a level of understanding that was convincing enough to let policymakers become aware of what the issue was that society faced.”

As Hoffert put it in a recent interview, in those days at Exxon “there were no divisions, no agendas. We were coming together as scientists to address issues of vital importance to the world.”

Fork in the Road

In 1988, James Hansen told Congress that there was now enough warming to declare that the greenhouse effect had arrived. Also that year, the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It was a moment that Exxon’s climate experts had been forecasting for a decade: that as warming became unmistakable, governments would move to control it.

Looking backward, one Exxon document from the early 1990s reflects a trail of research into global warming stretching back “long before the issue achieved its current prominence.”

An internal compendium of the company’s environmental record, on file in the official ExxonMobil historical archives at the University of Texas-Austin, acknowledged the uncertainties that have always faced climate researchers, but it didn’t downplay the risks.

“Fossil fuel use dominates as the source of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide,” said one section of the encyclopedic review. “Current scientific understanding demonstrates the potential for climate change to produce serious impacts.”

“For Exxon and the petroleum industry, potential enhancement of the greenhouse effect and the possibility of adverse climate are of particular and fundamental concern,” it said.

Drilling for Uncertainty

The IPCC published its first report in 1990. Despite the scientific gaps, the panel warned that unrestrained emissions from burning fossil fuels would surely warm the planet in the century ahead. The conclusion, the IPCC said after intense deliberations, was “certain.” It prescribed deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off a crisis in the coming decades.

At this crucial juncture, Exxon pivoted toward uncertainty and away from the global scientific consensus.

At the IPCC’s final session to draft its summary for policymakers, Exxon’s Flannery was in the room as an observer. He took the microphone to challenge both the certainty and the remedy. None of the other scientists agreed with Flannery, and the IPCC brushed off Exxon’s advice to water down the report, according to Jeremy Leggett’s eyewitness account in his book, The Carbon War.

At a conference in June 1991, MacCracken joined a panel chaired by Flannery to work together on a climate change project involving geo-engineering.

The contact, according to MacCracken, led to an unexpected solicitation from the oil lobby in Washington. Will Ollison, a science adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, in a fax marked urgent, asked MacCracken, then at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to write a paper highlighting the scientific uncertainties surrounding global warming.

The API, where Exxon held enormous sway, wanted him to write up the complex nuances in plain English – with an emphasis on the unknown, not the known.

Ollison said the IPCC’s 1990 report “may not have adequately addressed alternative views.”

“A review of these alternative projections would be useful in illustrating the uncertainties inherent in the ‘consensus’ views expressed in the IPCC report,” Ollison wrote.

MacCracken rejected the task as “fruitless.”

“I would caution you about too readily accepting whatever the naysayers put forth as a means of achieving balance,” MacCracken wrote back.

Flannery, for his part, continued to emphasize uncertainty. And so did Exxon’s new chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, who spoke of it repeatedly in public.

“Currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate,” Raymond claimed in a speech delivered in 1996 to the Economic Club of Detroit.

“Many people, politicians and the public alike, believe that global warming is a rock-solid certainty,” he said the next year in a speech in Beijing. “But it’s not.”

Addressing the World Petroleum Congress, which was meeting just before the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, Raymond even disputed that the planet was warming at all. “The earth is cooler today than it was 20 years ago,” he said.

That was false. Authoritative climate agencies declared 1997 the warmest year ever measured. Decade by decade, the warming has continued, in line with the climate models.

But Raymond, turning his back on Exxon researchers and their state-of-the-art work, mocked those climate models.

“1990’s models were predicting temperature increases of two to five degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Last year’s models say one to three degrees. Where to next year?”

“It is highly unlikely,” he said, “that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now.”

The Doubt Industry

Exxon and its allies had been working hard to spread this dilatory message.

First, they set up the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a lobbying partnership of leading oil and automobile companies dedicated to defeating controls on carbon pollution.

“As major corporations with a high level of internal scientific and technical expertise, they were aware of and in a position to understand the available scientific data,” recounts an essay on corporate responsibility for climate change published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.

“From 1989 to 2002, the GCC led an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign aimed at achieving these goals by sowing doubt about the integrity of the IPCC and the scientific evidence that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels drive global warming,” says the article, by Harvard climate science historian Naomi Oreskes and two co-authors.

Then, in 1998 Exxon also helped create the Global Climate Science Team, an effort involving Randy Randol, the company’s top lobbyist, and Joe Walker, a public relations representative for API.

Their memo, leaked to The New York Times, asserted that it is “not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it.” Opponents of the Kyoto treaty, it complained, “have done little to build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty.”

The memo declared: “Victory will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science,” and when “recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'”

Exxon wholeheartedly embraced that theme. For example, an advertisement called “Unsettled Science” that ran in major papers in the spring of 2000, prompted one scientist to complain that it had distorted his work by suggesting it supported the notion that global warming was just a natural cycle. “It’s a shame,” Lloyd Keigwin later told the Wall Street Journal. “The implication is that these data show that we don’t need to worry about global warming.”

Another ad, one of a series placed in The New York Times, cast aspersions on scientists who “believe they can predict changes in climate decades from now.”

Then, in the heat of the 2000 presidential race between climate champion Al Gore and erstwhile oilman George W. Bush, Exxon placed an ad in the Washington Post accusing MacCracken’s office of putting the “political cart before a scientific horse.”

Blowing the Whistle

The collaboration between Exxon, its surrogates, and the Bush administration to emphasize uncertainty and stave off action came to light in 2005. A whistleblower named Rick Piltz disclosed that Philip Cooney, an oil lobbyist who had become chief of staff at the White House environmental council, had been heavily editing the work of government researchers. Cooney resigned, and was hired by Exxon.

But the clashes continued between the scientific establishment and Exxon’s purveyors of uncertainty.

The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science, harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing “very misleading” statements about the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.

The Society’s communications manager Bob Ward reminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

The Royal Society said it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but “we do have concerns about ExxonMobil’s funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change.”

Ward said Exxon was funding at least 39 organizations “featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science on climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge.”

In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report detailing Exxon’s campaign of uncertainty, including a table identifying dozens of organizations that the group said had received $16 million in Exxon contributions over several years. (Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)

Exxon’s uncertainty campaign was detailed in three exhaustive reports published in 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project.

At a Congressional hearing in 2007, Harvard scientist James McCarthy, who was a member of the UCS board and the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared: “The Bush administration and a network of Exxon-funded, ExxonMobil funded organizations have sought to distort, manipulate and suppress climate science so as to confuse the American public about the urgency of the global warming problem, and thus, forestall a strong policy response.”

To this day, top Exxon officials sometimes argue that models are no basis for policy.

While Rex Tillerson, the current chairman, doesn’t echo Lee Raymond’s science denial in his formal speeches, he sometimes backslides when speaking off the cuff.

At Exxon’s annual meeting in 2015, Tillerson said it would be best to wait for more solid science before acting on climate change. “What if everything we do, it turns out our models are lousy, and we don’t get the effects we predict?” he asked.

And in its formal annual energy forecasts, as well as in its latest report on the implications of its carbon footprint, Exxon adopts business-as-usual assumptions. It deflects the question of how much carbon will build up in the world’s atmosphere over the next few decades, or how much the planet will warm as a result.

“As part of our energy outlook process, we do not project overall atmospheric GHG [greenhouse gas] concentration, nor do we model global average temperature impacts,” both reports say.

In footnotes, Exxon offers this excuse: “These would require data inputs that are well beyond our company’s ability to reasonably measure or verify.”

Click here for Part 1, an overview of Exxon’s history with climate change; Part II, an accounting of Exxon’s early climate research; Part III, a review of Exxon’s climate modeling efforts; Part IV, a dive into Exxon’s Natuna gas field project; Part V, a look at Exxon’s push for synfuels.

ICN staff members Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, Zahra Hirji, and Paul Horn also contributed to this report.

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https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/oil-execs-spout-disinformation-at-house-climate-disinformation-hearing/

no lnx many

Oil Execs Spout Disinformation at House Climate Disinformation Hearing

December 7, 2021

Elliott Negin

Senior Writer

Earlier this fall, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing about the oil industry’s decades-long climate disinformation campaign, inviting the heads of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell—along with their counterparts at the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute (API), the US oil industry’s largest trade association—to testify under oath.

What came out of their mouths? A gusher of disinformation.

It is well documented by journalists, legislators, academics and public interest groups such as my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), that the oil industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years on political campaigns, super PACs, lobbying, advertising, bogus scientific studies, and a network of libertarian think tanks and advocacy groups to manufacture doubt about climate science and prevent government action.

Nevertheless, the executives strenuously denied spreading climate science denial at the October 28 hearing. At the same time, they all flatly refused to: stop funding groups that are promoting climate disinformation, commit to an independent audit to verify that they are not funding climate science denial, or stop spending money to oppose efforts to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.

Given the unprecedented nature of the hearing, it attracted its share of news media attention, but there was no way for reporters on a tight deadline to capture all of the hot air released that day. So I sat down, caffeinated up, and forced myself to watch every minute of it again to drill below the surface.

What did I find? Throughout the six-hour marathon, the executives bobbed and weaved, refusing to directly answer simple yes or no questions, and recited shopworn talking points replete with half-truths, falsehoods and fabrications. Below are five of their biggest whoppers.

ExxonMobil does finance climate science denial

ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods was the first CEO to testify. His company has spent at least $39 million since 1998 on think tanks and advocacy groups to disparage climate science, more than any other funder besides Charles and the late David Koch, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries.

Woods’s answers to committee members’ questions were classic examples of plausible deniability, exploiting the fact that his company’s disinformation campaign was launched long before he became CEO. That allowed him to not only claim that he did not personally approve such a campaign, but also that the company does not tell its grantees to oppose its professed climate policy positions.

Early in the hearing, committee Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) asked all of the oil company executives how long they have been running their companies and if any of them had authorized a climate disinformation campaign. Like the rest of the execs, Woods—who replaced Rex Tillerson as CEO in 2017—said he did not sign off on such a campaign.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) followed up with Woods about that funding. “Mr. Woods, is it your testimony that Exxon has not at any point funded any think tank, advocacy organization or other ‘shadow groups’ against climate change efforts,” she asked. “Yes or no?”

“The position we take is transparent,” he responded, “and we publish the groups we support on our website.”

Yes, ExxonMobil has been publishing a list of its annual grants for years, and before that, it filed federal tax forms for its foundation that required it to list its grantees. Under Woods’ watch, from 2017 through 2020, the company donated $3.79 million to 13 organizations that either deny climate science, lobby against climate solutions, or both, according to company records.

Pressley continued: “Mr. Woods, do you commit right here to stop funding organizations that reject the science of climate change, yes or no?”

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods: We do not support denial.

“We do not support climate denial,” he replied. “We do not ask people to lobby for anything different than our publicly supported positions.”

On the contrary, ExxonMobil does support climate science denial. The company may not have formally asked its grantees to take diametrically opposite positions, but they have and still do, and ExxonMobil has continued to finance a number of them.

As I reported in a recent column, just last year ExxonMobil donated $100,000 to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which it has funded to the tune of $4.86 million since 1998. The views expressed by AEI economist Benjamin Zycher are 180 degrees from ExxonMobil’s alleged policy positions. He rejects the scientific consensus about the causes of global warming, insists that a carbon tax would be “ineffective,” and has called the Paris climate agreement an “absurdity.” And Zycher is hardly alone. AEI is just one of dozens of ExxonMobil grantees that have contradicted the company’s public stances on climate over the past two decades, giving climate science deniers in Congress—whose political campaigns are generously funded by ExxonMobil and other oil companies—intellectual cover to ignore the climate crisis.

Oil companies don’t support a carbon tax

During his opening statement, Woods repeated his company’s mantra about supporting a carbon tax. “We have advocated for an economywide revenue neutral price on carbon for more than a decade…,” he said.

As I have pointed out previously, ExxonMobil’s ongoing funding of climate science denier legislators and groups demonstrates that its support for a carbon tax has always been a sham. This became more apparent than ever when then-ExxonMobil lobbyist Keith McCoy conceded in a secretly recorded video in May that the company voiced support for such a tax only because it assumed it would never happen.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) pressed Woods about his company’s professed preference for a carbon tax, which the company first announced in 2009 to derail a cap-and-trade bill then moving through Congress. Referencing the fact that ExxonMobil’s website states that the company’s lobbying efforts are aligned with its publicly available positions “without exception,” Davis schooled Woods about just how seldom the company’s lobbyists broached the topic of carbon pricing on Capitol Hill since 2011. Only 12 of 344 ExxonMobil lobbyist reports involving tax legislation or policy, he said, cited carbon fee-related bills.

Rep. Danny Davis: Oil execs fake support for a carbon tax.

“Mr. Woods, your company’s lack of action on an issue it says it supports sends a rather interesting signal,” Davis concluded. “And this goes for all the organizations represented here today. Over the last decade, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, API and their outside lobbyists filed nearly 6,000 lobbying reports. The [Oversight] committee identified only 34 times that these companies and API reported lobbying on any of the bills that address carbon pricing. Meanwhile, they lobbied 77 times just on President Trump’s tax cuts.”

My own, more cursory investigation of ExxonMobil’s lobbying reports found that its inhouse lobbyists have not mentioned the topic of carbon pricing at all on Capitol Hill since 2018.

Human activity caused the climate crisis

Did the oil execs hire the same crisis management consultant? It certainly seemed that way, given they all used virtually the same wording to downplay the central role human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels—has played in triggering climate change, implying there are other, more significant causes.

“At Chevron, we’ve been very clear about where we stand,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth told the committee. “We accept the scientific consensus. Climate change is real. And the use of fossil fuels contributes to it.”

API CEO Mike Sommers also acknowledged that “climate change is real,” but would not attribute it directly to fossil fuels. “Industrial activity,” he said, “contributes to it.”

A few minutes later, Suzanne Clark, the US Chamber of Commerce’s president and CEO, chimed in. “The Chamber’s position is clear,” she said. “The climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes.”

ExxonMobil CEO Woods’ statement was even more contorted. “… We know the combustion of oil and gas releases greenhouse gases,” he said, “and that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that increased greenhouse gases can contribute to the effects of climate change.”

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth: Oil “contributes” to climate change.

Perhaps Wirth, Sommers, Clark and Woods were all on vacation in August. That’s when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued itsSixth Assessment Report, in which, for the first time, the IPCC concluded that human activities are unequivocally responsible for the climate crisis. Of those activities, burning fossil fuels is the primary culprit, not some sort of minor contributor.

The dramatic increase in average global temperature is “predominantly determined by CO2,” the IPPC report stated, and “[f]ossil fuel combustion for energy, industry and land transportation are the largest contributing sectors [to carbon dioxide emissions] on a 100-year time scale.” Between 2010 and 2019 alone, the report found that “average annual anthropogenic [human-caused] CO2 emissions reached the highest levels in human history,” and the combustion of fossil fuels produced 72 to 100 percent of them.

The four oil companies represented at the hearing have played an outsized role. A 2019 analysis by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute identified 20 state- and investor-owned fossil fuel companies that accounted for 35 percent of worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 1965 and 2017. Of the eight investor-owned corporations on the list,Chevron was the biggest emitter, followed closely by ExxonMobil, BP and Shell. Together they were responsible for more than 10 percent of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.

ExxonMobil has routinely contradicted climate science

In his written testimony and repeatedly throughout the hearing, ExxonMobil CEO Woods insisted that his company’s public statements about climate change have always been “consistent with the views of the broader, mainstream scientific community.”

According to two analyses of the company’s climate change communications by Harvard University professor Naomi Oreskes and research fellow Geoffrey Supran, however, Exxon, Mobil and the merged corporation, ExxonMobil, issued at least 45 newspaper advertisements and other public statements between 1996 and 2017 that openly contradicted mainstream climate science.

Regardless, Woods stuck to his talking point. For example, Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Woods about a public statement then-Exxon CEO Lee Raymond made in 1996 in which he said, “Currently the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate.” She wanted to know if that statement was consistent with the views of Exxon’s own scientists, who had warned top company officials as early as 1977 about the threat burning fossil fuels posed to the climate.

“Our understanding of the science,” Woods responded, “has been aligned with the consensus of the scientific community as far back as 20 years ago when you referenced our chairman at that time’s comments….”

In fact, the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report, published in 1995—a year before Raymond made that statement—concluded that global temperatures were rising and carbon emissions from human activity were most certainly the main cause.

Oil companies spend chump change on climate solutions

Oil companies like to crow about how much money they are spending to solve the climate crisis.

In ExxonMobil CEO Woods’ written testimony, he asserted that “ExxonMobil already has invested significantly in the next generation of lower-emission fuels and fuel technologies…,” and the company’s website boasts that it has spent more than $10 billion on researching, developing and deploying lower-emissions energy solutions since 2000.

That seems like a lot of money, but Kathy Mulvey, director of the UCS climate accountability campaign, put that $10 billion in context in a recent column. “That figure may sound impressive,” she explained, “until you compare it with the more than $500 billion the company spent on oil and gas exploration and infrastructure over the same period—50 times as much.”

In perhaps the most entertaining interrogation of the day, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) nailed Shell President Gretchen Watkins on the same contradiction. Holding up a glass jar of M&Ms, each representing about $50 million in spending, Porter pointed out that Shell’s 2020 annual report stated that the company planned to spend between $16 billion and $17 billion in 2021 on oil, gas and chemical operations and another $3 billion on marketing. She then asked Watkins how much the company planned to spend on renewable energy.

“This year we will be spending between two and three billion,” Watkins replied.

“Two to three billion on renewables and energy solutions,” said Porter. “In your testimony, you said, quote, ‘Meeting the demand for reliable energy while simultaneously addressing climate change is a huge undertaking and one of the defining challenges of our time.’ Shell has made these promises before. Shell pledged to spend six billion between 2017 and 2020 on renewable energy. How much of that did Shell actually spend? The answer is about half.

Rep. Katie Porter: Shell spends bubkes on renewable energy.

“Ms. Watkins, does this look like a huge undertaking to you?” Porter asked as she held up the glass jar with a few M&Ms at the bottom.

“Ms. Watkins, to me this does not look like an adequate response to one of the defining challenges of our time,” Porter continued. “This is greenwashing. Shell is trying to fool people into thinking that it is addressing the climate crisis when what it is actually doing is to continue to put money into fossil fuels.”

Roll out the subpoenas

Oversight Committee Chair Maloney was clearly not satisfied with the responses the committee got over the course of the day.

“Today’s witnesses refused to take responsibility for Big Oil’s decades-long disinformation campaign and even after agreeing that we are, in fact, in quote code red unquote crisis, they refused to stop funding groups like the American Petroleum Institute that are still blocking reforms like expanding the use of electric vehicles,” she said during her closing remarks. “So I see no choice but to continue our committee’s investigation until we see the truth.”

The committee had asked the oil companies and trade groups to provide documents detailing their payments to think tanks, public relations firms and others, as well as documents pertaining to internal deliberations over corporate climate policy strategies. Instead, Maloney said, the committee received photocopies of website pages, press clippings, annual reports and other publicly available materials.

Maloney announced that the committee would subpoena the oil companies and trade groups for key documents. “I have tried very hard to obtain this information voluntarily,” she explained. “But the oil companies employed the same tactics they used for decades on climate policy—delay and obstruction. Well that ends today…. We need to get to the bottom of the oil industry’s disinformation campaign, and with these subpoenas we will.” On November 2, she issued the subpoenas, giving the companies and trade associations until November 16 to respond.

According to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), chair of the Oversight Committee’s environment subcommittee, the climate disinformation investigation could take another six months and the committee may ask the CEOs to testify again. “This hearing is just the start of our investigation,” he said. “These companies must be held accountable.”

Posted in: Climate Change, Energy

Tags: Chevron, climate disinformation, climate-change, ExxonMobil, oil and gas industry

aha note phased fallback

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/congress-fails-to-pin-down-oil-company-execs-on-their-bad-faith-arguments/

no lnx

OIL SLICKS —

Congress fails to pin down oil company execs on their bad-faith arguments

Spin, lobbying, and obfuscation still rule the day.

JOHN TIMMER - 10/29/2021,

At some point, this must stop. A recent congressional hearing left us no closer to figuring out when that point will be reached.

Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform held hearings on the role of oil companies in fostering our present climate crisis. The companies led by these executives have a long history of playing down the risks of climate change, leading a number of House Democrats to suggest that this hearing could be the equivalent of the 1994 hearings with tobacco executives, in which the executives denied well-established scientific data on the addictiveness of nicotine.

But that expectation was doomed to disappointment. Oil companies, after all, had already demonstrated that they are happy to accept the science of climate change when under oath; they just tend to spin the details of their own role in influencing public perceptions of that science. Congress was treated to a repeat performance of that sort that neatly avoided the kind of catastrophic failure in public perception that the tobacco company executives produced.

However, the hearing did manage to highlight the gap between what many companies are saying now and the reality of what society has determined it needs to accomplish. What follows is less a recap of the testimony and more of an analysis of how the companies' spin brought them to their current circumstances—and where they'll go from here.

Why we’re here

It's now well-established that Exxon employed scientists who looked into the issue of climate change decades ago and came to the same conclusions as mainstream science did. But even as that information percolated internally, the company's executives were casting doubt on those findings.

This is where their paths diverged from those of tobacco executives. Over time, the rhetoric of oil companies shifted so that they no longer directly contested the science. Instead, Exxon provided funding to organizations that attack climate science, such as the Heartland Institute. Others funded the organization in a more roundabout way, through contributions to the American Petroleum Institute (API), which then provided funding to Heartland. Obviously, the API did many other things on behalf of oil companies, providing a useful layer of abstraction between the companies and climate change denialism.

That funding ended up serving two purposes. First, it continued the circulation of unjustified uncertainties regarding the strength of the scientific evidence, and company executives could reference that uncertainty in statements. Second, it allowed the executives to publicly acknowledge some aspects of climate science while remaining assured that the lobbying the companies had funded would continue to prevent any concrete action based on that science.

Thursday's hearings saw these factors come out in both dramatic and subtle ways. Exxon's CEO, Darren Woods, was challenged on a statement by a former company CEO who assigned climate science an uncertainty his own scientists said it lacked. But Woods denied any contradiction because he was able to point to a different part of the same statement in which the CEO said that we should probably do something about climate change.

All the executives were careful to note that they accepted that humanity "contributes" to climate change. Given that recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have concluded that essentially all the warming in the past century is due to human activities, this is a subtle way to undercut scientific conclusions while appearing to sound reasonable. Unfortunately, nobody called the executives on the tactic. But Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney did note the companies' past funding of climate change denialism and asked the executives to pledge that they would not do it again in the future. A grand total of zero executives were willing to make that pledge.

By contrast, all of them happily pledged to keep producing energy when prompted by a Republican committee member.

The awkward present

The promise to keep producing fossil fuels nicely illustrates the difficult set of circumstances that the oil companies' past stalling has left them and the public in. To an extent, we're all now the victims of their past successes.

The inaction the oil companies helped promote has ensured that we're now decades behind on reducing our carbon emissions. As a result, achieving international goals on emissions means that some of the known oil reserves that form the foundation for the companies' value will actually have to stay in the ground. Put differently, if we want to keep warming below 2° C, some of the oil companies' assets will end up being worthless, and they'll need to start reducing production tomorrow.

The companies are only now starting to take halting steps to acknowledge that fact. Shell intends to stop searching for new deposits in 2025. It is investing in renewables, and it plans to lower its production—but at a pace that's not fast enough to meet goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.Only BP plans to reduce production at a pace that is consistent with Paris; Exxon has no plans for reducing production, and Chevron actually plans to increase it.

The excuse offered again and again during the hearing was that the demand for fossil fuels remains high. But that is also the product of the delay fostered by the companies' spin and lobbying. Alternative technologies like renewable energy and electric vehicles have only now reached the maturity needed to provide viable alternatives, leaving us with a huge installed base of internal combustion vehicles and natural gas-powered heaters that need to be fueled.

The situation leaves us with two potential paths. One is that we allow demand to drop slowly and miss our climate goals. The other potential path is to push the transition to fossil fuel alternatives, which will likely lead to energy disruptions due to the rushed nature necessitated by our past delay.

The potential for disruptions was a theme the Republicans at the hearing returned to repeatedly, pointing to a recent rise in gasoline prices and worries of natural gas shortages if the winter turns out to be cold. The tactic felt like an attempt to ignore an actual crisis—the one with our climate—and manufacture a new one that requires a "solution" that would make the actual one worse. (Naturally, the same people hyping a hypothetical fossil fuel supply crisis complained that climate advocates are bad because they scare people with their warming scenarios.)

A future of contradictions and bad faith

The futility of the hearing was probably best illustrated by the presence of the American Petroleum Institute, an organization representing a market that, if everything goes according to plan, will shrink to an afterthought over the next few decades. What exactly is the institute supposed to say?

For the oil companies, the hearing was mostly an exercise in misdirection. They'd point to a few renewable energy projects they are involved in, only to have committee members point out that renewables represent just a tiny fraction of the company's total outlays. They'd hype their plans for reducing the emissions produced by their operations, which committee members noted conveniently ignored the fact that those plans ignored all the emissions that would result from the products of said operations.

All of the executives were on record as supporting the Paris Agreement, but committee members had dug into their companies' lobbying histories and found one mention of Paris compared to hundreds of instances where they lobbied over tax policy. Exxon's CEO repeatedly brought up carbon capture technology, even though it has not been demonstrated at any sort of scale.

Republicans made it clear that they were there to help with the obfuscation, repeatedly bringing up the fact that fracking had allowed the US to drop emissions by moving away from coal and raising the specter of a return to coal if US energy policy gets in the way of continuing the expansion of natural gas.

The reality, of course, is that investing in further natural gas capacity and generation now means we could be in the same place with a different fuel in a few decades. Natural gas is far better than coal, but it still produces greenhouse emissions that we'll need to eliminate. The more we invest in it now, the harder it will be to move on in the future.

So maybe it was wrong to think of the tobacco hearings as the preview for Thursday's grilling of oil executives. Instead, it's probably best to think of this meeting as a preview for the sorts of hearings we can expect to see with the natural gas industry a few decades down the line.

JOHN TIMMER

John became Ars Technica's science editor in 2007 after spending 15 years doing biology research at places like Berkeley and Cornell.

EMAIL jtimmer@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @j_timmer

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/28/exxon-ceo-accused-lying-climate-science-congressional-panel

2x?

no lnx

exxon CEO accused of lying about climate science to congressional panel

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney likens oil company bosses’ responses to those of tobacco industry at historic hearing

Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation, denied that there was an inconsistency between what the company told the public and what Exxon scientists had privately warned.

Chris McGreal

Thu 28 Oct 2021

The chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to Congress on Thursday after he denied that the company covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.

For the first time, Woods and the heads of three other major petroleum companies were questioned under oath at a congressional hearing into the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating. When pressed to make specific pledges or to stop lobbying against climate initiatives, all four executives declined.

Manchin, a centrist Democrat, has objected to key provisions of a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill that would slash planet-heating emissions.

Joe Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coal

The chair of the House oversight committee, Representative Carolyn Maloney, pressed Woods about statements by his predecessor, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, who in the 1990s said the scientific evidence for climate change was “inconclusive” and that “the case for global warming is far from air tight”. In 2002, Exxon ran advertisements in the New York Times calling climate science “unsettled”.

Malone put it to Woods that Exxon’s own scientists had repeatedly warned the company about the threat from burning fossil fuels as far back as the 1970s.

“There is a clear conflict between what Exxon CEO told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately for years,” she said.

Woods denied that Raymond or Exxon misled anyone.

“I do not agree that there was an inconsistency,” he said.

Maloney said the response reminded her of “another hearing that we had with the tobacco industry”.

“They said they did not believe that nicotine was addictive. Well, it came out that they lied. Tobacco nicotine was very addictive. And now I’m hearing from you that the science that was reported publicly, where your executives were denying climate change, we know that your scientists internally were saying that it’s a reality,” she said.

“So I was hoping that you would not be like the tobacco industry was and lie about this.”

The heads of the American operations of the other oil companies – Shell, Chevron and BP – also denied they misrepresented climate science or deceived the public.

They each said that they recognised global heating was a reality and a major challenge. But the executives did not accept that their companies had failed to take it seriously or that they were undermining attempts to cut greenhouse gases by funding trade groups pouring millions of dollars into lobbying Congress against tighter environmental laws.

“We accept the scientific consensus,” said Michael Wirth, the CEO of Chevron. “Climate change is real. Any suggestion that Chevron is engaged in disinformation and to mislead the public on these complex issues is simply wrong.”

But Maloney accused the oil companies of continuing the cover-up, including by hiding documents. She said she would take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to force the firms to reveal what they knew.

“We need to get to the bottom of the oil industry’s disinformation campaign and with these subpoenas we will,” she said.

The oil and gas industry, which spent about $100m on political lobbying last year, was strongly backed by a number of Republicans on the committee who sought to distract by denouncing Joe Biden’s energy policies.

Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight committee, speaks at a hearing on the role of fossil fuel companies in climate change.

Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight committee, speaks at a hearing on the role of fossil fuel companies in climate change. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Republicans called their own witness, Neal Crabtree, who said he lost his job as a welder within three hours of Biden being sworn in as president because the Keystone pipeline was cancelled. Crabtree was used to portray Biden as colluding with China and Russia against America’s oil industry.

The highest-ranking Republican on the committee, Representative James Comer, questioned the legitimacy of the investigation. He said the committee would be better off spending its time investigating the White House’s handling of inflation, illegal immigration and the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a hearing meant to focus on climate misinformation, several Republican members openly questioned the urgency of the climate crisis. Representative Clay Higgins called the hearing “a threat from within” because the American way of life was built on oil.

Another Republican member said Maloney owed the oil executives an apology for intruding on their right to free speech by pressing them to make a commitment that their firms will “no longer spend any money, either directly or indirectly, to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change”.

None of the executives would make a direct commitment.

Maloney showed the hearing a video secretly recorded by Greenpeace earlier this year of an Exxon lobbyist describing the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.

“How did Exxon respond?” asked Maloney. “Did they come clean about this shocking conduct? No. Mr Woods called Mr McCoy’s comments inaccurate and then they fired him. And they are obviously lying like the tobacco executives were.”

While the oil executives largely maintained a united front, Representative Ro Khanna, a leading critic of the petroleum industry on the committee, drew out testimony that showed the European companies, Shell and BP, were working to cut production while the US firms, Exxon and Chevron, intended to increase drilling in the coming years.

Wirth said that that Chevron would raise oil production while cutting carbon emissions.

The hearing also questioned the leaders of two powerful lobby groups accused of acting as front organisations for big oil, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Khanna noted that API was heavily funded by oil company money as it resisted the expansion of infrastructure for electric vehicles and opposed a methane fee backed by Biden, including flooding Facebook with advertisements in recent months.

Khanna challenged each of the oil executives in turn to resign from API over its position on electric vehicles or to tell it to stop its opposition to a methane fee. All of them declined to do so.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-27/op-ed-big-oil-congress-hearings

LAT no lnx

OPINION

Op-Ed: Will Congress expose Big Oil like it did Big Tobacco in the ’90s?

BY PATTI LYNN AND GEOFFREY SUPRAN

OCT. 27, 2021

On Thursday, executives from six major oil and gas corporations and trade associations — collectively dubbed the “Slippery Six” by advocates — will testify to Congress about their decades of climate denial and propaganda. The House Oversight Committee’s hearing, led by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), will consider testimony from leaders at ExxonMobil Corp, BP America, Chevron Corp. and Shell Oil, alongside the presidents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute.

The outcome will be one indication of whether the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying-fueled stranglehold on science-based decision-making can be loosened in time to meaningfully confront the climate crisis. Twenty-seven years ago, similar hearings featuring tobacco industry executives led to litigation by 52 U.S. states and territories and industry restitution to the public. The stakes this time are at least as high: trillions of dollars in predicted loss and destruction from climate change. Big Oil is due its Big Tobacco moment.

FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021 file photo, emissions rise from the smokestacks at the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant as the suns sets, near Emmett, Kansas, United States. The world needs to more than halve production of coal, oil and gas in the coming decade to maintain a chance of keeping global warming from reaching dangerous levels, according to a U.N.-backed study released Wednesday. The report published by the U.N. Environment Program found that while governments have made ambitious pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions, they are still planning to extract double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030?than what would be consistent with?the 2015 Paris climate accord’s goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

WORLD & NATION

Despite climate pledges, countries are upping fossil fuel production plans, study says

Oct. 20, 2021

In 1994, tobacco executives stood before Congress and lied about the addictiveness of their products. The hearings had a ripple effect. As the tobacco industry’s history of deceit and harmful products was laid bare, its public credibility crumbled. Further legal action against tobacco companies ensued, most notably the Master Settlement Agreement four years later, which required the industry to pay out a minimum of $206 billion over the next 25 years. Laws were passed to curb youth addiction, and smoking rates fell.

Though insufficient to redress the lives lost, livelihoods ruined and staggering healthcare costs of tobacco, especially among low-income communities and communities of color, the agreement set a precedent for Congress to investigate an industry network that has misled the public and policymakers in an effort to deny the dangers of its products and derail regulation. The MSA required corporations to absorb some of their “externalized costs” for society, and complementary litigation yielded millions of damning internal documents.

This week lawmakers have a similar opportunity to accelerate corporate accountability, legal scrutiny and political progress — this time on the climate crisis. Over the past seven years, journalists and scholars (including one of us) have uncovered overwhelming evidence that ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, the American Petroleum Institute, the coal industry and other groups invested in fossil fuels have known for decades that their products could cause dangerous global warming.Yet, rather than warning the public or taking action, they waged disinformation and lobbying campaigns in efforts to mislead the public and undermine climate policies. From strategy to networks to personnel and rhetoric, these efforts to deny and delay come straight from Big Tobacco’s playbook.

In fact, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, the District of Columbia, New York City and over 20 other cities and counties have already sued ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel corporations for fraud, damages or denial.Advocates around the world are also pursuing legislative and regulatory action beyond the courtroom, such as establishing ecocide as an international crime.

In some cases, attribution science, which can assess the impact of global warming on extreme weather and trace emissions and climate damages to corporations, is making it easier to quantify the economic damages owed. In recent decades, nearly two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 40% of temperature rise and more than 25% of sea level rise trace back to 90 major industrial carbon producers.

FILE - In this May 1, 2009 file photo, a crew member arrives by boat at th offshore oil drilling platform "Gail", operated by Venoco, Inc., off the coast near Santa Barbara, Calif. Leaders in the California Senate say they are introducing legislation to thwart President Donald Trump's attempts to expand offshore drilling through an executive order he signed Friday, April 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

[OPINION

Op-Ed: How Congress could curtail the Big Oil gravy train

Sept. 22, 2021]

The oil executives will likely do everything in their power to deflect attention away from this record. But members of Congress should force the CEOs to make a choice: Admit to their companies’ lies and risk further exposing themselves to legal scrutiny, or lie about past lies on climate science — a path in line with Big Tobacco’s undoing.

Historical parallels to tobacco industry tactics suggest that fossil fuel bosses may try to avoid getting caught in their own web of denial by calling climate change a “risk,” rather than what it is: real and human-caused. Tobacco historian Robert Proctor calls this hedging strategy “a kind of legal having-it-both-ways: an admission strong enough to ward off accusations of having failed to warn, yet weak enough to exculpate from charges of having marketed a deadly product.”

Expect also to see the Slippery Six shifting blame away from themselves and onto consumers by presenting the fossil fuel industry as an innocent supplier simply satisfying customer demand, and by positioning oil and gas companies as trustworthy innovators to be relied upon to invent silver bullet techno-fixes for this crisis. Front and center will be companies’ “net zero” pledges, which are inconsistent with the Paris agreement’s goal of holding global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, and which rely on economically unproven negative emissions technologies and offset schemes.

These messages of individualized responsibility and fossil fuels as the solution yield a “fossil fuel savior” framing of the climate crisis — again reflecting the playbook of Big Tobacco, which blames customers for choosing to smoke.

Lawmakers must see through Big Oil’s smoke and mirrors. As many politicians work tirelessly to build back greener and more equitably, let Thursday be the moment when they begin to take on the fossil fuel forces standing in the way.

Patti Lynn is executive director of Corporate Accountability, a nonprofit. Geoffrey Supran is a research fellow in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and director of climate accountability communication for the Climate Social Science Network.

https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2021-09-16.CBM%20Khanna%20to%20Woods-ExxonMobil%20re%20Disinformation%20FINAL%20PDF%20v2.pdf

September 16, 2021

Mr. Darren Woods

Chief Executive Officer

ExxonMobil Corporation

5959 Las Colinas Boulevard

Irving, TX 75039

Dear Mr. Woods:

We are writing to request information and documents regarding the reported role of

ExxonMobil in a long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role

of fossil fuels in causing global warming, and to request your appearance at a Committee hearing

on Thursday, October 28, 2021.

We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for

decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing

taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world. We are also concerned that to

protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation

to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.

Just four fossil fuel companies—BP, Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil—reported nearly

$2 trillion in profits between 1990 and 2019.1

During this same period, the global climate crisis

became increasingly dire, and its deadly impact on Americans increased. The world experienced

19 of the warmest years on record between 2000 and 2020.

In each of the last six years, the

United States has faced more than ten weather and climate disasters—including storms,

wildfires, and heat waves—costing over $1 billion each. There were 22 reported billion-dollar

climate disasters across the country in 2020.3

Public reporting indicates that ExxonMobil and its allies in the fossil fuel industry have

worked to prevent serious action on global warming by generating doubt about the documented

1 Revealed: Big Oil's Profits Since 1990 Total Nearly $2tn, The Guardian (Feb. 12, 2020) (online at

www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/12/revealed-big-oil-profits-since-1990-total-nearly-2tn-bp-shell-chevronexxon).

2 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Global Temperature (online at

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/) (accessed on July 20, 2021).

3 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters:

Overview (online at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/) (accessed on July 23, 2021).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 2

dangers of fossil fuels and misrepresenting the scale of your efforts to develop alternative energy

technologies—some of the same tactics the tobacco industry used to resist regulation while

selling products that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.4

Fossil Fuel Industry Spread Disinformation About Climate Science for Decades

Fossil fuel companies have been aware of the science of climate change for decades. In

1977, an ExxonMobil scientist warned the company’s management about the connection

between fossil fuel emissions and the “general scientific agreement that the most likely manner

in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the

burning of fossil fuels.”5

From 1979 to 1983, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and its oil

company members, including the companies that are now operating as or owned by ExxonMobil,

Shell, and Chevron, participated in a task force that shared climate science research and

discussed possible ways to reduce emissions.6

In 1988, Dr. James Hansen, then the director of the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration’s Institute for Space Studies, testified before Congress that “it was 99 percent

certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon

dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere” and that the global warming effect was

already “starting to cause changes in climate and weather.” Dr. Hansen emphasized, “It is time

to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is

here.”7

In response to these developments, fossil fuel industry actors reportedly sought to

counteract prevailing scientific knowledge. A 1998 memorandum developed with input from

representatives of Chevron, ExxonMobil, API, and other industry-funded front groups detailed

plans for a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting the media, the public, and

policymakers. In discussing actions around climate policy, the [GLOBAAL ACTION PLAN SMOKING GUN] memorandum declared, “victory

4 Big Oil Is the New Big Tobacco. Congress Must Use Its Power to Investigate, The Guardian (Jan. 20,

2020) (online at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/big-oil-congress-climate-change); Doubt Over

Climate Science Is a Product With an Industry Behind It, The Guardian (Mar. 5, 2015) (online at

www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/mar/05/doubt-over-climate-science-is-a-product-with-anindustry-behind-it); Union of Concerned Scientists, The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry

Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation (July 2015) (online at

www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-Dossiers.pdf).

5 Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago, Inside Climate

News (Sept. 16, 2015) (online at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmedfossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/).

6 Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too, Inside Climate News (Dec.

22, 2015) (online at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122015/exxon-mobil-oil-industry-peers-knew-aboutclimate-change-dangers-1970s-american-petroleum-institute-api-shell-chevron-texaco/).

7 Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate, New York Times (June 24, 1988) (online at

www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 3

will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science”

and when “recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’”8

Reports indicate that fossil fuel companies continued their climate “counter movement”

by contributing millions of dollars to academic and policy groups to influence third-party

promotion of climate misinformation.9

Throughout the 1990s, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and

Shell all joined API and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in one such trade group, the Global

Climate Coalition (GCC), which lobbied the U.S. government in an effort to derail international

action to reduce carbon pollution emissions. The successful campaign led to the United States

leaving the Kyoto climate agreement in 2001. Documents prepared for then-Under Secretary of

State Paula Dobriansky’s 2001 meeting with the GCC stated, “POTUS rejected Kyoto, in part,

based on input from you.”10

One study found that between 2003 and 2010, 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations

that downplayed global warming were heavily funded by ExxonMobil, Koch Industries,

Donors Trust, and other industry groups.

11 These organizations held out the appearance of

neutrality, while reportedly working to “identify, recruit, and train” scientists to publish research

aligned with industry, lobbying public officials to oppose efforts to address climate change, and

harassing scientists.

They pressed journalists to give media coverage to industry-backed

researchers, giving the misleading appearance of a division of opinion among climate

scientists.13

Fossil fuel industry actors reportedly paid over $1.2 million to Dr. Willie Soon, an

aerospace engineer with no climate science training. According to media reports, Dr. Soon

described his climate-science-denying papers and testimony before Congress as “deliverables” to

8 American Petroleum Institute, et al., Global Climate Science Communications Plan 1998 (Dec. 2015)

(online at https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Global-Climate-Science-CommunicationsPlan-1998.pdf). When questioned by the New York Times, “[i]ndustry representatives confirmed that the

documents were authentic.” Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate Treaty, New York Times (Apr. 26, 1998)

(online at www.nytimes.com/1998/04/26/us/industrial-group-plans-to-battle-climate-treaty.html).

9 How the Oil Industry Made Us Doubt Climate Change, BBC News (Sept. 20, 2020) (online at

www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382).

10 Some Like It Hot, Mother Jones (May/June 2005) (online at

www.motherjones.com/environment/2005/05/some-it-hot/); Revealed: How Oil Giant Influenced Bush, Guardian

(June 8, 2005) (online at www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/08/usnews.climatechange).

11 Robert J. Brulle, Institutionalizing Delay: Foundation Funding and the Creation of U.S. Climate Change

Counter-Movement Organizations, Climatic Change (Feb. 2014) (online at

www.researchgate.net/publication/263114280_Institutionalizing_Delay_Foundation_Funding_and_the_Creation_of

_US_Climate_Change_Counter-Movement_Organizations).

12 Union of Concerned Scientists, The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos

Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation (June 29, 2015) (online at

www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-Dossiers.pdf).

13 Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth

on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change (2011); Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the

Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2017).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 4

his corporate donors.14 Fossil fuel interests amplified his studies in media stories, publications,

and talking points.15

Fossil fuel companies also publicly spread doubt themselves. For example, then-Chief

Executive Officer of ExxonMobil Corporation, Lee Raymond, said in 1997, “Currently, the

scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect

on the global climate.”16

The Disinformation Campaign Continues Today

We are concerned that these strategies of obfuscation and distraction continue today.

Reporting indicates that, facing weak market performance and investor pressure, some large

fossil fuel companies have taken public stances in support of action on global warming while

continuing efforts in private to block meaningful solutions and legislation.

17 ExxonMobil and

Chevron publicly supported the Paris Agreement,

18 and BP and Shell have made “net-zero”

pledges for their direct emissions.

19 At the same time, fossil fuel companies continue to invest

overwhelmingly in fossil fuel extraction and to support efforts to extend the life of their

investments in fossil fuel, all while lobbying against reforms that would curb global warming.

In 2018, the fossil fuel industry supported efforts to roll back vehicle emission standards enacted

14 Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher, New York Times (Feb. 21, 2015)

(online at www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-HockSoon.html).

15 How Big Oil Lost Control of Its Misinformation Machine, Inside Climate News (Dec. 22, 2017) (online

at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122017/big-oil-heartland-climate-science-misinformation-campaign-kochapi-trump-infographic/); Researcher Helps Sow Climate-Change Doubt: Industry-Funded Cambridge

Astrophysicist Adds to Partisan Divide, Boston Globe (Nov. 5, 2013) (online at

https://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/11/05/harvard-smithsonian-global-warming-skeptic-helps-feed-strategydoubt-gridlock-congress/uHssYO1anoWSiLw0v1YcUJ/story.html); Union of Concerned Scientists, Smoke, Mirrors

& Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science (Jan.

2007) (online at www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/exxon_report.pdf).

16 Exxon Sowed Doubt About Climate Science for Decades by Stressing Uncertainty, Inside Climate News

(Oct. 22, 2015) (online at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-ClimateScience-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty).

17 Revealed: ExxonMobil’s Lobbying War on Climate Change Legislation, Channel 4 News (June 30,

2021) (online at www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation).

18 Chevron, Chevron Supports Well-Designed Climate Policy (online at

www.chevron.com/sustainability/environment/climate-policy) (accessed on Aug. 19, 2021); Energy Factor by

ExxonMobil, Reaffirming Our Commitment to the Paris Agreement (Jan. 20, 2021) (online at

https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/insights/partners/commitment-paris-agreement/).

19 Shell Sets Emission Ambition of Net Zero by 2050, with Customer Help, Reuters (Apr. 16, 2020) (online

at www.reuters.com/article/us-shell-emissions/shell-sets-emission-ambition-of-net-zero-by-2050-with-customerhelp-idUSKCN21Y0MW); BP’s New CEO Pledges Net Zero Emissions By 2050, CNN (Feb. 12, 2020) (online at

www.cnn.com/2020/02/12/business/bp-net-zero/index.html).

20 How the Oil Industry Has Spent Billions to Control the Climate Change Conversation, The Guardian

(Jan. 8, 2020) (online at www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/08/oil-companies-climate-crisis-pr-spending);

How a Powerful US Lobby Group Helps Big Oil to Block Climate Action, The Guardian (July 19, 2021) (online at

www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/19/big-oil-climate-crisis-lobby-group-api).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 5

by the Obama Administration.21

More recently, the industry has challenged the transition toward

electric vehiclesby opposing the installation of vehicle charging stations.22

Between 2015 and 2018, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies reportedly

spent $1 billion to promote climate disinformation through “branding and lobbying.”23

According to court filings by advocacy organizations, Chevron paid for advertising that

celebrates the company’s investments in renewable energy but spent only 0.2% of its annual

capital expenditure budget on lower-carbon energy resources.GREENWASH]

ExxonMobil has publicized its

investments in algae biodiesel research, even though most scientists agree that algae biodiesel is

not likely commercially viable.

In reality, ExxonMobil spent more money over the past ten

years on advertising than on algae research.26

Although ExxonMobil holds itself out as a climate champion, it has quietly proceeded

with investments in oil and gas.27 Between 2010 and 2018, ExxonMobil allocated a mere 0.22%

of its capital expenditures to clean energy.28

In 2018, you presented a plan to investors in which,

by 2025, ExxonMobil would increase its oil production by one million barrels per day.29 While

ExxonMobil touted its small investment in green energy, internal documents from 2018 show

21 The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules, New York Times (Dec.

13, 2018) (online at www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html); Trump

Finalizes Rollback of Obama-era Vehicle Fuel Efficiency Standards, Reuters (Mar. 31, 2020) (online at

www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-emissions/trump-finalizes-rollback-of-obama-era-vehicle-fuel-efficiencystandards-idUSKBN21I25S).

22 The Oil Industry vs. the Electric Car, Politico (Sept. 16, 2019) (online at

www.politico.com/story/2019/09/16/oil-industry-electric-car1729429?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202019-09-

16%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:23009%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive).

23 InfluenceMap, Big Oil’s Real Agenda on Climate Change (Mar. 2019) (online at

https://influencemap.org/report/How-Big-Oil-Continues-to-Oppose-the-Paris-Agreement38212275958aa21196dae3b76220bddc).

24 Fossil Fuel Firms Face New Challenge over “Greenwashing” Ads, Reuters (June 22, 2021) (online at

www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fossilfuel-climate-change-adverti/fossil-fuel-firms-face-new-challenge-overgreenwashing-ads-idUSKCN2DZ00B).

25 Exxon's Climate Fix Is Algae. Experts Say It Won't Work, E&E News (Nov. 2, 2020) (online at

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/1063717527).

26 Exxon's Climate Fix Is Algae. Experts Say It Won't Work, E&E News (Nov. 2, 2020) (online at

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/1063717527).

27 U.S. and European Oil Giants Go Different Ways on Climate Change, New York Times (Sept. 21, 2020)

(online at www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/business/energy-environment/oil-climate-change-us-europe.html).

28 Oil Firm Bosses’ Pay ‘Incentivises Them to Undermine Climate Action,’ The Guardian (Apr. 15, 2021)

(online at www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/15/oil-firm-ceos-pay-is-an-incentive-to-resist-climateaction-study-finds).

29 Exxon’s Internal Plans Reveal Rising CO2 Emissions, Scientific American (Oct. 7, 2020) (online at

www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxons-internal-plans-reveal-rising-co2-emissions/).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 6

that ExxonMobil “forecast that annual emissions from its operations would increase from 122

million metric tons in 2017 to 143 million metric tons in 2025.”30

Fossil fuel companies increasingly outsource lobbying to trade groups, obscuring their

own roles in disinformation efforts. Recently, an ExxonMobil lobbyist was caught on video

discussing the tactics employed by ExxonMobil to obstruct climate change legislation, including

using API and other industry groups as the “whipping boy” to advocate for policy positions that

ExxonMobil did not want to be associated with publicly. During the interview, the lobbyist said,

“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes.” He added, “Did we join some of

these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true.”31 He also

detailed ExxonMobil’s lobbying efforts to include natural gas as a clean energy source in the

event that Congress adopts a Clean Energy Standard, despite clear scientific evidence that natural

gas is a major driver of climate change. 32

Requests for Information

As worsening natural disasters linked to global warming devastate communities in the

United States and globally, one of Congress’s top legislative priorities is combating the

increasingly urgent crisis of a changing climate. To do this, Congress must address pollution

caused by the fossil fuel industry and curb troubling business practices that lead to

disinformation on these issues. In March 2021, the White House proposed an investment of

close to $2 trillion this decade through President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, with more than

half of the investments potentially used to address the climate crisis.33

Congress is contemplating wide-ranging climate-change legislation in connection with the President’s plan

and beyond it.

To inform these efforts, our Committee is investigating the role of the fossil fuel industry

and related entities in the unfolding crisis. In particular, we are seeking to understand

ExxonMobil’s role in contributing to climate change and ExxonMobil’s role in supporting

disinformation or misleading the public to prevent action to address this global crisis.

30 Id.

31 Revealed: ExxonMobil’s Lobbying War on Climate Change Legislation, Channel 4 News (June 30,

2021) (online at www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation).

32 ExxonMobil Lobbyist Reveals Company’s Involvement with “Forever Chemicals”, Channel 4 News (July

1, 2021) (online at www.channel4.com/news/exxonmobil-lobbyist-reveals-companys-involvement-with-foreverchemicals); Explainer: Cleaner but Not Clean—Why Scientists Say Natural Gas Won’t Avert Climate Disaster,

Reuters (Aug. 18, 2020) (online at www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-gas-climatebox-explainer/explainer-cleaner-butnot-clean-why-scientists-say-natural-gas-wont-avert-climate-disaster-idUSKCN25E1DR).

33 The White House, Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Plan (May 4, 2021) (online at

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/); Center for

Strategic and International Studies, The American Jobs Plan Gets Serious About Infrastructure and Climate Change

(Apr. 2, 2021) (online at www.csis.org/analysis/american-jobs-plan-gets-serious-about-infrastructure-and-climatechange).

Mr. Darren Woods

Page 7

In order to assist the Committee with this investigation, please produce the following

documents and information by September 30, 2021. Unless otherwise specified, the applicable

time period covered by these requests is from November 30, 2015, to the present:

All documents and communications sent, received, or created by key ExxonMobil

leaders and executives, including the chief executive officer, members of the

board, and the senior executives in charge of federal governmental affairs, U.S.

public affairs, marketing and advertising, and public relations, relating to the

following topics:

a. climate science, climate policy, or climate change;

b. clean energy;

c. the role of ExxonMobil, oil and gas companies, or the fossil fuel industry

in causing, mitigating, or responding to climate change;

d. marketing, advertising, social media, or lobbying activities tending to

influence public opinion on the issues described in Request 1(a)–(c),

including communications with public relations firms or social media

companies;

e. communications with the federal government, including the White House

and Congress, relating to any of the issues described in Request 1(a)–(c);

and

f. The impacts climate change or climate policy could have on ExxonMobil,

including impacts on facilities, operations, revenues, profits, net worth, or

financial interests;

Documents sufficient to show the total amount and itemization of any direct or

indirect funding provided by ExxonMobil to any employees, contractors, or

entities, including funding that is subsequently distributed to other entities,

relating to any of the issues described in Request 1(a)–(d), and, for any such

funding provided by the company, documents sufficient to show:

a. what activity was funded; and

b. any results achieved;

All internal and external policy memos, data, talking points, communications,

leave-behind materials, and other documents that ExxonMobil provided to

Members of Congress, their staff members, or executive branch officials related

to climate policy and legislation;

[Page 8]

Documents relating to ExxonMobil’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,

including:

a. any feasibility, cost, financial, impact, or other analysis of the plan;

b. any documents or communications related to the implementation of the

plan; and

c. any documents or communications discussing questions or concerns about

the plan or any draft of the plan, including about its feasibility, cost,

financing, or implementation; and

A listing and description of any projects or actions undertaken by ExxonMobil to

protect company facilities or operations from the impacts of climate change,

including the dates the projects or actions were undertaken and the amounts

expended on the projects or actions.

In addition, please confirm by September 23, 2021, that you will appear at the

Committee’s hearing on October 28, 2021.

The enclosed Witness Instruction Sheet provides information for witnesses appearing

before the Committee. Please note the procedures for submitting written testimony at least two

business days prior to the hearing.

The Committee on Oversight and Reform is the principal oversight committee of the

House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under

House Rule X. An attachment to this letter provides additional instructions for responding to the

Committee’s request. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact

Environment Subcommittee staff at (202) 225-5051.

Sincerely,

__ __

Carolyn B. Maloney Ro Khanna

Chairwoman Chairman

Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Environment

Enclosure

cc: The Honorable James Comer, Ranking Member

Committee on Oversight and Reform

The Honorable Ralph Norman, Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Environment

Responding to Oversight Committee Document Requests

In complying with this request, produce all responsive documents that are in your

possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents,

employees, and representatives acting on your behalf. Produce all documents that you

have a legal right to obtain, that you have a right to copy, or to which you have access, as

well as documents that you have placed in the temporary possession, custody, or control

of any third party.

Requested documents, and all documents reasonably related to the requested documents,

should not be destroyed, altered, removed, transferred, or otherwise made inaccessible to

the Committee.

In the event that any entity, organization, or individual denoted in this request is or has

been known by any name other than that herein denoted, the request shall be read also to

include that alternative identification.

The Committee’s preference is to receive documents in electronic form (i.e., CD,

memory stick, thumb drive, or secure file transfer) in lieu of paper productions.

Documents produced in electronic format should be organized, identified, and indexed

electronically.

Electronic document productions should be prepared according to the following

standards:

a. The production should consist of single page Tagged Image File (“TIF”), files

accompanied by a Concordance-format load file, an Opticon reference file, and a

file defining the fields and character lengths of the load file.

b. Document numbers in the load file should match document Bates numbers and

TIF file names.

c. If the production is completed through a series of multiple partial productions,

field names and file order in all load files should match.

d. All electronic documents produced to the Committee should include the following

fields of metadata specific to each document, and no modifications should be

made to the original metadata:

BEGDOC, ENDDOC, TEXT, BEGATTACH, ENDATTACH, PAGECOUNT,

CUSTODIAN, RECORDTYPE, DATE, TIME, SENTDATE, SENTTIME,

BEGINDATE, BEGINTIME, ENDDATE, ENDTIME, AUTHOR, FROM, CC,

TO, BCC, SUBJECT, TITLE, FILENAME, FILEEXT, FILESIZE,

DATECREATED, TIMECREATED, DATELASTMOD, TIMELASTMOD,

INTMSGID, INTMSGHEADER, NATIVELINK, INTFILPATH, EXCEPTION,

BEGATTACH.

Documents produced to the Committee should include an index describing the contents

of the production. To the extent more than one CD, hard drive, memory stick, thumb

drive, zip file, box, or folder is produced, each should contain an index describing its

contents.

Documents produced in response to this request shall be produced together with copies of

file labels, dividers, or identifying markers with which they were associated when the

request was served.

When you produce documents, you should identify the paragraph(s) or request(s) in the

Committee’s letter to which the documents respond.

The fact that any other person or entity also possesses non-identical or identical copies of

the same documents shall not be a basis to withhold any information.

The pendency of or potential for litigation shall not be a basis to withhold any

information.

In accordance with 5 U.S.C.§ 552(d), the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and any

statutory exemptions to FOIA shall not be a basis for withholding any information.

Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)(9), the Privacy Act shall not be a basis for withholding

information.

If compliance with the request cannot be made in full by the specified return date,

compliance shall be made to the extent possible by that date. An explanation of why full

compliance is not possible shall be provided along with any partial production.

In the event that a document is withheld on the basis of privilege, provide a privilege log

containing the following information concerning any such document: (a) every privilege

asserted; (b) the type of document; (c) the general subject matter; (d) the date, author,

addressee, and any other recipient(s); (e) the relationship of the author and addressee to

each other; and (f) the basis for the privilege(s) asserted.

If any document responsive to this request was, but no longer is, in your possession,

custody, or control, identify the document (by date, author, subject, and recipients), and

explain the circumstances under which the document ceased to be in your possession,

custody, or control.

If a date or other descriptive detail set forth in this request referring to a document is

inaccurate, but the actual date or other descriptive detail is known to you or is otherwise

apparent from the context of the request, produce all documents that would be responsive

as if the date or other descriptive detail were correct.

This request is continuing in nature and applies to any newly-discovered information.

Any record, document, compilation of data, or information not produced because it has

not been located or discovered by the return date shall be produced immediately upon

subsequent location or discovery.

All documents shall be Bates-stamped sequentially and produced sequentially.

Two sets of each production shall be delivered, one set to the Majority Staff and one set

to the Minority Staff. When documents are produced to the Committee, production sets

shall be delivered to the Majority Staff in Room 2157 of the Rayburn House Office

Building and the Minority Staff in Room 2105 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Upon completion of the production, submit a written certification, signed by you or your

counsel, stating that: (1) a diligent search has been completed of all documents in your

possession, custody, or control that reasonably could contain responsive documents; and

(2) all documents located during the search that are responsive have been produced to the

Committee.

Definitions

The term “document” means any written, recorded, or graphic matter of any nature

whatsoever, regardless of how recorded, and whether original or copy, including, but not

limited to, the following: memoranda, reports, expense reports, books, manuals,

instructions, financial reports, data, working papers, records, notes, letters, notices,

confirmations, telegrams, receipts, appraisals, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers,

prospectuses, communications, electronic mail (email), contracts, cables, notations of any

type of conversation, telephone call, meeting or other inter-office or intra-office

communication, bulletins, printed matter, computer printouts, teletypes, invoices,

transcripts, diaries, analyses, returns, summaries, minutes, bills, accounts, estimates,

projections, comparisons, messages, correspondence, press releases, circulars, financial

statements, reviews, opinions, offers, studies and investigations, questionnaires and

surveys, and work sheets (and all drafts, preliminary versions, alterations, modifications,

revisions, changes, and amendments of any of the foregoing, as well as any attachments

or appendices thereto), and graphic or oral records or representations of any kind

(including without limitation, photographs, charts, graphs, microfiche, microfilm,

videotape, recordings and motion pictures), and electronic, mechanical, and electric

records or representations of any kind (including, without limitation, tapes, cassettes,

disks, and recordings) and other written, printed, typed, or other graphic or recorded

matter of any kind or nature, however produced or reproduced, and whether preserved in

writing, film, tape, disk, videotape, or otherwise. A document bearing any notation not a

part of the original text is to be considered a separate document. A draft or non-identical

copy is a separate document within the meaning of this term.

The term “communication” means each manner or means of disclosure or exchange of

information, regardless of means utilized, whether oral, electronic, by document or

otherwise, and whether in a meeting, by telephone, facsimile, mail, releases, electronic

message including email (desktop or mobile device), text message, instant message,

MMS or SMS message, message application, or otherwise.

The terms “and” and “or” shall be construed broadly and either conjunctively or

disjunctively to bring within the scope of this request any information that might

otherwise be construed to be outside its scope. The singular includes plural number, and

vice versa. The masculine includes the feminine and neutral genders.

The term “including” shall be construed broadly to mean “including, but not limited to.”

The term “Company” means the named legal entity as well as any units, firms,

partnerships, associations, corporations, limited liability companies, trusts, subsidiaries,

affiliates, divisions, departments, branches, joint ventures, proprietorships, syndicates, or

other legal, business or government entities over which the named legal entity exercises

control or in which the named entity has any ownership whatsoever.

The term “identify,” when used in a question about individuals, means to provide the

following information: (a) the individual’s complete name and title; (b) the

individual’s business or personal address and phone number; and (c) any and all

known aliases.

The term “related to” or “referring or relating to,” with respect to any given subject,

means anything that constitutes, contains, embodies, reflects, identifies, states, refers to,

deals with, or is pertinent to that subject in any manner whatsoever.

The term “employee” means any past or present agent, borrowed employee, casual

employee, consultant, contractor, de facto employee, detailee, fellow, independent

contractor, intern, joint adventurer, loaned employee, officer, part-time employee,

permanent employee, provisional employee, special government employee,

subcontractor, or any other type of service provider.

The term “individual” means all natural persons and all persons or entities acting on

their behalf.

Committee on Oversight & Reform

Witness Instruction Sheet

Witnesses should provide their testimony, biography, and "Truth in Testimony"

disclosure and certification form via email to Oversight_Clerks@mail.house.gov

no later than 10:00 a.m. two business days . prior to the hearing.

Witnesses should also provide a short biographical summary and include it with

the electronic copy of testimony provided to the Clerk.

At the hearing, each witness will be asked to summarize his or her written

testimony in five minutes or less in order to maximize the time available for

discussion and questions. Written testimony will be entered into the hearing

record and may extend to any reasonable length.

Written testimony will be made publicly available and will be posted on the

Committee’s website and the U.S. House of Representatives Document

Repository. It is therefore recommended that personally identifiable information,

such as addresses and phone numbers, not be included in the biographical

information.

The Committee does not provide financial reimbursement for witness travel or

accommodations. Witnesses with extenuating circumstances, however, may

submit a written request for such reimbursements to Robin Butler, Financial

Administrator, 2157 Rayburn House Office Building, at least one week prior to

the hearing. Reimbursements will not be made without prior approval.

Witnesses with disabilities should contact Committee staff to arrange any

necessary accommodations.

Please note that Committee Rule 16(b) requires counsel representing an

individual or entity before the Committee or any of its subcommittees, whether

in connection with a request, subpoena, or testimony, promptly submit a notice

of appearance to the Committee. If this applies to you, please email the address

above to acquire this form.

For inquiries regarding these rules and procedures, please contact the Committee on

Oversight and Reform at (202) 225-5051.