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“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers, including the Global Climate Coalition, Partnership for a Better Energy Future, Coalition for American Jobs, Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, and Alliance for Climate Strategies.

note 34 partially funded

willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years” (:{PDF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:),Climate Research, Vol. 23 (January 21, 2003), P. 89-110. Archived August 11, 2015.

API’s PAC is the smallest player of the three analyzed here (though to be fair, it’s not a multibillion-dollar company), spending $133,500 on House members who backed decertifying the election.

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/08/oil-companies-climate-crisis-pr-spending

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How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation

‘From my perspective every indication of this evidence is once that closet door gets blown open, the skeletons are going to come tumbling out,’ said Geoffrey Supran.

Activists say Democratic climate proposals won’t be able to pass until lawmakers put a stop to oil companies trying to rebrand themselves

Emily Holden in Washington

Wed 8 Jan 2020

America’s oil companies are trying to rebrand themselves as part of the solution to the climate crisis, launching a campaign to counter top Democrats’ proposals to rapidly cut pollution from the power plants and cars that run on the industry’s petroleum and natural gas.

They say natural gas – a fossil fuel that emits heat-trapping carbon dioxide – is helping to slow climate disruption by providing an alternative to coal.

How vested interests tried to turn the world against climate science

Read more]

“We’re taking our message of energy progress to every corner of the country to show just what’s at stake in Washington and in state capitols around the country,” said Mike Sommers, CEO of the oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute (API), on a press call announcing the plan.

The campaign is part of a strategy in which the oil industry has funneled billions of dollars into its defense, threatening to outpace climate action advocates, say frustrated environmental activists who are increasingly calling on Democrats in Congress to take a tougher line on the sector.

But Sommers depicted a dark future if a presidential candidate who wants to ban fracking for natural gas wins the 2020 election: millions of jobs lost, hundreds of billions of dollars more for household energy costs and a global recession.

However, opponents of the industry say the only path to significant US climate action is through legislation and that lawmakers won’t be able to legislate unless they reveal how the industry has controlled the public dialogue around climate change and put a stop to its misdeeds.

Geoffrey Supran, a research associate who studies global warming politics at Harvard University, is urging House committees to demand more information from oil companies about their influence over public policy.Supran said obtaining corporate documents is “one of the most important actions Congress could take to address the climate crisis”.

“The reality is that as much as we know about fossil fuel interests’ denial and delay, we’ve really found those skeletons in the closet just by looking through a tiny keyhole – everything we know is based on just a few hundred documents scrounged from various sources,” Supran said. “From my perspective every indication of this evidence is once that closet door gets blown open, the skeletons are going to come tumbling out.”

Walking through Washington’s national airport this holiday season, travelers saw a type of advertisement that is becoming more mainstream – it pops up on social media, in commercial breaks for streaming video services, in newspapers and on the radio.A friendly-looking older woman in a hard hat beams at the camera. “Thanks to natural gas, the US is leading the way in reducing emissions,” the sign reads.

The ad campaign, called We’re On It, is sponsored by API – which represents the oil companies that have contributed significantly to the climate crisis.

While it’s true that US climate pollution is declining in large part because of the switch from coal to natural gas, scientists say far more drastic action is needed to slow climate change. And forecasts show natural gas threatening continued progress.

As the American public has become more aware of the climate crisis, oil companies have fought back.

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Over roughly the last three decades, five major US oil companies have spent a total of at least $3.6bn on advertisements – not counting their investments in public relations programs like sponsored beach clean-ups, or their influence through trade associations, dark money groups and campaign donations.

Activists gather with signs outside the American Petroleum Institute during the global climate action week in Washington DC, on 23 September 2019.]

Advertising spending has increased as politicians have paid more attention to climate change and API’s campaign comes as progressive candidates bidding for the White House, such as the US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, propose to ban fracking – a drilling method that has unlocked huge supplies of natural gas and driven down the cost of the fuel.

Any renewed investigation from Congress could reveal more about how the industry has tried to sway public opinion.

Investigative reporting has already shown that Exxon has known since at least the 1960s that its products were causing global warming. But Exxon has fought back, saying it is the victim of “a coordinated campaign perpetuated by activist groups with the aim of stigmatizing ExxonMobil”.

Exxon touts itself instead as an answer to the climate crisis. The top advertisement on Exxon’s YouTube page touts research on making biofuels from algae in order to cut climate pollution, but the technique is currently prohibitively expensive, and the research represents a tiny portion of Exxon’s budget.

In response to questions from the Guardian, an Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said Exxon is “committed to doing our part”.

“The world faces a dual challenge: meeting growing demand for energy while also reducing environmental impacts, including the risks of climate change,” Norton said.

Norton maintains that “all forms of energy are needed”, including natural gas and renewables, although scientists have concluded humans will have to stop using fossil fuels entirely to stem the crisis.

In the call with reporters, API’s CEO took a similar stance. He acknowledged the industry has a responsibility to help slow emissions that are causing rising temperatures, but he said the demand for affordable energy is growing and American fossil fuel companies will meet it.

Pressed to commit to any significant goal to curb emissions, Sommers said API could back some bipartisan legislation to incentivize technology that would capture carbon dioxide so that it cannot enter the atmosphere.[big pilot subsidized clean coal boondoggle just concert to anga]

“That’s legislation that’s supported by far-right Republicans and far-left Democrats, but it’s some place in the middle where we think we can meet and we can work together on this key priority,” Sommers said.

Critics of the oil industry say the Democrat-led House should be aggressive in seeking to counter the industry’s narrative. Some want Democrats to call executives into hearings and subpoena internal records about their influence campaigns – one of the most powerful tools available to Congress.

But that hasn’t happened. Instead of going directly for the oil companies, House committees have instead been holding dozens of hearings and introducing legislation about ways to cut pollution and help people affected by the climate crisis.

“Our oversight staff decided that OK, rather than kind of punching an industry that’s already pretty down in the public image, there are plenty of other things they also needed and wanted to pursue, so subpoenaing big oil just didn’t really rise to the top of the heap,” the staffer said.

Supran, who works with Harvard climate politics expert Naomi Oreskes, says they have a collection of information that could help Democrats determine which questions to ask and which documents to demand.

“Historical record points to a number of individuals, documents, and questions that could help Congress get to the bottom of how the fossil fuel regime misled America,” Supran said.

The other route – which Democrats are already pursuing – is state lawsuits against companies. But those challenges could take much longer and aren’t guaranteed to succeed.

Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of environmental sociology at Brown University who co-authored the research tallying oil spending on ads, said the findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Brulle has previously found that more than $2bn was spent lobbying Congress on climate legislation between 2000 and 2016.

He says lawmakers should investigate the oil industry the way the former congressman Henry Waxman took on tobacco companies in the 1990s.

“I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did. It’s an order of magnitude larger,” Brulle said.

Some accuse Democrats of fearing a backlash from the oil industry – which still donates to Democratic campaigns. They say moderate Democrats might be trying to stay civil with major companies because it will be easier to pass climate legislation with their support.

But it’s hard to imagine the industry backing substantial action that would limit oil production and use – which scientists say is required to avoid catastrophe.

I think what we’ll find is that the fossil fuel campaigns are going to dwarf what the tobacco industry did

Robert Brulle

So far, congressional efforts have only scratched the surface of the sector’s influence. In October, the oversight committee reviewed evidence of how much Exxon has known about the climate crisis and for how long. The Democrat-only climate committee in the Senate also held a hearing on dark money and climate change. The Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse urged his colleagues in the House to use their majority to get tougher with oil companies – subpoenaing their records if necessary.

“When we catch the fossil fuel industry spending money in these campaigns, we’re only seeing a sliver of the total operation,” Whitehouse said in a more recent interview with the Guardian. “I think it’s hard to counter their message effectively because remember – they have a $600bn annual subsidy that they’re defending, according to the [International Monetary Fund].

“The idea that some other entity, particularly some struggling charitable organization, is going to be able to go toe-to-toe in spending and outspend them is not really feasible.”

Despite fossil fuel companies massive spending, they have continued to lose public support. Elected officials just haven’t followed the shift.

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A majority – 60% of Americans – want to “dramatically reduce” fossil fuel use in 10 or 20 years, according to Gallup. And between 2013 and 2019, the percentage of people who wanted to emphasize oil production has dropped from 46% to 28%.

“If you take climate change seriously, then you have to think about what your path is to getting a serious climate bill,” Whitehouse said. “And the path to a serious climate bill requires disabling the fossil fuel industry’s obstruction apparatus that has been the thing that has prevented that from happening.”

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Oil company records from 1960s reveal patents to reduce CO2 emissions in cars

ExxonMobil and others pursued research into technologies, yet blocked government efforts to fight climate change for more than 50 years, findings show

Exxon Mobil

The patent records were among a new trove of documents published by the Center for International Environmental Law, and deepen the public relations challenge for Exxon.

Suzanne Goldenberg

@suzyji

Fri 20May 2016

The forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 – even as the oil industry lobby tried to squash government funding for such research, according to a trove of newly discovered records.

Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s – including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla.

Scientists for the companies patented technologies to strip carbon dioxide out of exhaust pipes, and improve engine efficiency, as well as fuel cells. They also conducted research into countering the rise in carbon dioxide emissions – including manipulating the weather.

Esso, one of the precursors of ExxonMobil, obtained at least three fuel cell patents in the 1960s and another for a low-polluting vehicle in 1970, according to the records. Other oil companies such as Phillips and Shell also patented technologies for more efficient uses of fuel.

However, the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil lobby, opposed government funding of research into electric cars and low emissions vehicles, telling Congress in 1967: “We take exception to the basic assumption that clean air can be achieved only by finding an alternative to the internal combustion engine.”

This 1970 patent, assigned to Esso (now ExxonMobil), is a design for a low-polluting engine system.]

And ExxonMobil funded a disinformation campaigned aimed at discrediting scientists and blocking government efforts to fight climate change for more than 50 years, before

The patent records were among a new trove of documents published on Thursday by the Center for International Environmental Law, and deepen the legal and public relations challenge for Exxon.

“What we saw was an array of patent technologies that demonstrated that these companies had the technologies they needed and could have commercialised to help address the problem of C02 pollution,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Ciel. “They then turned to Congress and said you don’t need to invest in electrical vehicle research because the research is ongoing and it’s robust.”

The findings echo those in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which explored the deliberate destruction of GM’s first electric vehicles.

Alan Jeffers, an Exxon spokesman, insisted he could not comment directly on the documents as he was unable to access the Center for International Environmental law website on which they were published on Thursday morning.

In an emailed statement, Jeffers said: “The Guardian gave us only a few hours to comment on documents from four decades ago.”

Jeffers went on: “This further illustrates the Guardian’s well-established bias on climate change issues which has been demonstrated previously through its keep it in the ground campaign.”

He said the company believed the risks of climate change were real, was researching lower emission technologies, and engaged in “constructive dialogue” with policy makers about energy and climate change.

Researchers discovered more than 20 such patents filed by oil companies from as early as the 1940s for technologies that could help in the development of electric cars.

However, Ron Dunlop, president of Sun Oil and API chairman, told a joint hearing of the commerce committee in 1967 that government funding of research into electric cars would be misplaced– because the oil companies were so advanced in their research of cleaner cars. “We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass produced and marketed, it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint,” he told Congress. “Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.”

Muffett said the findings were the result of three years of research and were not exhaustive.[npi]

“The question is what did they do to try to commercialise these technologies, knowing what they did about climate change,” he went on.

The revelations, the second set of documents released by Muffett’s organisation, reinforce charges by campaigners that Exxon was well aware that the burning of fossil fuels was a main driver of climate change – despite its public posture of doubt.

In addition to the technologies with potential for electric cars, Exxon and other oil companies were actively researching methods to cut emissions of carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas.

In another historic document that surfaced last month, a Canadian subsidiary of Exxon admitted the company had the technology to cut carbon emissions in half. However, the corporate memo dating from 1977 said it would be prohibitively expensive – doubling the cost of electricity generation, according to the documents obtained by Desmog blog.

New York and 17 other attorneys general, including DC and the US Virgin Islands, are investigating whether the oil company lied to investors and the public about the threat of climate change.

Campaigners plan to further turn up the heat on the company next week when Exxon holds itsannual shareholder meeting in Dallas.

Campaigners have argued for more than a decade that Exxon bankrolled a network of front groups and conservative think tanks aimed at discrediting well-established science – confusing the public and delaying governments efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for warming.

Those efforts to put Exxon on the spot gathered pace after Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times reported that the company’s own scientists knew as early as the 1970s that greenhouse gases caused climate change.

Tell the truth, ExxonMobil: a low-carbon future is affordable – and necessary

Read more]

The attorney general of the US Virgin Islands has subpoenaed Exxon to turn over email, documents and statements over the last decades.

Exxon has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated.

However, the company has reversed its opposition to fuel cell technology. Earlier this month, the company announced it had been conducting a joint research effort on fuel cell power plants with FuelCell.[results?]

The initiative, which got underway in 2011, aims to route the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning power plants into fuel cells, producing low emissions electricity. The company has estimated it can cut 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.

“At ExxonMobil, we share the view that the risks of climate change are serious and warrant thoughtful action,” Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s chief executive, told the US Energy Association after receiving its annual award.

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https://www.desmog.com/2021/09/14/oil-industry-api-lobbying-against-proposed-methane-fee/

Oil Industry Wages Major Lobbying Campaign to Kill Proposed Methane Fee

After expressing support for carbon pricing earlier this year, the American Petroleum Institute and other oil lobby groups are pressuring Congress to not put a tax on methane. Critics see yet another cynical attempt to block climate action.

By Nick Cunningham on Sep 14, 2021

no lnx, anno lost see methane 2

the oil industry has launched an all-out pressure campaign to kill an attempt by Congressional Democrats to tax methane – an extremely powerful greenhouse gas – for the first time.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group, enlisted over 130 state-level chambers of commerce, oil lobbying outfits, and labor groups, and together they wrote a letter on September 7 to U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is considering the methane fee as part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill.

This is despite top oil companies and their trade associations earlier this year claiming they were in favor of carbon pricing as their preferred policy choice to address climate change.

In the same month as the industry made headlines for supporting carbon pricing, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced a bill in March 2021, the Methane Emissions Reduction Act of 2021, which would impose a $1,800 per ton fee on methane emissions beginning in 2023, and rise by 2 percent per year above inflation going forward.

The senators saw the bill as having the potential to end methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, taking a large bite out of potential warming.

That bill, or some version of it, now has a chance of getting folded into the budget package that Congressional Democrats are currently writing. The House Energy and Commerce Committee included a lower fee in its portion of the package working its way through the House.

With details still murky and Congress working at a blistering pace to put the sweeping budget bill into place, things could still change. But over the next few weeks or months, a methane fee has a real chance of being signed into law by the President.

Faced with the reality of a price being put on methane, the oil industry has begun mobilizing to attack the idea, claiming that regulation is preferred instead. The about-face is consistent with longstanding efforts by the fossil fuel industry to oppose environmental regulations and derail any action on climate change.

“[T]he industry has a long history of opposing whatever’s on the table by saying it supports something else (e.g., it wants cap and trade when a carbon tax is on the table, and it wants a carbon tax when cap and trade is on the table),” said Ben Franta, a JD/PhD candidate at Stanford University’s Law School and Department of History who studies the history of climate denial.

“The end result,” he told DeSmog via email, “is nothing getting passed.”

Congress Eyes Methane Fee

Methane is over 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas when released into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Due to this shorter lifespan compared to CO2, it is seen as a low-hanging fruit for climate action. Scientists say urgent and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to slow the rate of global warming, and slashing methane offers one of the most immediate and impactful ways of achieving this.

The oil and gas industry is one of the largest emitters of methane, which leaks at every stage of the production and distribution process. Methane seeps out from drilling sites, pipelines, compressor stations, storage tanks, and liquefied natural gas terminals. The problem is also not geographically isolated, but is common across the entire global oil and gas industry.

Cutting methane could have an enormous impact. Eliminating 50 percent of methane from oil and gas operations could achieve the equivalent climate benefit of shuttering all of the coal plants in China, according to environmental group Clean Air Task Force.

“Putting a price on methane pollution that discourages oil and gas companies from continuing their practice of virtually unfettered methane pollution is one of the most effective immediate steps we can take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Senator Whitehouse said in a statement in March. “We believe our new bill would put a stop to virtually all methane emissions from the industry.”

But the oil industry is scrambling to prevent such a scenario from playing out.

Oil Industry’s Lobbying Frenzy

In its letter last week to the Senate committee weighing a methane fee as part of the budget bill, API called the proposal a “punitive fee” that could “jeopardize affordable and reliable energy with likely little reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

But research suggests the penalty may not be steep enough.

“We’re effectively subsidizing fossil fuels relative to renewables by picking up the tab for the climate change they cause, for the air pollution they cause, and so on,” Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth Science at Duke University, and contributor to the UN’s Global Methane Assessment, told DeSmog in an email. He said each ton of methane causes roughly $4,300 in damages.

“So that’s the subsidy that fossil fuel companies (and other methane sources) currently are receiving,” he said.

On the same day that the API sent its letter, the American Gas Association (AGA), a lobby group for gas utilities, wrote a separate letter to the House and Senate leadership from both parties in opposition to the methane fee. AGA said it would be a “regressive tax on low-income” families, a line of argument that has been a particular favorite of the industry in recent years.

API’s new interest in regulating methane is “akin to more smoke and mirrors than a genuine change of policy position.”

Oil Change International

It isn’t just the major D.C.-based national oil lobby groups, however, that have launched a media campaign on this issue. Many state-level equivalents fanned out across the country, writing op-eds in local newspapers and pressing their congressional delegations to kill the methane fee. The arguments are often mirror images of each other.

In the Kansas City Star, the Kansas Oil Independent Oil & Gas Association made the case that a methane fee is “duplicative, punitive, and costly,” echoing API’s talking points. It was also unnecessary, the Kansas lobby group said, because reducing methane is already “a top priority for the oil and gas industry.”

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a lobby group for Appalachian gas drillers, said the fee is an “unreasonable, punitive tax.”

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) has been leaning on lawmakers from both parties, decrying provisions in the budget bill that would “decimate” the oil and gas industry, referring to the potential removal of subsidies and the methane fee.

The Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia sent a letter in early September to Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and other members of the state’s congressional delegation, arguing the methane tax would “raise costs for all Americans … and provide virtually no environment benefit.”

Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined in on the action, writing a letter to Democratic leadership on the same day as API launched its effort. Sen. Cramer urged Democrats “to resist the insatiable demands from the environmental left and do what is right for all Americans by opposing a new fee on methane emissions from oil and natural gas facilities.”

He called the tax “punitive” and “unnecessary,” echoing industry talking points. “One would be hard-pressed to find an oil and gas company not committed to reducing methane emissions,” he said.

Various oil lobbies, including IPAA and the American Exploration & Production Council, a lobbying outfit for large U.S. oil drillers, were quick to promote Sen. Cramer’s letter on Twitter. Notably, during his last election cycle in 2018, Sen. Cramer received more than $540,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry; the sector represented his largest source of fundraising.

While some are focused on the Senate, other opponents of the methane tax are trying to block action on the other side of the Capitol. “I actually believe our best chance to stop these tax hikes is not in the Senate, they’re in the House. Speaker Pelosi has a razor thin majority,” Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said on Energy Policy Watch, an industry-friendly podcast put on by Hart Energy, an oil industry research firm, and Cornerstone Government Affairs, a D.C.-based lobbying firm.

“I think we can alter what those significant tax hikes look like if we engage now over the next several weeks in the House,” he said. He called on the oil and gas industry to apply pressure to the dozen or so House Democrats who were waffling on the budget bill.

Meanwhile, Energy Citizens, a front group created by API, has been running ads on Facebook targeting Democrats seen as vulnerable in the 2022 midterm elections, according to E&E News.

API launched a seven-figure campaign — both TV and online ads — aimed at killing the methane fee.

Oil Lobby’s Shifting Positions

Revelations of Exxon’s lobbying strategy as exposed in June by Unearthed and Channel 4 news has obvious echoes to the oil industry’s current predicament.

Keith McCoy, ExxonMobil’s lobbyist who was caught on tape, said the company publicly professes support for a carbon tax because it knows one will never occur. “Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that, but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” he said.

API, it appears, is taking a similar approach.

“Thanks to the ExxonMobil lobbyist caught on tape, it’s confirmed that Big Oil opposes behind closed doors the climate policies they publicly support,” Lauren Pagel, national methane co-chair at Earthworks, told DeSmog in an email. “What’s different here is that new methane rules definitely will happen, and oil companies think they’ll have a better chance to weaken them if they publicly support them.”

“API claims to support carbon pricing, and methane pricing is simply a subset of carbon pricing,” Senator Whitehouse said in a statement to DeSmog. API said in March 2021 that they support carbon pricing. “API’s ever-shifting and contradictory positioning on methane pollution is a clear indication that the industry is desperate to escape any accountability for the massive damage it’s knowingly doing to our planet.”

Instead of a fee, the oil industry says it prefers federal regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “If the objective is to reduce methane emissions, direct regulation of methane is the best method to implement such a government policy,” API said in its September 7 letter.

In fact, the EPA does plan on announcing new federal regulations on methane, on both new and existing oil and gas sites. On September 8, over 70 community, health, tribal and environmental organizations sent a letter to the EPA, urging the agency to craft strong rules.

But critics see hypocrisy and opportunism in API’s new position, which is nothing more than the latest tactic in a long history of blocking climate legislation.

An April 2021 report from Oil Change International looked at API’s newfound interest in regulation, and identified the countless times that API in fact opposed methane regulation over the past decade.

The oil lobby “has apparently abandoned more than a decade of opposition to the regulation of the climate super-pollutant methane, to suddenly being all about it,” the report said, adding that the new position in favor of regulation is “akin to more smoke and mirrors than a genuine change of policy position.”

Over the past decade API consistently stated that methane regulation by the federal government was not needed because companies were already capturing methane, they had every incentive to capture it, they were implementing innovative technologies, and any regulation would be costly. In any case, the industry argued, methane emissions from drillers were already declining.

Many if not all of those assertions were misleading at best, if not outright untrue. Studies show that methane emissions have soared and are growing at an alarming rate, and that the oil and gas industry is one of the largest sources. Methane emissions in the Permian basin, for example, are back to pre-pandemic levels.

Studies also show that the industry could eliminate as much as 75 percent of its methane emissions using technologies that already exist, and two-thirds of that could be done at no additional cost.

But much of the industry hasn’t been taking the steps needed to cut emissions – such as detecting and plugging leaks, and conducting regular upkeep to ensure equipment operates properly – because there is little scrutiny or regulatory requirements to do so. Oil companies face virtually no penalty for letting methane leak into the atmosphere.

“You can’t both claim that you’re going to take care of the problem but that you don’t need anyone to kind of force your hand on it,” said Shannon Heyck-Williams, senior director for climate and energy policy at the National Wildlife Federation, referring to the oil industry’s shifting positions on methane. “It’s just not going to work to say that any longer given the stage of the climate crisis we’re in.”

In 2016, API sued EPA to block methane regulations being implemented under President Obama, which would have only impacted new facilities, not existing ones. Shortly after, however, President Trump was in office, and API urged him to roll back these rules.

In August 2020, the Trump administration finalized the rollback of the Obama-era regulations on methane, leaving in place little oversight for methane pollution. Even some in the oil industry were uneasy about unfettered methane pollution – BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil opposed the rollback. But API supported the move.

In the early days of the Biden administration, API changed course, and voiced support for regulation, which appeared to be a sea change. But as Oil Change International notes, API offered no specifics, no stated targets, instead simply issuing statements of support for “cost-effective” regulation.

According to Franta’s research, the API’s climate denial dates back to at least 1980. He said that when API says it supports regulation, “that could mean anything.”

Federal regulations also take time to craft and implement, and are subject to litigation. Even if they are finalized, they can be rolled back by the next administration. If a methane fee becomes law as part of the budget bill currently under consideration, on the other hand, it will become much harder to undo — rather than being able to use an executive order, a separate law would have to be passed by Congress to remove the tax.

API did not respond to a list of questions from DeSmog. When DeSmog requested access to a press call API hosted on methane on September 9, API did not respond. The Marcellus Shale Coalition and the Independent Petroleum Association of America did not respond to questions.

Senator Whitehouse, one of the methane tax’s main proponents, denounced the oil lobby group. “API has zero credibility on this issue. While it now claims to support methane regulations, it opposed them during the Trump years,” he said. “It’s obvious that API’s newfound support for regulations is just a smokescreen to try and tank a pricing regime where companies would face a price if they continued to pollute.”

ENERGYPOLITICS AND POLICY

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

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-oil-and-gas-companies-suing-to-pollute-without-limits/

no lnx

...

The member companies of the 24 trade associations listed in the sidebar are responsible

for much of the pollution that makes the oil and gas sector the largest industrial source

of methane emissions in the United States. (see Text Box)

CAP reviewed these trade associations’ membership lists—when available—and

cross-referenced the member companies with those that reported methane emissions to the

Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, or GHGRP, in 2014 and 2015. When the full

membership list was not publicly available, the authors used other lists, such as lists of

companies serving on the associations’ boards of directors. (see the Methodology

section for a complete discussion of the sources used)

Through its review, CAP found that:

■ At least 104 oil and gas production companies reported methane pollution in

2014 or 2015 and are members of these trade associations—and are therefore

affiliated with the lawsuits to block the EPA and BLM oil and gas methane

standards. This number is likely an underestimate, since not every trade

association makes its full membership list public.

■ These 104 companies emitted 38.6 million metric tons of methane, measured

in carbon dioxide equivalent, in 2014 and 38.1 million metric tons in 2015. The

2015 emissions are equivalent to the emissions generated from running more than

11 coal-fired power plants for a year or the emissions from burning 20 million tons

of coal. The United States could power 4 million homes for a year with the

methane that these companies wasted in 2015

CAP’s findings underestimate the total amount of methane pollution from the

companies affiliated with the lawsuits for two key reasons. First, the trade associations

that are fighting to block the rules represent some companies that may not report their

emissions to the GHGRP, which only requires companies to report if they release

25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent methane in any given year. Second,

more than half of the litigating trade associations do not make their full membership

lists publicly available. (see Methodology)

Table 1 shows 2014 and 2015 emissions of the oil and gas companies that are confirmed

members in at least one of the trade associations currently challenging the EPA’s

methane rule. Many companies are members of more than one trade association.

...

Profiles of key trade associations involved in the

EPA litigation

Twenty-four oil and gas associations are suing the EPA over the methane

standards for new oil and gas operations. Four of the largest associations are

profiled below.

American Exploration & Production Council

The American Exploration & Production Council is a national trade

association that represents 32 of the biggest independent oil and gas

producers in the country. Of those producers, three companies—Exxon

Mobil Corp., Chesapeake Energy Corp., and EOG Resources Inc.—are among

the top four biggest methane emitters in 2015.

Independent Petroleum Association of America

The Independent Petroleum Association of America, or IPAA, is one of the

largest oil and gas trade associations in the country, representing thousands

of companies in the industry. Six of the top 10 biggest methane-polluting

companies are represented on the IPAA’s board of directors. IPAA also is

suing to block the BLM methane waste prevention rule.

American Petroleum Institute

The American Petroleum Institute, or API, is a trade association that

represents more than 625 oil- and gas-related companies, ranging from

multimillion dollar corporations to independently owned producers to

refiners and pipeline operators. All of the top 10 methane-emitting

companies in 2015 are members of API.

Western Energy Alliance

The Western Energy Alliance, or WEA, represents more than 300 oil and gas

companies engaged in exploration and production in the American West.

Several of the top methane emitters—including Anadarko Petroleum Corp.,

Devon Energy Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., and EOG Resources Inc.—are

members of the WEA’s board of directors. WEA also is suing to block the

BLM methane waste prevention rule.

Conclusion

Addressing methane emissions is essential to protecting the health of Americans and to

achieving the goals of the U.S. Climate Action Plan. Unfortunately, the oil and gas

industry is fighting the first-ever methane limits for the oil and gas sector and suing the

EPA and BLM to defend its ability to pollute. With the close ties among the oil and gas

industry, the new Trump administration, and their allies in Congress, the trade

...

i think this is complete but no lnx; see api3 for html save fail]

https://www.**desmog**.com/american-petroleum-institute/

american Petroleum Institute (API)

Background

Based in Washington DC, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry, representing over 600 corporate members “from the largest major oil company to the smallest of independents, come from all segments of the industry.” The API says its mission is to “influence public policy in support of a strong, viable U.S. oil and natural gas industry.” API describes itself as “the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry.” [1]

API was initially established onMarch 20, 1919 in New York City and moved to Washington DC in late 1969.According to its website, API “speak[s] for the oil and natural gas industry to the public, Congress and the Executive Branch, state governments and the media. We negotiate with regulatory agencies, represent the industry in legal proceedings, participate in coalitions and work in partnership with other associations to achieve our members’ public policy goals.”  [2], [1]

ExxonSecrets reportsthat API has funded organizations that oppose regulations aimed at combating global warming including the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). API is also a member of the **National Wetlands Coalition**, a group suggesting government regulation on wetlands are “burdensome and ineffective regulations on private property.” According to Sourcewatch, The National Wetlands coalition has been relatively inactive since the 1990s, but was made up of a group of about 60 municipal associations, utilities and major industrial concerns, such as Exxon, Texaco and Kerr-McGee. [40], [41] [3]

API Promoted “Uncertainty” about Climate Change

A 1998 Communications Plan, obtained by the New York Timesand reported on at Greenpeace, suggests that API was actively working to promote “uncertainty” about climate change science and links to fossil fuels. According to the document, “victory will be achieved when […] Average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”[5]

“Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts. It will be necessary to establish measurements for the science effort to track progress toward achieving the goal and strategic success,” the document reads.

:{InsideClimate News:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: reports that API also knew of climate change as early as 1982. A Columbia University report titled “Climate Models and :{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Warming, A Selective Review and Summary” (:{PDF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:)commissioned by the institute in 1982, cautioned that global warming “can have serious consequences for man’s comfort and survival.” [49], [50]

Koch Ties & Cooperation

While Koch Industries is not known to be a member of API, as reported in the funding section below, API has donated a total of $139,000 to Americans for Prosperity, the astroturf tea party group founded by billionaire David Koch. [6]

Koch interests often align with those of API, and Koch-aligned groups often engage inlobbying on behalf for the same oil-and-gas-friendly legislation as API. For example, API joined in when trade associations including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (:{AFPM:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), the latter which represents Koch Industries, BP, and Exxon Mobil among others, joined together to work as “one unified voice” to combat21 young plaintiffs suing for stronger action on climate change. [78],[48]

“Time Is Running Out” — API

Long before API‘s coordinated plans to promote uncertainty, in 1965, President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee published of a report titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment.” Then-API-president Frank Ikarddescribed that report at an oil industry conference, *DeSmog* reported: [76]

“This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action,” Ikard told the audience, as he described research into climate change caused by fossil fuels.

“The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.”

According to excerpts of Ikard’s speech, published in the peer-reviewed journal *Nature*, Ikhard said: [77]

“One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts.”

According to the Nature letter from Stanford historian Benamin Franta, API itself had funded research reaching  similar conclusions. For example, in 1954, a California Institute of Technology geochemist sent the API a research proposal reporting that fossil fuels caused carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to rise roughly five percent since 1854. [77]

API accepted that research proposal and advanced it under the name “Project 53” but never made those results public.[77]

Energy Citizens

Starting in 2009, the API led a coalition called “Energy Citizens” and held rallies opposing the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, targeting states “whose Democratic Senators aren’t strong supporters of a stringent bill, such as […] Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mark Begich of Alaska.” [25]

According to *Newsweek*, API asked regional companies to urge their employees to participate in planned protests.A leaked memo revealed that “The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at [20 different] states.” [26]

“Energy Citizens” is also supported by the National Association of Manufacturers (:{NAM:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), American Farm Bureau, American Highway Users Alliance, National Black Chamber of Commerce (:{NBCC:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, FreedomWorks,[hot air tour?] American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. [27]

According to O’Dwyer’s Magazine, in a February 2010 article titled “The Politics of Climate Change,”

“The group has loudly protested the EPA’s decision to have greenhouse gas emissions regulated under the Clean Air Act. API members include Chevron, ConocoPhillips,Exxon Mobil, GE, Halliburton and Shell.” [28]

Template fliers for the “Energy Citizens” rallies warned that “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.” They additionally claimed the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would “cost 2 million American jobs, raise gasoline and diesel prices up to $4.”

The :{EPA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: estimated the bill would cost :{U.S.:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: households “about a postage stamp a day,”while the Energy Information Administration projected annual “energy bill costs could rise between $26 per household to $362 by 2020.” [29]

The companyDemocracy, Data & Communications (DDC), wrote in a case study that it “has actively partnered with the American Petroleum Institute (API) for years, designing,

executing, and managing all facets of their key national advocacy program” and was “asked with creating an on-the-ground campaign focused on raising the prole of Energy Citizens in support of natural gas production from the ‘Marcellus Shale’ formation in Pennsylvania.” [64]

DDC said it helped to convene two roundtable meetings with local congressional representatives for the Energy Citizens campaign, as well as get 170 letters of support published and sent to Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Commission. According to IRS tax filings reviewed by DeSmog, API paid DDC $29.3 million for its work between 2011 and 2015, *DeSmog* reported. [65]

DDC has also worked with the tobacco company Phillip Morris on a website fighting against tobacco regulation. DDC is also an Associate Member of the**Edison Electric Institute (:{EEI:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:),**which has also paid DDC at least $1.8 million since 2012 for PR work according to the IRS. [65]

EnergyTomorrow.org

API has released a series of print ads espousing the benefits of fossil fuels, claiming that E15 fuel would damage equipment, and linking to their project, EnergyTomorrow.org.

Anti-E15 & E85 Ads

• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: :{ATV:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Cartoon (2016)
• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Jet Ski Cartoon (2016)
• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Lawnmower Cartoon (2015)
• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Motorcycle Cartoon (2015)
• General Anti-:{E85:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Cartoon (2014)
• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Snowblower Cartoon (2013)
• Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Leaf Blower Cartoon (2013)
• General Anti-:{E15:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Cartoon (2013)

Other Ads

• Energy Security Ad (2015)
• “Beauty” Cartoon (2012)

Energy for Progress

January 7, 2020

On January 7, 2020, API launched a ne highlighting “the natural gas and oil industry’s leadership in reducing emissions to record low levels and supporting economic and environmental progress in local communities,” according to a press release.  The campaign included the website EnergyforProgress.org.

View a sample video below: [82]

[vid]

aPI announced the campaign at its annual “State of American Energy” event, and featured a panel comprised of TV host Mike Rowe and the presidents of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, the Petroleum Equipment and Services Association, and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. [82]

“From Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and Pennsylvania, natural gas and oil development is energizing economies and improving millions of lives,” API President and CEO Mike Sommers said in prepared remarks.  The campaign’s key focus appears to be combatting efforts that would ban or limit fracking. Sommers declared “he future of energy is at stake, whenever people doubt the value of natural gas and oil in our daily lives.” [82]

The Energy for Progress website features a section on “environmental protection” where it claims natural gas has been a key reason “U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have reached their lowest levels in a generation.” [83]

API‘s Lobbying

API is also heavily involved in direct lobbying on behalf of the oil and gas industry, having spent over $98 million on lobbying activities since 1998, according to data collected by OpenSecrets. [4]

Year Lobbying Expenditures

2017 $4,860,000

2016 $4,430,000

2015 $7,790,000

2014 $9,090,000

2013 $9,300,000

2012 $7,310,000

2011 $8,640,000

2010 $7,300,000

2009 $7,320,000

2008 $4,849,437

2007 $4,000,000

2006 $3,380,000

2005 $3,640,000

2004 $2,870,000

2003 $3,140,000

2002 $3,040,000

2001 $1,140,000

2000 $460,000

1999 $3,383,442

1998 $2,982,188

Grand Total $98,925,067

API & the American Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) Merger

On November 18, 2015, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) announced a merger to create a “single voice promoting the industry” while working under the name of the American Petroleum Institute. ANGA was founded in 2009 and is funded by natural gas producers, and has worked against federal limits on methane emissions. [52]

OpenSecrets reports that ANGA has spent more than $15 million on lobbying activities for the oil and gas industry since 2009: [53]

Year TotalLobbying Expenditure

2015 $1,290,000

2014 $1,290,000

2013 $1,930,000

2012 $2,650,000

2011 $3,000,000

2010 $3,360,000

2009 $1,660,000

Grand Total $15,180,000

Explore Offshore [vs steyer CA mobilization on prop 23?]  see renta-toms

The American Petroleum Institute launched its Explore Offshore project in June 2018 “seeking to convince Hispanic and black communities to support the Trump administration’s proposed expansion of offshore drilling,” Reuters reported. [72]

“We want to build support in minority communities because the message that increasing the supply of affordable energy and good paying jobs will resonate,” said Erik Milito, API’s director of Upstream and Industry Operations. [72]

Explore Offshore describes itself as a “national coalition that supports offshore energy exploration and production to help supply affordable energy for American consumers, small businesses, and manufacturers.”

“Explore Offshore’s mission is to unite supporters of offshore energy development and promote its benefits and its importance to our nation’s economy and energy security,” its website claims.

Coalition members include representatives from Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a range of local affiliates are listed on its coalition page. [68], [70]

According to Reuters, Explore Offshore has partnered with a number of black and Hispanic business groups including the Virginia, Florida and North Carolina Hispanic Chambers of Commerce and the Florida Black Chamber of Commerceand South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. [72]

Only one African-American man, South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce chairman Stephen Gilchrist, was involved in the group. Gilchrist reportedly “counts [Steve] Bannon as a friend.” While the group identifies itself as a “bipartisan coalition,” its sole Democrat is Jim Webb, who has praised “gallantry” of Confederate soldiers and defended “the venerable Robert E. Lee” according to a Politico story on Webb’s roots. [75], [73], [74]

July 24, 2018

Representatives from API and API‘s “Explore Offshore South Carolina” attended a luncheon hosted by the SC African American Chamber of Commerce to discuss “the Economic impacts and safety of Offshore Energy.” [71]

May 16, 2018

Explore Offshore, a “project of the American Petroleum Institute”ran an ad campaign on Facebook promoting offshore drilling in Florida. According to Facebook’s political ad archive, the ads were removed because they lacked a “Paid for by” label while including political content. [68], [69]

The ad text read as follows:

“Contrary to what the opposition wants you to believe, offshore energy exploration has occurred safely alongside marine life, commercial fishing, military activities, and tourism for decades in the Gulf.

‘Not only have these industries co-existed with energy production, but in many cases energy development has stimulated and bolstered investments, increased higher-paying jobs, and supported retail and tourism in coastal towns along the Gulf,’ Cornelia Horner, a spokeswoman with the American Petroleum Institute.

The choice is simple when you have the facts. Say yes to exploring our offshore resources in Florida.”

Stance on Climate Change

May 2017

In its most recent “Climate and Energy” primer, API claims that the use of natural gas is enough to reduce CO2 emissions, and that we should recognize “the many benefits that oil and natural gas provide our nation”: [63]

“CO2 emissions from power generation in 2016 were near 30-year lows, in large part due to greater use of natural gas. And increased use of natural gas in the power generation sector has helped to reduce total  CO2 emissions to their lowest level in nearly 25 years.

“This proves that Americans do not have to make the false choice between utilizing our nation’s energy resources and protecting the environment.

“The oil and gas industry considers climate change a very important issue and is engaging constructively to address this complex global challenge.

United States climate policy must recognize the vital role of petroleum products in modern society, and the many benefits that oil and natural gas provide our nation and the world.”

API offered a similar statement on its website. [44]

2015

An archived version of the American Petroleum Institute website admits that “emissions from [energy] production and use may be helping to warm our planet by enhancing the natural greenhouse effect of the atmosphere. That’s why oil and gas companies are also working to reduce their greenhouse emissions.” [42]

A November 2015 “Climate and Energy Primer” (PDF) released by API suggests there are “uncertainties” with regards to climate change, however still suggests it is a serious problem: [43]

“While we rely on them for most of our energy and will likely do so for years to come, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notes: ‘Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet’s climate. However, they are not sure by how much it will change, at what rate it will change, or what the exact effects will be.’Despite these uncertainties it is clear that climate change is a serious problem that requires research for solutions and effective policies that allow us to meet our energy needs while protecting the environment. That’s why oil and gas companies are working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

1998

API‘s 1998 ”Global Climate Science Communications Plan” (PDF), reported by the New York Times and authored by the American Petroleum Institute’s Joe Walker, revealed the institute’s stance on climate change.

According to the plan, “victory will be achieved when”: [5]

Average citizens “understand” (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the “conventional wisdom”

Media “understands” (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science

Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current “conventional wisdom”

Industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy

Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”

Under the heading “Climate Reality,” the document continues:

“Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be do moment when we can declare victory for our efforts. It will be necessary to establish measurements for the science effort to track progress toward achieving the goal and strategic success.”

1982

InsideClimate News reports that the American Petroleum Institute knew of climate change as early as 1982:A Columbia University report titled “Climate Models and CO2 Warming, A Selective Review and Summary” (PDF) commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute in 1982, cautioned that global warming “can have serious consequences for man’s comfort and survival.” [49], [50]

American Petroleum Institute Funding (As Donor)

There are 374 transactions on record for the American Petroleum Institute as a Donor in the Conservative Transparency Database. Note that not all of the following funding values have been confirmed by DeSmogBlog. [6]

View the attached spreadsheet for further details on the American Petroleum Institute’s funding by year (.xlsx).

Recipient Total

Oil and Natural Gas Industry Labor Management Committee $3,597,648

Citizens to Protect Pennsylvania $2,851,500

National Association of Manufacturers $2,026,150

2012 Tampa Bay Host Committee $2,022,473

Coloradans for Responsible Reform $1,544,481

Ground Water Protection Council $1,440,800

Independent Petroleum Association of America $1,387,356

American Chemistry Council $1,232,000

Health Effects Institute $910,000

Cleveland 2016 Host Committee Inc. $900,000

State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations $775,000

Business Industry Political Action Committee $775,000

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute $772,500

Americans for Tax Reform $740,000

Rebuilding Together $706,812

University of Connecticut $700,531

Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee $700,000

Republican Governors Association $630,000

IHS Global $625,000

University of California Davis $622,490

Democratic Governors Association $555,000

American Council for Capital Formation $535,000

Business Institute for Political Analysis $525,000

University of Colorado $455,133

Congressional Black Caucus Foundation $445,000

Plumbers & Pipefitters $440,500

Coalition for American Jobs $412,969

Energy Policy Research Foundation $375,000

Consumer Energy Alliance $332,500

Ohio Oil & Gas Energy Education Program $306,000

America’s Wetland Foundation $300,000

Raise the Bar Protect Our Constitution $300,000

Environmental Council of the States $256,750

60 Plus Association $253,000

National Ocean Policy Coalition $250,000

American Action Network $250,000

Building and Construction Trades Department AFL–CIO $245,000

Maine Energy Marketers Association $240,000

US Chamber of Commerce $236,500

Franklin-Hamilton Inc. $235,000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology $229,500

The Keystone Center $220,500

Politico $220,000

Coloradans for a Stable Economy $200,000

George Mason University Foundation $200,000

Republican State Leadership Committee $200,000

Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance $200,000

National Academy of Sciences $200,000

Stronger $180,000

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation $165,500

Pipeline Research Council $162,500

Stanford University $160,000

Institute for Energy Research $160,000

Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies $152,500

Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council $150,000

Republican Attorneys General Association $150,000

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research $150,000

Americans for Prosperity $139,000

FreedomWorks $130,000

Petroleum Association of Wyoming $130,000

Congressional Black Caucus Institute $125,000

Montana Department of Environmental Quality $117,274

University of Massachusetts Dept of Microbiology $117,000

Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce $107,193

Association for Environmental Health and Sciences $106,000

American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers $105,000

Ground Water Research & Education Foundation $105,000

National Foreign Trade Council $101,000

National Retail Federation $100,000

Alliance to Save Energy $100,000

Friends of the House 2016 LLC $100,000

Michigan State University $100,000

National Taxpayers Union $100,000

American Legislative Exchange Council $98,000

National Black Chamber of Commerce $97,500

Clemson University $95,000

University of California Berkeley $94,402

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign $93,900

North Carolina State University $93,135

United States Association for Energy Economics $92,500

100 Black Men of America $90,000

US News and World Report – US News Stem Solutions $85,000

National Conference of State Legislatures $84,000

Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States $81,000

Northwestern University School of Law $80,000

LNG Allies $80,000

Common Ground Alliance $80,000

Rutgers University $80,000

Capitol Hill Publishing Corp. $79,500  https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_de/2166829

International Conservation Caucus Foundation $75,000

The Foreign Policy Group $75,000

Offshore Energy Center $75,000

Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute $75,000

National Council for Air and Stream Improvement $75,000

Utility Air Regulatory Group $75,000

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners $71,800

HispanicAssociation on Corporate Responsibility $71,750

NebraskaEthanolBoard $71,212

Congressional Black Caucus Policy & Leadership Institute $70,000

American Association of Blacks in Energy $70,000

Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research $68,500

American Conservative Union $66,000

A Wider Circle $60,000

United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce $60,000

American GI Forum of the United States $60,000

Sustainable Remediation Forum $60,000

James Madison Institute $60,000

National Newspaper Publishers Association $57,500

The National Center forAmerican Indian Enterprise Development $55,000

National Marine Sanctuary Foundation $52,500

University of Tulsa $52,353

University of Oklahoma $52,194

Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation $51,000

National Journal Group $50,000

Western Governors’ Association $50,000

Texas State Society of Washington DC $50,000

Hispanic Alliance for Progress/Prosperity Institute $50,000

National Industrial Sand Association $50,000

American Legion $50,000

NM Association Conservative District $50,000

The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences $50,000

Council of Great Lakes Governors $50,000

Citizens Against Government Waste $50,000

Rice University $50,000

Michigan Chamber PAC II $50,000

Nicholls State University $45,000

Western States Air Resources Council $45,000

Coordinating Research Council $45,000

National Petrochemical & Refiners Association $45,000

The Bryce Harlow Foundation $42,500

Council of State Governments $41,000

Northwestern University $40,000

Saj Media (Greater Wilmington Business Journal) $40,000

Third Way $40,000

National Conference of Black Mayors $40,000

Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy $40,000

Consensus Building Institute $40,000

Formula Sports Group $40,000

NALEO Educational Fund $40,000

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) $39,951

University of Rochester $38,695

American Council on Science and Health $37,500

Mahoning County Democratic Party $37,500

Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association $37,500

University of New Hampshire $36,000

Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment $35,000

National Urban League $35,000

Wright State University $35,000

University of Houston – Clear Lake $34,000

Radio Television Digital News Association $31,000

Federal Water Quality Coalition (Barnes & Thornburg) $31,000

Conservative Political Action Conference $31,000

Washington Press Club Foundation $30,285

Taxpayers for Common Sense $30,000

Coastal America Foundation $30,000

The Tax Foundation $30,000

Illinois Institute of Technology $30,000

Virginia Chamber of Commerce $30,000

Fund for Peace $30,000

Ohio Democratic Party $30,000

University of California $30,000

Resources First Foundation $30,000

North Carolina Agricultural Foundation $28,000

Western Michigan University $28,000

American Tort Reform Association $25,100

Mercatus Center $25,000

Tread Lightly Inc. $25,000

Competitive Enterprise Institute $25,000

Jefferson Island Club $25,000

FTI Consulting $25,000

Battelle Memorial Institute $25,000

National Association of Hispanic Publications $25,000

Consortium of Catholic Academies of the Archdiocese of Washington $25,000

PGA Foundation $25,000

The Ripon Society $25,000

Arizona State University $25,000

Democratic Attorneys General Association $25,000

Heartland Institute $25,000

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies $25,000

American Highway Users Alliance $25,000

Bloomberg Finance LP $25,000

National Association of Wholesaler Distributors (LIFO Coalition) $25,000

University of Vermont $25,000

Western Business Roundtable $25,000

Southern Christian Leadership Conference $25,000

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers $25,000

Southern Republican Leadership Conference South Carolina $25,000

American Forest and Paper Association $21,700

Nebraska Ethanol Industry Coalition $20,212

National Foundation for Women Legislators $20,000

Illinois AFL–CIO $20,000

HM&C Center Stage LLC $20,000

Fund for American Studies $20,000

New Mexico Community Capital $20,000

University of Texas at Arlington $20,000

Community Leaders of America $20,000

Virginia Foundation for Research & Economic Education $20,000

Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce $20,000

Carbon Sequestration Council $20,000

Edison Electric Institute $18,500

American Institute of Chemical Engineers $17,500

North American Metals Council $17,000

Everybody Wins! DC $16,400

US Conference of Mayors $15,000

The National Center for American Indian Enterprise $15,000

New York Academy of Sciences $15,000

Nevada State AFL–CIO $15,000

Board of Hispanic Caucus Chairs $15,000

Bryce Harlow Foundation $15,000

NCSL Foundation for State Legislatures $15,000

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars $15,000

Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania $15,000

Foreign Policy Association $15,000

The Corbett Cawley Inaugural Committee $15,000

Flag Credit Union $15,000

National Board of Professional Teaching Standards $15,000

Metro Denver Economic Development Corp $12,500

Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry Education Foundation $12,500

The Economic Club of Washington DC $12,000

The George Washington University $12,000

Public Lands Advocacy $11,000

Center for Legislative Energy and Environmental Research $10,785

Scientific Consulting Group $10,500

Foundation for American Communications $10,000

Virginia Sustainable Building Network $10,000

Institute for Policy Innovation $10,000

California Climate Action Registry $10,000

Montana Economic Developers Association $10,000

National Chamber Foundation $10,000

Unlocking Potential $10,000

National Association of Black Journalists $10,000

Center for Excellence in Education $10,000

MahoningCounty Republican Party $10,000

The Horinko Group $10,000

Centennial Institute $10,000

Conference Group $10,000

Citizens for Sound Conservation $10,000

Congressional Award Foundation $10,000

Abate of Illinois $10,000

National Association of Energy Officials $10,000

Committee for Economic Development $10,000

Ohio Republican Party $10,000

Freedom Foundation of Minnesota $10,000

Jobs for America’s Graduates $10,000

A Better Missouri Nixon for Governor $10,000

Republican Governors Public Policy Committee $10,000

Council of State Chambers (COSC) $10,000

Kasich-Taylor New Day Inaugural Committee $10,000

Stop Oil Seeps California $10,000

University of Alaska Foundation $10,000

Federal Recycling and Remediation Coalition (Barnes & Thornburg) $10,000

Ohioans For Change $10,000

Volta Live Inc. $10,000

Latitude LLC $10,000

Texas Oil and Gas Association $10,000

Alliance for Consumer Education $10,000

Indiana Works $10,000

Hydrogen Sulfide Coalition $10,000

Gulf of Mexico Alliance $10,000

National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition $10,000

Science Spark $10,000

Colorado State University $10,000

Rockwood Labor Club $7,500

Women’s Energy Network of Houston $7,500

New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Alliance $7,500

Illinois Legislative Black Caucus Foundation $7,500

Missouri Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association $7,500

Climate Action Reserves $7,500

Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs $6,511

University of Texas at Austin $6,500

Hart Energy Publishing LLP $6,500

Waterfall Foundation $6,000

Ohio Oil & Gas Association $6,000

San Antonio Hispanic Chamber $6,000

Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors $6,000

American Society for Testing and Materials $6,000

New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce $5,500

Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry $5,333

Utilities Telecom Council $5,100

National Conference of State Societies $5,000

Hispanic College Fund $5,000

Meridian International $5,000

Aspen Institute $5,000

American Oil & Gas Historical Society $5,000

National Association of Neighborhoods $5,000

Grand Total $43,446,878

990 Forms

Key People

API Leadership Team

Name 2013 2014 2015[7] 2016[45] 2017 2018 Description

Erik G Milito Y Y Y Y Y Y Group Director Upstream & Industry Operations

Frank J Macchiarola Y Y Y Group Director Downstream and Industry Operations

Gerardo Uria Y Y Y Director, Membership and Development

Harry M Ng Y Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Office of the General Counsel

Jack Gerard Y Y Y Y Y Y President & CEO

John D Modine Y Vice President, Global Industry Services

John Robertson Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President & Chief Financial Officer Administration and Finance

Kyle Blsakower Y Vice President Regulatory & Economic Policy. (Also oversees API‘s climate policy development) [8]

Kyle Isakower Y Y Y Y Y Vice President, Regulatory & Economic Policy

Linda Rozett Y Y Y Y Y Vice President Communications

Lisa Salley Y Y Y Vice President Global Industry Services

Louis Finkel Y Y Y Executive Vice President, Government Affairs. Advised oil and natural gas pipeline companies for two D.C.consulting firms. [9]

Martin Durbin Y Y Y Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer

Megan Bloomgren Y Y Vice President Communications

Robert Greco Y Y Y Group Director, Downstream and Industry Operations

Robin Rorick Y Y Y Y Group Director Midstream and Industry Operations

Stacy Linden Y Y Y Y Y Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Office of the General Counsel

Todd Snitchler Y Group Director Market Development

*Jack Gerard announced on January 24, 2018 that he would step down as API‘s president. [67]

Officers, Trustees, Etc. (Via 990 forms)

Name 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Description

David Seaton Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Marvin Odum Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Rex Tillerson Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Timothy C. Felt Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

W Herbert Hunt Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

David W Williams Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Jack Gerard Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y President & CEO

John S Watson Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Paul L Howes Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

John Robertson Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President & Chief Financial Officer Administration and Finance

Gary R Heminger Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Harry N Pefanis Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

John B Hess Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

John T Gremp Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Joseph Bryant Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Karen Wright Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Stephen I Chazen Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Al Monaco Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Greg C. Garland Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

David J Lesar Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Linda Rozett Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President Communications

Virginia Gigi B Lazenby Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Douglas R Matthews Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

A. L. Walker Y Y Y Y Board Member

John C Minge Y Y Y Y Board Member

Khalid S Alnaji Y Y Y Y Board Member

Martin S Craighead Y Y Y Y Board Member

Ryan M Lance Y Y Y Y Chairman Of The Board

Tracy W Krohn Y Y Y Y Board Member

Doug J Suttles Y Y Y Board Member

Gary G Rich Y Y Y Board Member

Lee M Tillman Y Y Y Board Member

Paul Stevens Y Y Y Board Member

Ricardo Darre Y Y Y Board Member

Richard Muncrief Y Y Y Board Member

Robert Doug Lawler Y Y Y Board Member

Roger Jenkins Y Y Y Board Member

Stacy Linden Y Y Y Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Office of the General Counsel

Thomas Burke Y Y Y Board Member

Tim J Cutt Y Y Y Board Member

Troy W Thacker Y Y Y Board Member

David W Grzebinski Y Y Board Member

Lorenzo Simonelli Y Y Board Member

Paal Kibsgaard Y Y Board Member

Russell K Girling Y Y Board Member

Torgrim Reitan Y Y Board Member

Kyle Isakower Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President, Regulatory & Economic Policy

John D Modine Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President, Global Industry Services

Erik G Milito Y Y Y Y Y Group Director Upstream & Industry Operations

Eric J Wohlschlegel Y Y Y Y Senior Director

Rolf W Hanson Y Y Y Y Senior Director

Charles Williams Y Y Y Y Y Exec Dir Ctr for Offshore Safety

Robert Greco Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Group Director, Downstream and Industry Operations

Howard J Feldman Y Y Y Y Senior Director

Louis Finkel Y Y Executive Vice President, Government Affairs

Martin Durbin Y Y Y Y Y Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer

Bruce Culpepper Y Board Member

Dave A Hager Y Board Member

David J Rintoul Y Board Member

Erica S Bowman Y Chief Economist

Frank J Macchiarola Y Group Director Downstream and Industry Operations

Greg L Ebel Y Board Member

Jose G Uria Y Former key-Acting Vice President

Jose-Ignacio Sanz Saiz Y Board Member

Lisa Salley Y Vice President Global Industry Services

Robin Rorick Y Group Director Midstream and Industry Operations

Steve Pastor Y Board Member

J Larry Nichols Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

James P McGregor Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Jack B Moore Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Bill Maloney Y Y Y Y Board Member

Harry M Ng Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Office of the General Counsel

Hank A True III Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Ray L Hunt Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Robert Bobby L Parker Jr Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Rod Nelson Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Alan S Armstrong Y Y Y Y Board Member

Daniel W Rabun Y Y Y Y Board Member

John Bannerman Y Y Y Y Board Member

Peter Evensen Y Y Y Y Board Member

W Matt Ralls Y Y Y Y Board Member

G Steven Farris Y Y Y Board Member

John C Felmy Y Y Y Y Y Chief Economist

David Fanta Y Y Board Member

Clarence P Cazalot Jr Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Chairman of the Board

James Hackett Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Lamar McKay Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Morten Arntzen Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Nabeel M Amudi Y Y Board Member

James F Justiss Jr Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Drew P Cobbs Y Y Y Executive Director, MD Petroleum Council

Aubrey McClendon Y Board Member

Ralph A Hill Y Board Member

Corbin J Robertson Jr Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Chadwick C Deaton Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

James J Mulva Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Patrick D Daniel Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Alvis Truman Hunt Y Y Y Y Senior Director

Tofig Al-Gabsani Y Y Y Board Member

Conrad A Lass Y Senior Director

Brenda S Hargett Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Former Vice President

James E Ford Y Y Y Y Y Y Former Vice President

Jim C Craig Y Y Y Y Y Y Former Vice President

Av Jones Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Bjourn Moller Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Bruce C Gottwald Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Frederic C Hamilton Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

John Miller Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Kathleen Shanahan Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

John P Kerekes Y Y Y State Office Executive Director

Steve Malcolm Y Y Y Board Member

William E Albrecht Y Y Y Board Member

David M Wood Y Y Board Member

John M Yearwod Y Y Board Member

Peter D Kinnear Y Y Board Member

Byron M Cavaney Y Y Y Y Y Y Former Pres/CEO

David O’Reily Y Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Michelle E Rinn Y Y Y Y Y Y Corporate Sec & GRP Dir

Anthony Mayer Y Y Y Y Board Member

Dalton J Boutte Y Y Y Y Board Member

George Kirkland Y Y Y Y Board Member

James E Nielson Y Y Y Y Board Member

Kevin M Hostler Y Y Y Y Board Member

Louis A Raspino Y Y Y Y Board Member

Philip F Anschutz Y Y Y Y Board Member

Randall K Eresman Y Y Y Y Board Member

Ray R Irani Y Y Y Y Board Member

Sidney J Jansma Y Y Y Y Board Member

Thomas A Bannigan Y Y Y Y Board Member

Ali A Abuali Y Y Board Member

Douglas M Morris Y Y Group Director

Erin P Thompson Y Y Director

German Cura Y Y Board Member

John A Carrig Y Y Board Member

Merrill A Pete Miller Y Y Board Member

Michael L Platner Y Y Director

Michael J Dolan Y Board Member

Claiborne P Deming Y Y Y Y Y Board Member

Daniel F McNease Y Y Y Board Member

Douglas L Rock Y Y Y Board Member

James J O’Brien Y Y Y Board Member

James L Gallogly Y Y Y Board Member

John M Duty Y Y Y Board Member

John Morgan Y Y Y Board Member

Jonathan P Whitworth Y Y Y Board Member

Joseph H Netherland Y Y Y Board Member

Karl F Kurz Y Y Y Board Member

Lew O Ward Y Y Y Board Member

Norm J Szydlowski Y Y Y Board Member

Peter Robertson Y Y Y Board Member

Robert A Malone Y Y Y Board Member

Sheldon R Erikson Y Y Y Board Member

Steven B Hinchman Y Y Y Board Member

Thomas P Richards Y Y Y Board Member

Joseph Alvardo Y Board Member

Katherine E Lewis Y Director

Kendra L Martin Y Director

RD Dan Nelson Y Board Member

Ziad Labban Y Board Member

John Hofmeister Y Y Y Board Member

Lynn Elsenhans Y Y Y Board Member

Andrew Slaughter Y Y Ex Officio

Byron Dunn Y Y Board Member

Carl Boetticher Y Y Ex Officio

Cortlandt S Dietler Y Y Board Member

Dave Sampson Y Y Ex Officio

Dawood Al-Dawood Y Y Board Member

Gerald T McPhee Y Y Ex Officio

Gordon M DeFilippo Y Y Ex Officio

Gregg J Davis Y Y Board Member

J Stephen Simon Y Y Board Member

James F Snyder Y Y Ex Officio

James R Buhrmaster Y Y Ex Officio

Jon A Marshall Y Y Board Member

Louie Ehrlich Y Y Ex Officio

Mark A Jackson Y Y Board Member

Michael C Linn Y Y Ex Officio

Michael McShane Y Y Board Member

Mohammad Al-Shammari Y Y Board Member

Patrick T Mulva Y Y Ex Officio

Randy Armstrong Y Y Ex Officio

Randy Limbacher Y Y Board Member

Richard Bird Y Y Ex Officio

Roy M Huffington Y Y Board Member

Russell E Ginn Y Y Board Member

Stephen A Elbert Y Y Board Member

Stephen F Gates Y Y Ex Officio

Steve Pryor Y Y Ex Officio

Todd R Schultz Y Y Ex Officio

Bobby Shackouls Y Y Treasurer – Executive Committee

Lee R Raymond Y Y Member – Executive Committee

Ross J Pillan Y Y Member – Executive Committee

Betty Anthony Y Group Director of Industry Operations and Upstream

Dale R Laurance Y Member – Executive Committee

Ed Murphy Y Group Director of Industry Operations and Downstream

Key Past Leadership

Red Cavaney — Past President and Chief Executive Officer. [10]

William F. O’Keefe — Past executive vice president. [10]

Lee R. Raymond — Past Trustee and Vice Chairman. [11]

Philip A. Cooney — Past “climate team leader” and lobbyist at API (before 2001). [12]

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Actions

March 25, 2021

API announced in a press release that it would endorse a “carbon price policy.” [98]

“Confronting the challenge of climate change and building a lower-carbon future will require a combination of government policies, industry initiatives and continuous innovation,” API President and CEO Mike Sommers said.

However, as noted at InfluenceMap, this announcement “needs to be viewed in the wider context of the organization’s long history of opposing effective action on climate change.” [99]

“A statement of theoretical support for a market-based carbon price is a long way from agreeing to what will likely need to be strong, binding rules to limit fossil fuel usage & methane emission,” said InfluenceMap Executive Director Dylan Tanner.

“As with all positive-sounding, top-line statements we’ve seen from fossil fuel interests recently, the focus needs to be on details and actions – not just the rhetoric.

“Carbon pricing is, after all, a broad concept.

“Embracing carbon pricing does not necessarily translate into support for effective climate policy until there is a specific piece of legislation or regulation to implement a price.” [99]

InfluenceMap highlighted a number of examples over the prior months of “API’s oppositional approach to proposed climate policy” such as API’s CEO Mike Sommers’ comment in a January 2021 American Energy Keynote Speech where he said scaling back fossil fuel development would  be the “surest way to bring (economic) recovery to a stop.” [99]

API described the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement as “aggressive” in January 2021. In November of 2020, API CEO Mike Sommers promised to fight back against the Biden Administration with every tool at its disposal” if they tried to limit oil and gas development on federal lands. [99]

As noted at The Washington Post, environment and climate groups expressed doubts that API’s draft endorsement was significant. [100]

Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said “the API’s move would be little more than a public relations ploy, and the Biden administration shouldn’t be taking policy cues from the standard polluters’ playbook.” Golden-Krasner added that a “instead of letting producers buy their way out of climate accountability, we need strong regulations to keep fossil fuels in the ground.” [100]

However, The Washington Post noted “API’s biggest members have long been betting on carbon pricing and the likelihood that climate regulation would one day be adopted.” [100]

Oil giant Total, which vowed to combat climate change, quit API, saying it no longer represented its positions or interests. [100]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sommers claimed the decision reflected a change in circumstances since API’s past opposition to carbon pricing. [101]

“As things have continued to evolve, we know that more needs to be done,” Mr. Sommers said. “We also know that climate change is real and we need to do more to address one of the marquee issues of our time.”

January 26, 2021

Following an announcement from newly-elected US President Joe Biden outlining executive orders for fossil fuel industry, including achieving a carbon-free power sector by 2035, API responded with claims that “Restricting natural gas and oil development on federal lands and waters risks hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in government revenue for education and conservation programs.” API released OnLocation analysis claiming, “U.S. energy leadership could be at stake if a federal leasing and development ban is enacted,” that “Nearly 1 million jobs could be lost by 2022,” among other claims. [95], [96], [97]

July 13, 2020

API removed “energy” from its logo, and introduced a new red, blue and gray logo E&E News reported. [92]

“As part of our logo redesign, we conducted research that found policymakers and global standards customers already had a strong association between API and energy and knew without noting the word that we were standard bearers for policies that support access to affordable, reliable and cleaner energy while providing safety and sustainability standards and certifications around the world,” API said in a statement to E&E News. [92]

E&E news noted that the change echoed a recent rebranding by the Texas-based Vistra Energy Corp. which also announced a switch to Vista Corp, saying energy is “most commonly used to refer to the petroleum/oil and gas sector, of which we are not a part.” [92]

Earlier in 2020, API also began using the phrase “natural gas and oil” rather than “oil and gas.” [92]

According to API, the new logo reflects “our industry’s laser-focus on the future, innovation and the evolving role of natural gas and oil in taking us on the journey.”

“In the 12 years since API last updated its brand, the U.S. shale revolution – enabled by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – has elevated the importance of our domestic natural gas and oil resources,” API wrote on its blog. [93]

June 24–25, 2020

API was highlighted in a lawsuit from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office that also called out Exxon Mobil Corporation, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, Koch Industries, Inc., and the Koch-owned Flint Hills Resources LP and Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend for allegedly misleading consumers about climate change. [87]

“When corporations and trade associations break the law and hurt Minnesotans, it’s my job and my duty to hold them accountable. The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans’ health and our state’s environment, infrastructure, and economy,” said Attorney General Keith Ellison, as reported in the AG office press release. [88]

“Previously unknown internal documents were recently discovered that confirm that Defendants well understood the devastating effects that their products would cause to the climate, including Minnesota, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. But Defendants did not ever disclose to the public—or to Minnesotans—their actual knowledge that would confirm the very science they sought to undermine. Instead, Defendants, both directly and through proxies, engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective. This campaign was intended to, and did, target and influence the public, and consumers, including in Minnesota,” the lawsuit reads. [89]

Discussing API‘s role:

“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers, including the Global Climate Coalition, Partnership for a Better Energy Future, Coalition for American Jobs, Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, and Alliance for Climate Strategies. These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products. Defendants benefited from the spread of this disinformation.”

On Koch, the lawsuit suggests that the company is liable for the various actions of its numerous subsidiaries involved in the manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum products. It also notes:

“Koch also supports numerous foundations including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Koch Institute, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. Koch expects the foundations that it supports to fund groups that further its financial interests. Koch constructively controls how the foundations that it supports direct their philanthropic activities.”

It also notes that, like numerous other oil companies, “Koch also understood climate-change science, the connection to sales of its fossil fuel products, and the potential for catastrophic consequences before the science was widely understood by the general public.”

It highlights what appeared to be a coordinated effort by companies including Koch to “combat climate change ‘alarmists’ through a campaign focused on science, information dissemination, and politics.” It highlights a 2006 memo from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association that outlined how Koch Industrieswas working with other large corporations including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Southern Company, American Electric Power (AEP), and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

Shortly after, the D.C. Attorney General’s Office joined in a similar lawsuit against BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The lawsuit alleges the four largest investor-owned oil and gas companies violated the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act by promoting and selling fossil fuel products contributing to global warming, while knowing about the harmful consequences since at least the 1950s. [90]

The lawsuit highlights the industry’s use of fake grassroots groups, such as the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which started out as a front group for tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1993. This group had transitioned to become the Advancement of Sound Science Center in 1997 and was run out of the home of climate science denier Steve Milloy, who most recently worked in public relations for coal company Murray Energy, before being disbanded. [90]

According to a press release from the D.C. Attorney General’s Office, “The [oil] companies not only employed the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition — a fake grassroots citizen group created by Big Tobacco as part of the industry’s misinformation campaign — they also funded and promoted some of the same scientists hired by tobacco companies. These scientists disputed the conclusions of climate researchers, despite not having any training in climate science themselves.” [91]

“For decades, these oil and gas companies spent millions to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of profits,” said AG Racine. “The defendants violated the District’s consumer protection law by concealing the fact that using fossil fuels threatens the health of District residents and the environment. OAG filed this suit to end these disinformation campaigns and to hold these companies accountable for their deceptive practices.

March 20, 2020

The Independent reported the American Petroleum Institute had been accused of “wildly inflating” job numbers in the fracking industry. The report by Food & Water Watch concluded API had inflated the numbers in “a clear attempt to defend the economically struggling industry that is linked to air, water and climate pollution.” [84], [85]

The API had released a report claiming that more than 7.5 million jobswould be at risk from a fracking ban with 26,000 in Pennsylvania where the fracking industry is a key election issue. The new analysis from Food & Water Watch found that data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on fracking differed significantly from API‘s numbers, and counts 636,000 total jobs, and 26,000 in Pennsylvania. [86]

FWW Research Director Alison Grass said: “It’s more important than ever to accurately assess how many workers are employed in the oil and gas fracking industries. For years, the industry has concocted wildly inflated employment numbers in an effort to blunt criticism of the toll that fracking has taken on our air, water, and climate. [84]

“Our analysis offers convincing evidence that employment benefits of fracking have been overhyped to manipulate the public and policymakers. Frackers have been far more effective at creating illusions than jobs.” [84]

December 9, 2019

The Consumer Energy Alliance announced on its Facebook page that API had become an official member. One month after posting the news, the announcement had received one ‘like.’ [81]

September 9, 2019

API launched a series of ads on its YouTube channel touting emissions reductions by natural gas and oil companies. According to an API spokesman, the ads were produced to “provide balance to the energy debate as Congress returns and the presidential primary continues.” [79]

One of the videos, titled “We’re On It,” declared that America’s natural gas and oil companies were “leading the world in cutting greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest levels in a generation.” [80]

The ads were also being run on television, radio, in airports, and on billboards in Washington D.C. and New York. API claimed to be spending more than $1 million dollars on the campaign. [79?

september 13, 2017

API CEO Jack Gerard told reporters that while he takes climate change “seriously,” further deregulation is still necessary, for the economy to “really grow and flourish,” E&E News reported. [66]

“What we don’t support is unnecessary, redundant, costly regulations that provide no benefit to society, yet cost industry a lot,” Gerard said. “Our emissions of carbon are down to a 30-year low. That was brought to us primarily by cleaner-burning, fuel-efficient natural gas,” he said. “So when you put all that in context, I think we need to look at that holistically, but I think the deregulatory agenda needs to continue.”[ 66]

February 22 – 25, 2017

The American Petroleum Institute was an exhibitor at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), among a range of other conservative and pro-industry groups. [61]

February 5, 2017

API launched a new advertising campaign called Power Past Impossible to tout the uses of oil and natural gas. They released one of their ads during Super Bowl 51 (see video below).  According to The Hill, API estimated that the ad would have reached an estimated 110 million people. [60]

API plans to run the ad for several years in different media. They also launched a website, Powerpastimpossible.org, as part of their campaign.

“Power Past Impossible is the next step in API’s long-running effort to create energy awareness,” API‘s president, Jack Gerard, told reporters. [60]

“The Power Past Impossible campaign features a few of the countless products and technological advances made possible from natural gas and oil, from life-saving medical devices to cosmetics to drug stores, from plastics in our toys to cell phones to 3D printers,” Gerard said. [60][//ROWE?]

The Hill reported that Gerard said that while deregulation wasn’t the primary focus of the campaign, it tied in nicely.

“Those regulatory burdens, when they’re unnecessary or duplicative, add costs that make us less competitive,” he said.[60]

“We support appropriate regulation. We believe regulation has a role. What we need to do is fix it so it’s smart, commonsense regulation.” [60]

The API campaign also features a number of additional videos on a Power Past Impossible YouTube channel. [60]

June 8, 2016

API Director of Upstream and Industry Operations Erik Milito claimed that government reports have already proven hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to be safe. Milito points to an EPA report that, while it did conclude that fracking could potentially impact drinking water, had also said it did not find “evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” [54]

“Hydraulic fracturing is being done safely under the strong environmental stewardship of state regulators and industry best practices,” Milito said. “Yet, since releasing the report, the EPA continues to face a barrage of politically based attacks attempting to tamper with scientific conclusions.” [54]

Notably, the EPA report that Milito links to includes a prominent notice which describes it as a “draft report,” of which peer review would begin in the first quarter of 2015. [55], [56]

“This assessment provides a review and synthesis of available information concerning the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on drinking water resources in the United States. This is a draft report that has been made available for public comment and shared with theEPA Science Advisory Board for expert peer review.” [55]

June 2016

The American Petroleum Institute (API) was among organizations named in a Massachusetts subpoena looking for communications between ExxonMobil and organizations denying climate change, reports The Washington Times. [58]

Organizations named in the Massachusetts subpoena include the following: [58]

The Centre for Industrial Progress

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

The American Enterprise Institute

Americans for Prosperity

The American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Petroleum Institute

The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University

The George C. Marshall Institute

The Heartland Institute

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

This latest inquiry by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is one in a series of investigations into what ExxonMobil knew about climate change and when, started by a coalition of attorneys general in the US. [59]

May 23, 2016

The American Petroleum Institute released a statement celebrating the passage of the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the U.S. House of Representatives which would revise Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export provisions. [57]

“U.S. LNG exports will create American jobs, significantly strengthen the global energy marketplace, and bolster our strategic alliances,” API Executive Vice President Louis Finkel said. “Today’s action by the U.S. House of Representatives to approve LNG exports provisions as part of the defense authorization bill further cements the critical role U.S. energy plays at home and abroad.

“It’s time for our nation to fully embrace the vast economic and geopolitical opportunities unleashed by the energy renaissance. U.S. LNG exports ensure that consumers across the globe have access to stable, diverse energy supplies, protect America’s role as a global energy leader, further enhance national security in the homeland and help our allies break dependence on nations that use their energy resources as a political weapon.” [57] [VLAD?]

March 2016

A group of 21 kids and teenagers (including those as young as eight years old) are suing the US government and the fossil fuel industry over climate inaction, appearing in an Oregon courtroom on March 9. [47], [48]

“It may sound like a long shot, but fossil fuel industry groups are taking the lawsuit seriously,” The Nation writes. [47]

In November, lobbyists representing ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Koch Industries, and energy companies petitioned the judge for permission to join the case alongside the government, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers. The groups called the case “extraordinary,” and asked the court to dismiss the case.  [47], [48]

Among those suing the US government:

“Nathaniel, a teenager from Fairbanks whose asthma has worsened with the wildfires that now sweep across Alaska each summer; Alex, whose family farm in Oregon has been parched by record heat waves and drought;Journey, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe living in Hawaii, whose family fled from flooding in 2012; and Levi, an 8 year old who lives on a low-lying barrier island in Florida that is already grappling with sea level rise.” [47]

July 2015

The American Petroleum Institute has pushed to remove the crude oil export ban in the U.S. Jack Gerard, API President and CEO, said in a press conference “blocking trade in crude oil harms consumers when they fill up, it harms the economy, it inflates the trade deficit, it limits job creation, and it undermines America’s ability to protect our allies.”

The conference also featured EnCana Corporation President and CEO Doug Suttles, who they reported would be giving a “firsthand account of the North American Energy renaissance and why allowing crude exports is imperative to continuing our momentum.” [14]

The Congress Blog reports just a few risks of lifting the ban, including a huge increase in dangerous rail traffic: [15]

“[T]he hazardous increases in oil production that could come with the removal or weakening of the crude export ban presents much greater dangers that simply cannot be ignored. Everyday, dangerous fracking wells, sprawling rail lines carrying so-called ‘bomb trains’ and a network of leaking pipelines threaten our communities with spills and explosions with far-too-frequent regularity. If the highest estimates of increased oil production are realized, eliminating the crude oil export ban could lead to as much as a doubling of crude-by-rail traffic from today’s already perilous levels.”

May 2015

As of July, 2015, there had been six accidents involving oil trains where tank cars derailed and were punctured and oil was spilled since the beginning of the year. In the first five, there were also fires and explosions. [16]

All six oil train derailments involved new 1232 model train cars that the American Petroleum Institute is suing to keep on the tracks longer than existing timelines presented in the new oil-by-rail regulations. [17]

As reported in the New York Times, API has “long argued that forcing oil producers and shippers to use newer tank cars and replace older models would impose high costs on the industry and lead to a shortfall in tank car capacity.”

Their petition would challenge the government’s timeline to upgrade/retrofit older tank carswith newer safety features to prevent spills and derailments in the future. It also challenges a requirement that tank cars be equipped with new electronic braking systems or be faced with operational restrictions.

February 2015

The American Petroleum Institute released an updated “Primer” (PDF) on Hydraulic Fracturing, bearing the same title as their previous reports (“Hydraulic Fracturing: Unlocking America’s Natural Gas Resources”). According to the report, Fracturing is “largely responsible for changing America’s energy narrative from one of limited options to one of nearly limitless plenty.”

API makes the claim that “There are zero confirmed cases of groundwater contamination” due to hydraulic fracturing. They also divert blame of earthquakes caused by fracturing, citing studies that found it was “impossible to say with a high degree of certainty whether or not these earthquakes were triggered by natural means or by the nearby hydraulic-fracturing operation.” According to API, Fracturing is a “Safe, proven technology.”

Since the API‘s Report, the Environmental Protection Agency has released a long-awaited draft of its assessment of fracking’s impact on drinking water. The EPA fracking assessment found that fracking indeed contaminates drinking water: “From our assessment, we conclude there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources,” the EPA wrote. [18]

October 2013

API launched a campaign in South Portland [MAINE]with the goal of influencing a referendum to ban tar sands in the area. The referendum was the result of local activists gathering almost 4,000 signatures in their city of about 25,000 to get the issue on the ballot.

API backed a professionally run public relations, voter outreach and get-out-the-vote effort to urge citizens to vote against the referendum. In mailings and open letters to the residents of South Portland, the campaign claimed that there were no plans to bring tar sands to South Portland. [19]

One stated (emphasis added):

“Some of you may be concerned about tar sands, which may have prompted you to sign a Waterfront Protection Ordinance petition. But the ordinance is not about tar sands.”

In addition to suggesting the referendum was unrelated to tar sands, they claimed the ordinance would shut down the port’s existing oil operations and cost local people their jobs.

According to a June, 2014 report by the Environment Maine Research and Policy Centre titled “Inside the Big Oil Playbook: (PDF) the API spent over $750,000 to defeat the ballot measure (which was defeated by fewer than 200 votes). [20], [21]

December 16, 2011

Jack Gerard spoke at a press briefing teleconference on oil sands where he criticized President Obama’s decision to delay the Keystone XL project.

He claimed that Obama’s decision was “driven by politics” and that environmental studies had already found that there would be “no significant impacts’ on the environment” by the pipeline. [22]

July 19, 2010

The API released a “primer” (PDF) on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that concludes (based on two studies) that there has been “no instance of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing,” and that there were “no significant environmental risks as a result of proper hydraulic fracturing.” [23]

DeSmogBlog investigated the environmental impacts of fracking and came to a different conclusion: It is becoming increasingly clear that the unconventional gas boom is happening too fast, too recklessly and with insufficient concern for the potential cumulative impacts on our most critical resources – clean air, safe drinking water and a stable climate.

API spent $1.9 million in the third quarter to lobby the federal government on hydraulic fracturing as well as other issues including offshore oil drilling, and clean water and air standards. [24]

April 2009

API sent a letter to members of Congress critical of the Obama administration:

“The US oil and natural gas industry has the expertise and technology to produce the energy we need to fuel economic growth, create jobs, generate significant revenues for local, state and federal governments, and bolster our national security. However, our companies cannot do so if held back by harmful, counter-productive taxes and are restricted from access to domestic oil and natural gas resources that the country urgently needs. … If imposed, these taxes and fees could have a debilitating effect on our economy, when our nation can least afford it. They would reduce investment in new energy supplies, meaning less energy produced for American consumers. We cannot tax our way out of our energy problems.” [30]

April 20, 2009

API protested the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endangered public health and could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Jack Gerard of API concluded that “The Clean Air Act was created to address local and regional air pollution, not the emission of carbon dioxide and other global greenhouse gases,” as reported in the Oil & Gas Journal.  [31]

November 2008

In response to the November 2008 election of Barack Obama as President and Joe Biden as Vice-president, API released a statement in the name of their CEO, Jack Gerard, saying:

“The American people have spoken loud and clear that they want politicians to put aside partisan bickering… . The oil and natural gas industry stands ready to help put America’s vast energy resources to good use, strengthening our nation’s economy and energy security, and providing good jobs for Americans across the country.” [32]

Gerard earlier criticized Obama’s platform, saying “Obama’s plan to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies would harm one of the few industries that are thriving” in the economic crisis. [33], [39]

January 31, 2003

API partially funded a controversial paper (PDF) authored by climate change skeptics Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas that comes to the conclusion that the climate hasn’t changed in the last 2000 years. [34]

The study,published in Energy & Environment, notes that many parts of the world showed medieval warming that exceeded the warming observed in the 20th century. [35]

March 21, 2002

The API produced a 16-minute video titled “Fuel-less: you can’t be cool without fuel,” which was distributed through the National Science Teachers Association. The film starts with the line “you’re not going to believe this, but everything everything I have that’s really cool comes from oil!” [62] ROWE]

The video was also available on the API-owned website Classroom-Energy.org. The website describes its aim as to provide teachers and students with materials on “the vital role of oil and natural gas in modern life.” According to a WHOIS lookup, the domain for Classroom Energy was registered by the American Petroleum Institute on March 21, 2002. [36]

An API memo leaked to the media in 1998 explained API‘s plan to target schools:

“Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.” [37]

Classroom-Energy.org now redirects to energytomorrow.org.

Early 1998

As reported by the New York Times, the American Petroleum Institute developed acommunications plan to challenge climate change science. A small group met including representatives from Exxonmobil, Chevron, the Southern Company (a large US coal company), the American Petroleum Institute and others from a variety of conservative think tanks including the George C Marshall Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow — Many of which have received significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. [38]

The plan they drew up, leaked to Greenpeace (view documents here), proposed:

‘…a national media relations programme to inform the media about uncertainties in climate science; to generate national, regional and local media on the scientific uncertainties and thereby educate and inform the public, stimulating them to raise questions with policymakers.’ The plan would roll out up to and beyond the UNFCCC meeting (COP4) later that year in Buenos Aires.

According to the plan, “Victory will be achieved” when:

“Average citizens understand (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties

becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’

Media ‘understands (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science

Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”

Part of the strategy was to co-ordinate “a complete scientific critique of the IPCC research and its conclusions” and to enable decision makers to raise “such serious questions about the Kyoto treaty’s scientific underpinnings that American policy makers not only will refuse to endorse it, they will seek to prevent progress towards implementation at the Buenos Aires meeting in November, or through other way.”

They would also recruit and train five “independent scientists,” described as “new faces… without a long history of visibility in the climate debate” who would participate in media outreach with the aim to “maximise the impact of scientific views consistent with ours, with Congress, the media and other key audiences” as well as specifically targeting students and teachers in order to “erect a barrier against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.”

1956

API and the Oil Industry Information Committee sponsored a cartoon titled “Destination Earth” to promote the petroleum industry. According to the National Film Preservation Foundation, the film is a “Science-fiction-influenced cartoon sponsored by petroleum producers to lionize their industry and promote free enterprise.” [94]

Destination Earth Sponsored by API

In the cartoon, according to the Film Preservation Society description, ”’Colonel Cosmic,’ an astronaut from the totalitarian planet Mars, flies to Earth, where he discovers cheap oil and the market economy. Returning home, he leads a revolution and frees Martian entrepreneurs to begin oil exploration, start small businesses, and lead the planet out of economic stagnation.” The cartoon played at New York’s Paramount Theatre before being distributed more widely. [94]

American Petroleum Institute Contact & Location

The address and phone number for the American Petroleum Institute (API) was as follows as of May, 2016: [51]

API

1220 L Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20005-4070

USA

Phone 202-682-8000

Related Organizations

Virginia Energy Citizens

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is a sponsor of Virginia Energy Citizens, a group describing itself as a grassroots coalition.

Virginia Energy Citizens’ state coordinator Miles Morin attended the July 2015 meeting of the Northern Virginia Tea Party where he was originally billed as speaking on how “the radical environmental movement poses a serious threat to our freedoms, our property.” The online initiation was later revised to read how Morin would speak on how to tell “local, state and federal officials why you support pro-energy policies.” [13]

Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group, described API‘s relationship with Virginia Energy Citizens. He says lobbyists and paid consultants are now not only shaping public opinion with advertising, but also attended meetings and passing themselves off as grassroots activists (a “new” strategy):

“That’s clearly deceptive,” Holman said. “Not only are they trying to deceive the Tea Party activists, they’ll also be deceiving Congress at the same time.”  [13]

Classroom Energy!

Website run by API to inform teachers and students of the “vital role of oil and natural gas in modern life.”

API Members

The American Petroleum Institute’s members include major oil, gas, and coal companies. [46]

Between 2006 and 2017, API has reported over 1,100 unique member organizations. View the attached spreadsheet for a complete list of the American Petroleum Institute’s members year over year (.xlsx). [46]

Some notable examples below: [46]

Organization 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

BAKER HUGHES, INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

BECHTEL CORPORATION Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

BHP BILLITON Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

BP AMERICA INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

CHEVRON CORPORATION Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

CONOCOPHILLIPS Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

DEVON ENERGY CORP. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

EXXONMOBIL Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

MARATHON OIL COMPANY Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

SCHLUMBERGER LIMITED Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

SEABULK INTERNATIONAL INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

SHELL OIL COMPANY Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

TRANSCANADA PIPELINES Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

POTOMAC ENVIRONMENTAL, INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

TRANSOCEAN Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

CHESAPEAKE ENERGY Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

GE ENERGY/ BENTLY NEVADA Y Y Y Y Y Y

HESS CORPORATION Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

HUNT CONSOLIDATED INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y

ITT CORPORATION Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

ONEOK Y Y Y Y Y Y

PHILLIPS 66 Y Y Y Y Y Y

TIDEWATER INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y

ENCANA Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

DIAMOND OFFSHORE Y Y Y Y Y

ENBRIDGE, INC. Y Y Y Y

MITSUBISHI CORPORATION (AMERICAS) Y Y Y Y

NEWFIELD EXPLORATION COMPANY Y Y Y

SOUTHWESTERN ENERGY COMPANY Y Y Y

SIEMENS Y Y

POSCO Y Y

SCHNEIDER CANADA SERVICES Y Y Y Y

CRESTONE PEAK RESOURCES Y

MCDERMOTT INTERNATIONAL INC. Y

MOTIVA ENTERPRISES LLC Y

SUNOCO LOGISTICS Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

SAUDI REFINING, INC. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

GE OIL & GAS Y Y Y Y Y Y

STATOIL Y Y Y Y Y Y

BILL BARRETT CORPORATION Y

POSCO AMERICA Y

SIEMENS ENERGY – OIL & GAS CONSULTING SOLUTIONS Y Y Y Y Y Y

SIEMENS WATER TECHNOLOGIES CORP. Y Y Y Y Y Y

AMERICAN ENERGY PARTNERS Y Y

KINDER MORGAN ENERGY PARTNERSHIP, L.P. Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

TALISMAN ENERGY INC. Y Y Y Y Y

CONSOL ENERGY, INC. Y Y

HUNT OIL COMPANY Y Y Y Y Y Y

HONEYWELL Y Y Y Y Y

URS CORPORATION Y Y Y Y Y

CHIEF OIL & GAS Y

CH2M HILL Y Y Y Y

GE OIL & GAS CONMEC Y Y Y Y

SIEMENS ENERGY & AUTOMATION Y Y

TRC SOLUTIONS Y Y

BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE Y Y Y

GE MOTORS Y Y

NUCOR Y Y

DOMINION EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION, INC. Y

SIEMENS DEMAG DELAVAL TURBOMACHINERY, INC. Y

TOTAL SA Y

Social Media

@APIenergy on Twitter.

“The American Petroleum Institute” on Facebook.

“The American Petroleum Institute” on LinkedIn.

Resources

“API Overview and Mission,” The American Petroleum Institute. Archived August 10, 2015.

“API History,” The American Petroleum Institute. Archived August 10, 2015.

Mark Dowie. “Greens Outgunned,” Earth Island Journal, Vol 10. No. 2 (Spring 1995). Archived January 13, 2004.

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“Office of the President,” API. Archived, January 28, 1999.

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Andrew C. Revkin. “Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming,” New York Times, June 8, 2005. Archived September 15, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/SkHVT

Isaac Arnsdorf. “Small Tea Party Meeting Has a Special Guest: Big Oil,” Bloomberg Politics, August 10, 2015.

“Press Conference Call on Crude Oil Exports with Jack Gerard and Encana CEO Doug Suttles,” American Petroleum Institute. Archived August 11, 2015.

David Turnbull. “Lift the ban, cook the climate,” Congress Blog (TheHill.com), July 23, 2015. Archived August 11, 2015.

Justin Mikulka. “Most Recent Oil Train Accidents and Spills Involved ‘Safer’ CPC-1232 Tank Cars,” DeSmogBlog, July 23, 2015.

Jad Mouawad. “Oil Industry Asks Court to Block Rail Transport Safety Rules,” May 12, 2015.

Sharon Kelly. “EPA Study: Fracking Puts Drinking Water Supplies at Risk of Contamination,” DeSmogBlog, June 4, 2015.

Justin Mikulka. “Maine Residents Fight American Petroleum Institute Lobbyists Over Ban on Tar Sands Shipments,” DeSmogBlog, July 21, 2014.

“Inside the Big Oil Playbook” (PDF), Environment Maine Research & Policy Center, June 2014. Archived August 11, 2015.

Ben Jervey. “South Portland Tar Sands Pipeline Defeat: Big Oil Outspends Local Grassroots 6-to-1,” DeSmogBlog, November 8, 2013.

Bill Bush. “Briefing stresses importance of Keystone XL to national security” (Press Release), the American Petroleum Institute, December 16, 2011. Archived August 11, 2015.

“Hydraulic Fracturing: Unlocking America’s Natural Gas Resources” (PDF) American Petroleum Institute, July 19, 2011. Archived November 16, 2010.

“Petroleum group spent $1.9M on lobbying in 3Q,” AP, December 15, 2011. Reposted at Boston.com. Archived August 11, 2015.

Ian Talley, “Lobby Groups to Use Town Hall Tactics to Oppose Climate Bill,” Wall Street Journal “Washington Wire” blog, August 11, 2009.

David Stone. ”The Browning of Grassroots,” Newsweek, August 19, 2009. Archived January 12, 2012.

Alex Kaplun, “’Energy Citizens’ Take Aim at Climate Legislation,” The New York Times, August 12, 2009. Archived Aug 11, 2015.

“The Politics of Climate Change,” O’Dwyer’s Magazine, Feb. 2010. Archived August 11, 2015.

Ian Talley, “Lobby Groups to Use Town Hall Tactics to Oppose Climate Bill,” Washington Wire (Wall Street Journal Blog), August 11, 2009. Archived August 11, 2015.

Noah Brenner, “API slaps administration on policy,” Upstreamonline.com, April 6, 2009.

Nick Snow, “EPA issues proposed endangerment finding on GHGs,” Oil & Gas Journal, April 20, 2009. Archived August 11, 2015.

“API: Oil, gas industry will work with new administration,“ Oil & Gas Journal, November 5, 2008. Archived August 11, 2015.

Daniel Whitten. “Obama May Put Renewable-Energy Plan Ahead of Climate Package,” Bloomberg, November 5, 2008. Archived September 11, 2014. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/YFmCO

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years” (PDF), Climate Research, Vol. 23 (January 21, 2003), P. 89-110. Archived August 11, 2015.

(CfA Press Release) “20th Century Climate Not So Hot,” Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, March 31, 2003. Archived August 11, 2015.

“About Us,” Classroom Energy!. Archived August 11, 2015.

Laurie David. “Science a la Joe Camel,” The Washington Post, November 26, 2006. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6frz9xIZ5

“Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science” (PDF), Greenpeace. Archived August 10, 2015.

Edward John Craig. “A New Day for Planet Gore,” National Review, November 5, 2008. Archived March 9, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6frnucqg0

ExxonSecrets Factsheet: American Petroleum Institute.

“National Wetlands Coalition,” SourceWatch profile. Accessed March 9, 2016.

“Climate Change,” American Petroleum Institute website. Archived July 25, 2015. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“Climate Change and Energy” (PDF), American Petroleum Institute (November 2015 Report). Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“Climate Change,” American Petroleum Institute. Archived March 9, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6fswZkl4V

“API Leadership Team,” American Petroleum Institute. Archived July 7, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“API Member Companies,” American Petroleum Institute.  Archived March 9, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ftC1nakJ

Zoë Carpenter. ”21 Kids Are Suing President Obama Over Climate Inaction,” The Nation, March 9, 2016. Archived March 9, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ftDfs2wv

“Big oil lines up to battle kids in climate court case,” Climate Home, January 15, 2016. Archived March 9, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ftFVi0e0

Neela Banerjee. “Oil Industry Group’s Own Report Shows Early Knowledge of Climate Impacts,” InsideClimate News, February 5, 2016. Archived March 9, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ftFznlLb

“Climate Models and CO2 Warming, A Selective Review and Summary” (PDF), American Petroleum Institute. Retrieved from InsideClimateNews.org. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“Contact,” American Petroleum Institute. Archived May 20, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6hezXo07M

Robert Grattan. “Oil and natural gas boosters to merge into energy lobbying behemoth,” November 18, 2015. Archived June 2, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“America’s Natural Gas Alliance,” OpenSecrets. Accessed June 2, 2016.

Asha Glover. “API: Even EPA Said Fracking Is Safe,” Morning Consult, June 8, 2016. Archived June 22, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“U.S. EPA. Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources (External Review Draft),” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-15/047, 2015. Archived June 22, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iTCsqLy0

“Peer Review Plan (PDF), EPA.gov. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

“American Petroleum Institute welcomes FY17 National Defense Authorization Act,” DailyEnergyInsider, May 23, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iTDV6id6

Valerie Richardson. “Exxon fights Mass. AG’s ‘political’ probe into climate change dissent,” The Washington Times, June 15, 2016. Archived June 24, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iVfnzUhc

Ben Jervey. “State Investigations Into What Exxon Knew Double, and Exxon Gets Defensive,” Desmog, April 1, 2016.

Timothy Cama. “Oil lobby targets consumers in new campaign,” The Hill, February 6, 2017. Archived February 18, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/7qYYU

“CPAC 2017 Sponsors,” cpac.conservative.org. Archived March 6, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/SKFRU

“Fuel-less,” Clasroom Energ. Archived August 11, 2015. Achive.is URL: https://archive.is/Ac3YM

“Climate and Energy,” API, May 2017. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

“AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE (API)—STATE–FOCUSED EXAMPLE” (PDF), DDCpublicaffairs.com. Archived at DeSmog.

Steve Horn. “Here’s the PR Firm Behind ‘Your Energy America’ Front Group Pushing Atlantic Coast Pipeline,” DeSmog, June 14, 2017.

“Storms shouldn’t halt Trump deregulation efforts — API chief,” E&E News, September 13, 2017. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

Steven Mufson. “Jack Gerard to step down as head of powerful American Petroleum Institute,” The Washington Post, January 17, 2018. Archived January 25, 2018. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/iaPDw

“ABOUT,” Explore Offshore. Accessed May 25, 2018.

“Archive of Ads With Political Content: American Petroleum Institute,” Facebook. Accessed May 25, 2018.

“Coalition,” Explore Offshore. Accessed May 25, 2018.

“Economic Impacts and Safety of Offshore Energy Lunch,” Eventbrite. Archived August 1, 2018. Archive.fo URL: https://archive.fo/azTZq

Valerie Volcovici. “Big Oil eyes U.S. minority groups to build offshore drilling support,” Reuters, June 22, 2018. Archived Aug 1, 2018. Archive.is URL: https://archive.fo/84gDE

“Steve Bannon tells black business leaders in South Carolina to demand better,” The Post and Courier, November 10, 2017. Archived August 1, 2018. Archive.is URL: https://archive.fo/cT4A7

David Mark. “Webb’s rebel roots: An affinity for Confederacy,” Politico, June 10, 2008. Archived Aug 1, 2018. Archive.is URL: https://archive.fo/BVWRL

“PRIVACY POLICY,” Explore Offshore. Aug 1, 2018.

Sharon Kelly. “‘Time is Running Out,’ American Petroleum Institute Chief Said in 1965 Speech on Climate Change,” DeSmog, November 20, 2018.

“Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming,” Nature Climate Change (2018).

Jesse Prentice-Dunn. “Major lobbying groups join Koch-backed effort to allow more natural gas waste on public lands,” Medium, February 9, 2017. Archived August 7, 2019. Archive.fo URL: https://archive.fo/LlFKd

Josh Siegel, Abby Smith. “Daily on Energy: Trump’s vulnerability to oil attack on Saudi Arabia,” Washington Examiner, September 16, 2019. Archived September 17, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/3KUpa

“We’re On It,” YouTube video uploaded by user The American Petroleum Institute on September 9, 2019. Archived .mp4 on file at DeSmog.

“We’re pleased to announce our newest member, The American Petroleum Institute, we look forward to working with you! #MemberMonday,” Facebook post by Consumer Energy Alliance, December 9, 2019. Archived January 10, 2020. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/SsJhi

“API LAUNCHES NEW NATIONAL CAMPAIGN ‘ENERGY FOR PROGRESS’, HIGHLIGHTS U.S. ENERGY LEADERSHIP IN ANNUAL STATE OF AMERICAN ENERGY EVENT” (Press Release), The American Petroleum Institute, January 7, 2020. Archived February 14, 2020.

“ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION,” Energy for Progress. Archived February 18, 2020. Archive.ph URL: https://archive.ph/KBiGC

Louise Boyle. “Pro-fracking group is ‘wildly inflating’ job numbers, environmental campaigners claim,” Independent, March 20, 2020. Archived April 9, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/NnefO

“Phantom Jobs: Fracking Job Creation Numbers Don’t Add Up” (PDF), Food & Water Watch, March 20, 2020. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

“America’s Progress at Risk: An Economic Analysis of a Ban on Fracking and Federal Leasing for Natural Gas and Oil Development” (PDF), Ameican Petroleum Institute, 2020. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

Dana Drugmand. “Minnesota Attorney General Sues Exxon, Koch and API for Climate Deception,” DeSmog, June 24, 2020.

(Press Release). “AG Ellison sues ExxonMobil, Koch Industries & American Petroleum Institute for deceiving, defrauding Minnesotans about climate change,” The Office of Minnesota Attorney, June 24, 2020. Archived June 25, 2020. Archive URL:https://archive.vn/VdRIK

“State of Minnesota, by its Attorney General, Keith Ellison Vs. American Petroleum Institute et al” (PDF), State of Minnesota County of Ramsey, District Court Second Judicial District. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.”

Dana Drugmand. “DC Is the Latest to Sue Exxon and Big Oil for Climate Disinformation Campaigns,” DeSmog, June 25, 2020.

(Press Release). “AG Racine Sues Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell for Misleading Consumers About the Role Fossil Fuels Play in Climate Change,” Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, June 25, 2020. Archived June 25, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/5Quzv

Edward Klump. “API dials back ‘energy’ branding,” E&E News, July 14, 2020. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

Megan Bloomgren. “New Logo Reflects API’s Future Focus, Collaborative Path To Finding Solutions,“ American Petroleum Institute, July 13, 2020. Archived July 31, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/rcXTp

“Destination Earth (1956),” National Film Preservation Foundation. Archived .mp4 on file at DeSmog.

“Restricting natural gas and oil development on federal lands and waters risks hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in government revenue for education and conservation programs,” tweet by @APIenergy, January 26, 2021. Archived.png on file at Desmog.

“FACT SHEET: President Biden Takes Executive Actions to Tackle the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, Create Jobs, and Restore Scientific Integrity Across Federal Government,” The White House, January 27, 2021. Archived February 11, 2021. Archive.vn URL: https://archive.vn/AX5Kh

“A Federal Leasing And Development Ban Threatens America’s Energy Security And Economic Growth, Undermines Environmental Progress,” American Petroleum Institute. Archived February 14, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/RuwlH

(Press Release). “API Outlines Path For Low-Carbon Future In New Climate Action Framework,” American Petroleum Institute, March 25, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/p23HY

(Press Release). “American Petroleum Institute’s newly announced ‘carbon price’ policy,” Influencemap via Mailchimp. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/A47XC

Steven Mufson. “Top oil and gas lobbying group close to backing a carbon tax,” The Washington Post, March 2, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/cI1zA

Timothy Puko. “Oil Lobby Backs Climate Action Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/csTyK

Other Resources

“American Petroleum Institute,” SourceWatch profile.

American Petroleum Institute profile at Koch Vs Clean.

American Petroleum Institute Profile at Polluterwatch.

“American Petroleum Institute,” Wikipedia.

“Exxon Still Funding Climate Change Deniers,” Greenpeace, May 18, 2007. Archived March 5, 2011.

Kevin Grandia. “Oil Lobby’s ‘Energy Citizens’ Astroturf Campaign Exposed,” Huffington Post, August 13, 2009.

Greenpeace research documents on the American Petroleum Institute.

Clifford Krauss and Jad Mouawad. “Oil Industry Backs Protests of Emissions Bill,” The New York Times, August 18, 2009.  Archived August 11, 2015.

Sheila McNulty. “The big oil backlash?“ Energy Source, August 20, 2009. Archived August 20, 2009

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute

red wh& blue logo

American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the petroleum industry. Much of its work has been dedicated to the advancement of climate change denial and blocking of climate legislation to defend the interests of its constituent organizations.^[4][5]

The association describes its mission as to promote safety across the industry globally and influence public policy in support of a strong, viable U.S. oil and natural gas industry.^[6] API's chief functions on behalf of the industry include advocacy, negotiation and lobbying with governmental, legal, and regulatory agencies; research into economic, toxicological, and environmental effects; establishment and certification of industry standards; and education outreach.^[7] API both funds and conducts research related to many aspects of the petroleum industry.^[7][8]

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History

See also: Petroleum industry and Petroleum in the United States

Previous logo

Although some oil was produced commercially before 1859 as a byproduct from salt brine wells, theAmerican oil industry started on a major scale with the discovery of oil at the Drake Well in western Pennsylvania in 1859.

The American Petroleum Institute was founded on 20 March 1919 and based in New York City.^[1]

In 1959, at a symposium organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business for the centennial of the American oil industry, the physicist Edward Teller warned then of the danger of global climate change.^[9] Edward Teller explained that carbon dioxide "in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect" and that burning more fossil fuels could "melt the icecap and submerge New York".^[9]

In 1969, the API decided to move its offices to Washington, DC.^[1]

Standards and certification...

ducator information

In addition to training industry workers and conducting seminars, workshops, and conferences on public policy, API develops and distributes materials and curricula for schoolchildren and educators. The association also maintains a website, Classroom Energy.^[19]

Public relations and lobbying

See also: Fossil fuels lobby, Climate change denial, and ExxonMobil climate change controversy

API spent more than $3 million annually during the period 2005 to 2009 on lobbying; $3.6 million in 2009.^[20] As of 2009, according to API’s quarterly “Lobbying Report” submitted to the U.S. Senate, the organization had 16 lobbyists lobbying Congress.^[21] According to an investigation conducted by the International Business Times, API lobbied the Department of State for all of 2009 on "legislative efforts concerning oil sands" and "Canadian Oil Sands."^[22]

The American Petroleum Institute also lobbied the State Department every quarter in 2009. In three of four quarters, the group listed “legislative efforts concerning oil sands” as one of the areas it was focusing on in its lobbying, and in the final quarter, it listed “Canadian Oil Sands.” Among API’s members are ExxonMobil, which has invested in Canadian oil sands.

API lobbies and organizes its member employees' attendance at public events to communicate the industry's position on issues. A leaked summer 2009 memo from then API President Jack Gerard asked its member companies to urge their employees to participate in planned protests (designed to appear independently organized) against the cap-and-trade legislation the House passed that same summer. "The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at [20 different] states," including Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Gerard went on to assure recipients of the memo that API will cover all organizational costs and handling of logistics. In response to the memo, an API spokesman told media that participants will be there (at protests) because of their own concerns, and that API is just helping them assemble.^[23]

To help fight climate control legislation that has been approved by the U.S. House, API supports the Energy Citizens group, which is holding public events.^[24][25] API encouraged energy company employees to attend one of its first Energy Citizen events held in Houston in August 2009, but turned away Texas residents who were not employed by the energy industry. Fast Company reported that some attendees had no idea of the purpose of the event.^[26][27] In December 2009, Mother Jones magazine said API and Energy Citizens were promulgating climate disinformation.^[28]

In the second half of 2008, as the U.S. presidential election neared, API began airing a series of television ads where spokeswoman Brooke Alexander encourages people to visit their new website, EnergyTomorrow.org.^[third-party ^source ^needed]

In January 2012, the American Petroleum Institute launched the voter education campaign - Vote 4 Energy. The campaign says that increased domestic energy production can create jobs, increase government revenue, and provide U.S. energy security. The Vote 4 Energy campaign does not promote any specific candidate or party, but rather provides voters with energy information to equip them to evaluate candidates on the federal and local levels and make decisions in favor of domestic energy on Election Day. The main components of the Vote 4 Energy campaign include the website - Vote4Energy.org - and social media communities, along with a series of advertisements and events around the country. The vote 4 energy campaign was criticized for presenting misleading arguments about the relationship between oil production and jobs whilst ignoring the potentially catastrophic consequences of increased fossil fuel consumption on the Earth's climate.^[29]

The API successfully pushed for an end to a ban on American oil exports on the grounds that the ban increased demand for Russian and Iranian oil, thereby benefiting the unfriendly regimes in these countries. Critics noted that many of its member companies continued to maintain ongoing business in these countries whilst the lobbying campaign was in progress, leading to accusations of hypocrisy.^[30] Furthermore, the API's campaigns have been criticized for advocating policies that are likely to exacerbate global warming and its associated problems.^[31] The API has repeatedly funded conservative groups that deny the reality of anthropogenic global warming^[32] in spite of the overwhelming scientific consensus that it presents a serious problem for the planet.^[33]

It has many front groups, including the NH Energy Forum that in August 2011 hosted a New Hampshire event for Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry.^[34][35]

Inventory Reports

Every Tuesday (unless Monday is a holiday) at 4:30 PM the API releases a report on US inventories of crude oil, gasoline and distillates, to paid subscribers.^[36] This information is soon relayed to the public by news sources. As this information predates the report on the same inventory levels by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), it gives investors an early look at the information that may be coming from the EIA, although there is frequently some disparity between the two sets of figures.

See also

• United States Oil and Gas Association, formerly the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association

References

1. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute#cite_ref-history_1-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute#cite_ref-history_1-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute#cite_ref-history_1-3) "API history", American Petroleum Institute (page visited on 2 January 2018).
2. ^ "Mike Sommers - President and Chief Executive Officer, American Petroleum Institute - Biography". Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Retrieved October 18,2018.
3. ^ https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/130433430
4. ^

• "Minnesota sues Exxon, Koch and API for being 'deceptive' on climate change". Reuters. 2020-06-24. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
• "Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price". the Guardian. 2021-06-30. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
• Subramanian, Samanth. "Big oil's industry lobby is starting to lose its grip on big oil itself". Quartz. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
• Meyer, Robinson (2020-02-20). "The Oil Industry Is Quietly Winning Local Climate Fights". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-10-14.

5. ^

• "ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant's support for carbon tax a PR ploy". the Guardian. 2021-06-30. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
• "How a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action". the Guardian. 2021-07-19. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
• "After 40 years of climate denial, American Petroleum Institute (API) offers... more denial!". Red, Green, and Blue. 2021-01-15. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
• Brown, Alleen (2021-01-16). "Oil Industry Reconsiders Donations to Election Deniers — but Has Its Own Big Lie". The Intercept. Retrieved 2021-10-14.

6. ^ "Industry Mission". www.api.org. Retrieved 2020-07-01.
7. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute#cite_ref-about_7-1) "About API". American Petroleum Institute. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
8. ^ "API President and CEO". www.api.org. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
9. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute#cite_ref-Franta_9-1) Benjamin Franta, "On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming", The Guardian, 1 January 2018 (page visited on 2 January 2018).
10. ^ "Home - SOME". mycommittees.api.org. Retrieved 2020-04-07.
11. ^ "Committee Information". www.api.org. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
12. ^ "Committee on Standardization of Oilfield Equipment and Materials (CSOEM)". www.api.org. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
13. ^ "API Committee on Refinery Equipment (CRE)". www.api.org. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
14. ^ "API Committee on Petroleum Measurement (COPM)". www.api.org. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
15. ^ "Engine Oil Guide" (PDF). American Petroleum Institute. March 2010.
16. ^ API RP 505 Recommended Practice for Classification of Locations for Electrical Installation at Petroleum Facilities Classified as Class I, Zone 0, Zone 1 and Zone 2 (2002).
17. ^ API RP 500 Recommended Practice for Classification of Locations for electrical Installation at Petroleum Facilities Classified as Class I, Division 1 and Division 2.
18. ^ API Unit, Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary, accessed 11 Nov. 2015.
19. ^ "2009 Awards". Education World. Retrieved 16 Jan 2021.
20. ^ "Lobbying: American Petroleum Institute". Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
21. ^ "Second Quarter Lobbying Form, 2009, Secretary of the Senate". Retrieved March 29, 2012.
22. ^ Sirota, David (5 April 2016). "Oil Companies Donated to Clinton Foundation While Lobbying State Department". International Business Times. Retrieved 14 April 2016.
23. ^ Stone, Daniel (August 20, 2009). "The Browning of Grassroots". Newsweek. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
24. ^ Krauss, Clifford; Mouawad, Jad (August 18, 2009). "Oil Companies Back Public Protests of Greenhouse Gas Bill". Retrieved August 2, 2019 – via NYTimes.com.
25. ^ McNulty, Sheila (August 20, 2009). "The big oil backlash?". Financial Times. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
26. ^ Schwartz, Ariel (August 21, 2009). "American Petroleum Institute Demonstrates How to Screw Up a Grassroots Event". Fast Company. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
27. ^ Talley, Ian (August 11, 2009). "Lobby Groups to Use Town Hall Tactics to Oppose Climate Bill". The Wall Street Journal.
28. ^ Harkinson, Josh (December 4, 2009). "The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial". Mother Jones. Retrieved August 17, 2015. Here's a guide to the dozen loudest components of the climate disinformation machine...Meet the 12 loudest members of the chorus claiming that global warming is a joke and that CO2 emissions are actually good for you.
29. ^ DaMelle, Brendan. "API's New 'Vote 4 Energy' Ad Campaign Is Thinly Veiled Election Year Bullying". desmogblog.com. DeSmog Blog. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
30. ^ Horn, Steve. "Big Oil Argued for U.S. Crude Exports to Fend Off Iran, But First Exporter Vitol Group Also Exported Iran's Oil". DeSmog Blog. Retrieved 22 January2016.
31. ^ Readfearn, Graham. "What happened to the lobbyists who tried to reshape the US view of climate change?". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
32. ^ Dunlap, Riley; Jacques, Peter (2013). "Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection". American Behavioral Scientist. 57 (6): 699–731. doi:10.1177/0002764213477096. PMC 3787818. PMID 24098056.
33. ^ Cook, John (2014). "Reply to 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature: A re-analysis'". Energy Policy. 73: 706–708. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2014.06.002.
34. ^ Johnson, Brad (August 15, 2011). "Rick Perry's First Stop In New Hampshire Is Funded By Big Oil". ThinkProgress. Archived from the original on 2012-03-30. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
35. ^ "Rick Perry stumps Manchester - next stop Iowa"^[permanent ^dead ^link], New Hampshire Public Radio, 14 August 2011.
36. ^ "API Statistics Web page".

External links

 Media related to American Petroleum Institute at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Organizational Profile – National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)
• Center for Biological Diversity v Dept of the Interior DC Appellate Decision stopping offshore Alaska Oil Leases. April 17, 2009
• Sourcewatch profile
• API Monogram Licenses Product Monogram Lists
• Center for Responsive Politics profile
• API code list at Piping-Designer.com
• "American Petroleum Institute Internal Revenue Service filings". ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.

• United States portal
• Energy portal
• Companies portal

Categories: 

• American Petroleum Institute
• Trade associations based in the United States
• Climate change denial
• Oil industry standards
• Standards organizations in the United States
• 501(c)(6) nonprofit organizations

TALK

bit of edit war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley legit vs hugh account has been blocked indefinitely because CheckUser evidence confirms that the account's owner has abusively used multiple accounts. vs rubin left b/c of hostile env]

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The oil industry has launched an all-out pressure campaign to kill an attempt by Congressional Democrats to tax methane – an extremely powerful greenhouse gas – for the first time.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group, enlisted over 130 state-level chambers of commerce, oil lobbying outfits, and labor groups, and together they wrote a letter on September 7 to U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is considering the methane fee as part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill.

This is despite top oil companies and their trade associations earlier this year claiming they were in favor of carbon pricing as their preferred policy choice to address climate change.

In the same month as the industry made headlines for supporting carbon pricing, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced a bill in March 2021, the Methane Emissions Reduction Act of 2021, which would impose a $1,800 per ton fee on methane emissions beginning in 2023, and rise by 2 percent per year above inflation going forward.

The senators saw the bill as having the potential to end methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, taking a large bite out of potential warming.

That bill, or some version of it, now has a chance of getting folded into the budget package that Congressional Democrats are currently writing. The House Energy and Commerce Committee included a lower fee in its portion of the package working its way through the House.

With details still murky and Congress working at a blistering pace to put the sweeping budget bill into place, things could still change. But over the next few weeks or months, a methane fee has a real chance of being signed into law by the President.

Faced with the reality of a price being put on methane, the oil industry has begun mobilizing to attack the idea, claiming that regulation is preferred instead. The about-face is consistent with longstanding efforts by the fossil fuel industry to oppose environmental regulations and derail any action on climate change.

“[T]he industry has a long history of opposing whatever’s on the table by saying it supports something else (e.g., it wants cap and trade when a carbon tax is on the table, and it wants a carbon tax when cap and trade is on the table),” said Ben Franta, a JD/PhD candidate at Stanford University’s Law School and Department of History who studies the history of climate denial.

“The end result,” he told DeSmog via email, “is nothing getting passed.”

Congress Eyes Methane Fee

Methane is over 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas when released into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Due to this shorter lifespan compared to CO2, it is seen as a low-hanging fruit for climate action. Scientists say urgent and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to slow the rate of global warming, and slashing methane offers one of the most immediate and impactful ways of achieving this.

The oil and gas industry is one of the largest emitters of methane, which leaks at every stage of the production and distribution process. Methane seeps out from drilling sites, pipelines, compressor stations, storage tanks, and liquefied natural gas terminals. The problem is also not geographically isolated, but is common across the entire global oil and gas industry.

Cutting methane could have an enormous impact. Eliminating 50 percent of methane from oil and gas operations could achieve the equivalent climate benefit of shuttering all of the coal plants in China, according to environmental group Clean Air Task Force.

“Putting a price on methane pollution that discourages oil and gas companies from continuing their practice of virtually unfettered methane pollution is one of the most effective immediate steps we can take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Senator Whitehouse said in a statement in March. “We believe our new bill would put a stop to virtually all methane emissions from the industry.”

But the oil industry is scrambling to prevent such a scenario from playing out.

Gas flare in Permian Basin, Eddy County, New Mexico. Credit: blake.thornberry. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Oil Industry’s Lobbying Frenzy

In its letter last week to the Senate committee weighing a methane fee as part of the budget bill, API called the proposal a “punitive fee” that could “jeopardize affordable and reliable energy with likely little reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

But research suggests the penalty may not be steep enough.

“We’re effectively subsidizing fossil fuels relative to renewables by picking up the tab for the climate change they cause, for the air pollution they cause, and so on,” Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth Science at Duke University, and contributor to the UN’s Global Methane Assessment, told DeSmog in an email. He said each ton of methane causes roughly $4,300 in damages.

“So that’s the subsidy that fossil fuel companies (and other methane sources) currently are receiving,” he said.

On the same day that the API sent its letter, the American Gas Association (AGA), a lobby group for gas utilities, wrote a separate letter to the House and Senate leadership from both parties in opposition to the methane fee. AGA said it would be a “regressive tax on low-income” families, a line of argument that has been a particular favorite of the industry in recent years.

API’s new interest in regulating methane is “akin to more smoke and mirrors than a genuine change of policy position.”

Oil Change International

It isn’t just the major D.C.-based national oil lobby groups, however, that have launched a media campaign on this issue. Many state-level equivalents fanned out across the country, writing op-eds in local newspapers and pressing their congressional delegations to kill the methane fee. The arguments are often mirror images of each other.

In the Kansas City Star, the Kansas Oil Independent Oil & Gas Association made the case that a methane fee is “duplicative, punitive, and costly,” echoing API’s talking points. It was also unnecessary, the Kansas lobby group said, because reducing methane is already “a top priority for the oil and gas industry.”

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a lobby group for Appalachian gas drillers, said the fee is an “unreasonable, punitive tax.”

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) has been leaning on lawmakers from both parties, decrying provisions in the budget bill that would “decimate” the oil and gas industry, referring to the potential removal of subsidies and the methane fee.

The Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia sent a letter in early September to Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and other members of the state’s congressional delegation, arguing the methane tax would “raise costs for all Americans … and provide virtually no environment benefit.”

Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined in on the action, writing a letter to Democratic leadership on the same day as API launched its effort. Sen. Cramer urged Democrats “to resist the insatiable demands from the environmental left and do what is right for all Americans by opposing a new fee on methane emissions from oil and natural gas facilities.”

He called the tax “punitive” and “unnecessary,” echoing industry talking points. “One would be hard-pressed to find an oil and gas company not committed to reducing methane emissions,” he said.

Various oil lobbies, including IPAA and the American Exploration & Production Council, a lobbying outfit for large U.S. oil drillers, were quick to promote Sen. Cramer’s letter on Twitter. Notably, during his last election cycle in 2018, Sen. Cramer received more than $540,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry; the sector represented his largest source of fundraising.

While some are focused on the Senate, other opponents of the methane tax are trying to block action on the other side of the Capitol. “I actually believe our best chance to stop these tax hikes is not in the Senate, they’re in the House. Speaker Pelosi has a razor thin majority,” Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said on Energy Policy Watch, an industry-friendly podcast put on by Hart Energy, an oil industry research firm, and Cornerstone Government Affairs, a D.C.-based lobbying firm.

“I think we can alter what those significant tax hikes look like if we engage now over the next several weeks in the House,” he said. He called on the oil and gas industry to apply pressure to the dozen or so House Democrats who were waffling on the budget bill.

Meanwhile, Energy Citizens, a front group created by API, has been running ads on Facebook targeting Democrats seen as vulnerable in the 2022 midterm elections, according to E&E News.

API launched a seven-figure campaign — both TV and online ads — aimed at killing the methane fee.

A compressor station along newly constructed pipeline in Loving County, Texas. ©2020 Justin Hamel

Oil Lobby’s Shifting Positions

Revelations of Exxon’s lobbying strategy as exposed in June by Unearthed and Channel 4 news has obvious echoes to the oil industry’s current predicament.

Keith McCoy, ExxonMobil’s lobbyist who was caught on tape, said the company publicly professes support for a carbon tax because it knows one will never occur. “Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that, but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” he said.

API, it appears, is taking a similar approach.

“Thanks to the ExxonMobil lobbyist caught on tape, it’s confirmed that Big Oil opposes behind closed doors the climate policies they publicly support,” Lauren Pagel, national methane co-chair at Earthworks, told DeSmog in an email. “What’s different here is that new methane rules definitely will happen, and oil companies think they’ll have a better chance to weaken them if they publicly support them.”

“API claims to support carbon pricing, and methane pricing is simply a subset of carbon pricing,” Senator Whitehouse said in a statement to DeSmog. API said in March 2021 that they support carbon pricing. “API’s ever-shifting and contradictory positioning on methane pollution is a clear indication that the industry is desperate to escape any accountability for the massive damage it’s knowingly doing to our planet.”

Instead of a fee, the oil industry says it prefers federal regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “If the objective is to reduce methane emissions, direct regulation of methane is the best method to implement such a government policy,” API said in its September 7 letter.

In fact, the EPA does plan on announcing new federal regulations on methane, on both new and existing oil and gas sites. On September 8, over 70 community, health, tribal and environmental organizations sent a letter to the EPA, urging the agency to craft strong rules.

But critics see hypocrisy and opportunism in API’s new position, which is nothing more than the latest tactic in a long history of blocking climate legislation.

An April 2021 report from Oil Change International looked at API’s newfound interest in regulation, and identified the countless times that API in fact opposed methane regulation over the past decade.

The oil lobby “has apparently abandoned more than a decade of opposition to the regulation of the climate super-pollutant methane, to suddenly being all about it,” the report said, adding that the new position in favor of regulation is “akin to more smoke and mirrors than a genuine change of policy position.”

Over the past decade API consistently stated that methane regulation by the federal government was not needed because companies were already capturing methane, they had every incentive to capture it, they were implementing innovative technologies, and any regulation would be costly. In any case, the industry argued, methane emissions from drillers were already declining.

Many if not all of those assertions were misleading at best, if not outright untrue. Studies show that methane emissions have soared and are growing at an alarming rate, and that the oil and gas industry is one of the largest sources. Methane emissions in the Permian basin, for example, are back to pre-pandemic levels.

Studies also show that the industry could eliminate as much as 75 percent of its methane emissions using technologies that already exist, and two-thirds of that could be done at no additional cost.

But much of the industry hasn’t been taking the steps needed to cut emissions – such as detecting and plugging leaks, and conducting regular upkeep to ensure equipment operates properly – because there is little scrutiny or regulatory requirements to do so. Oil companies face virtually no penalty for letting methane leak into the atmosphere.

“You can’t both claim that you’re going to take care of the problem but that you don’t need anyone to kind of force your hand on it,” said Shannon Heyck-Williams, senior director for climate and energy policy at the National Wildlife Federation, referring to the oil industry’s shifting positions on methane. “It’s just not going to work to say that any longer given the stage of the climate crisis we’re in.”

Gas flares in Colorado. Credit: WildEarth Guardians. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

In 2016, API sued EPA to block methane regulations being implemented under President Obama, which would have only impacted new facilities, not existing ones. Shortly after, however, President Trump was in office, and API urged him to roll back these rules.

In August 2020, the Trump administration finalized the rollback of the Obama-era regulations on methane, leaving in place little oversight for methane pollution. Even some in the oil industry were uneasy about unfettered methane pollution – BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil opposed the rollback. But API supported the move.

In the early days of the Biden administration, API changed course, and voiced support for regulation, which appeared to be a sea change. But as Oil Change International notes, API offered no specifics, no stated targets, instead simply issuing statements of support for “cost-effective” regulation.

According to Franta’s research, the API’s climate denial dates back to at least 1980. He said that when API says it supports regulation, “that could mean anything.”

Federal regulations also take time to craft and implement, and are subject to litigation. Even if they are finalized, they can be rolled back by the next administration. If a methane fee becomes law as part of the budget bill currently under consideration, on the other hand, it will become much harder to undo — rather than being able to use an executive order, a separate law would have to be passed by Congress to remove the tax.

API did not respond to a list of questions from DeSmog. When DeSmog requested access to a press call API hosted on methane on September 9, API did not respond. The Marcellus Shale Coalition and the Independent Petroleum Association of America did not respond to questions.

Senator Whitehouse, one of the methane tax’s main proponents, denounced the oil lobby group. “API has zero credibility on this issue. While it now claims to support methane regulations, it opposed them during the Trump years,” he said. “It’s obvious that API’s newfound support for regulations is just a smokescreen to try and tank a pricing regime where companies would face a price if they continued to pollute.”

https://gizmodo.com/the-big-oil-money-behind-the-members-of-congress-who-fu-1846020442

earther

np lnx

The Big Oil Money Behind the Members of Congress Who Fueled the Capitol Attack

ByBrian Kahn and Dhruv Mehrotra

1/08/21

On Wednesday, Chevron decried the assault on the Capitol by a mob of violent extremists hellbent on halting a democratic process. ,“We call for the peaceful transition of the U.S. government,” the biggest oil company in the U.S. tweeted. “The violence in Washington, D.C. tarnishes a two-century tradition of respect for the rule of law.”

It’s hard to argue with that. Two of the key ingredients for the violent insurrection were 123 House Republicans who signed onto a Texas lawsuit full of baseless claims and legal theories and more than a dozen Republican senators who invoked conspiracy theories to challenge the election results. Many of those people are in power thanks to the political donations of none other than Chevron. The company is hardly alone; other fossil fuel companies and the industry’s main trade group have also plunged money into the coffers of those who objected to a free and fair election.

[

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The Capitol has a police force with a $500 million budget, and yet it failed at its one job on…

Read more]

Eartherpulled data directly from the Federal Election Commission for individual donations and aggregator site Open Secrets to see just how muchcorporate PACs of Chevron and Exxon, two of the largest oil companies in the U.S., and the American Petroleum Institute, the main trade group, gave members of Congress who helped inspire Wednesday’s violence with their actions and rhetoric. We also reached out to these entities to see if they would continue to fund the campaigns of any members of Congress who challenged the election results.

In Chevron’s case, the company’s corporate PAC donated $745,000 to those House members over the past decade and more than $127,000 to the seditious senators. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who led the push to challenge election results in states they don’t represent and cheered on protesters, each received $10,000 from Chevron’s PAC in 2018. Cruz also enjoyed a $15,000 donation from the company’s PAC for his Senate run in 2012.

Those donations went to helping re-elect Cruz and elect Hawley.

On the House side, the PAC has spent $58,000 keeping House Minority Whip Steve Scalise in office. Scalise, who is intimately familiar with politically motivated violence having been shot at a House softball practice in 2017, baselessly said prior to the riots that “there have been serious questions about the integrity of the electoral process.” Other recipients include Rep. Dan Crenshaw ($11,000), who put out a Mission Impossible-style videoglorifying attacking political enemies ahead of the Georgia runoff; Rep. Kevin Brady ($56,500), who began to question the election before the results were even fully in; and Rep. Mark Mullwayne ($17,500), who called the attack on the Capitol a false flag even as police were trying to clear the mob.

Exxon hasn’t put out a statement on the Capitol violence, perhaps taking a cue from Chevron getting dragged on Twitter as a result. The company’s PAC has, however, donated a lot of money to those who don’t support the democratic process. It was just as generous as Chevron was with Cruz, giving him $25,000 over the course of his tenure in the Senate. The company goes way back with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who said she would challenge the results before backing down after the violence; their first donation to her goes back to 2003 when she was running for the House, and they’ve donated to her in every election since, records show.

Over the past decade, Exxon’s PAC has kicked nearly $1.5 million to guilty House members, basically twice Chevron’s investment in ending democracy. Scalise ($44,000) again cleaned up as did Brady ($52,000), which isn’t surprising given that they represent major oil and gas extraction and manufacturing regions, though Exxon could fund less seditious candidates and probably still get a decent bang for its buck. It’s also given to Rep. Mo Brooks ($5,000), who also went the false flag route on the attack and also thinks sea level rise is caused by rocks falling into the ocean (sorry, but it’s my favorite fact); Rep. Barry Loudermilk ($17,000), who wanted to decertify Georgia’s results presidential results, which is very convenient for him since he represents a Georgia district; and Rep. Elise Stefanik ($33,500), one of the few women in the Republican caucus to challenge the results, whom Trump praised during impeachment proceedings as a “new Republican Star [sic].”

In response to whether Exxon would continue to financially support these members of Congress, the company said: “Thanks for reaching out. We are reviewing the contributions of the PAC.” They did not respond to a request to clarify if that meant they would end their support.

Then there’s API. The group didn’t put out a statement on Wednesday, but it did retweet President and CEO Mike Sommers, former chief of staff to ex-House Speaker John Boehner, who decried the violence in his former workplace. Sommers himself kicked $20,000 to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s PAC and $5,600 to Kevin McCarthy for Congress. McCarthy joined Republicans contesting the vote, with Rep. Mo Brooks telling CNN that “Kevin McCarthy’s part of the team.” He voted to decertify the election even after the violence, but he opposes impeaching the president and said on Friday that we should “lower the temperature” after coaxing it to a fever. Then there’s $2,200 for Trump’s re-election itself and $6,600 for two Rep. Steve Scalise-related ventures.

API’s PAC is the smallest player of the three analyzed here (though to be fair, it’s not a multibillion-dollar company), spending $133,500 on House members who backed decertifying the election. The list contains many of the big oil players mentioned above, which is perhaps unsurprising given the companies it represents.

API did not respond to a request for comment asking whether it or Sommers would end support for members who inspired Wednesday’s barbarity that left a multiple people dead, including a Capitol police officer, though Sommers did tweet earlier on Friday that his “heart breaks for the family and friends of the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died as a result of yesterday’s violence.”

==

http://redgreenandblue.org/2021/01/14/american-petroleum-institute-denying-climate-science-since-1980/

while many in the Trump administration are concerned about their next job — “member of a violently seditious racist’s government” doesn’t look great on a resume, after all — apparently the American Petroleum Institute has no qualms with hiring terrorist-adjacent staff, and has _{hired}_ Energy Dept press secretary Jessica Szymanski. Despite a tweet from an API executive condemning the violence (_{less than even other pro-polluter groups}_ who issued full statements) given that API bankrolls Republicans (including _{insurrectionists}_) it’s not exactly a surprise to see they’ve rescued Szymanski from unemployment.

By Climate Denier Roundup

Because as a new study shows, API has been embracing denial for decades now. Dr. Ben Franta’s latest, _{in }__{Environmental Politics}_ examines an archival report published by API in 1980 that shows how “commercial fossil fuel interests played a more obstructive role in climate change discourse and policy throughout the 1980s than previously understood.”

In _{a twitter thread}_ last week, Dr. Franta explained how the “Two Energy Futures” policy report lays bare three key aspects of the oil industry’s long-term denial campaign. It ignored conclusions of its own internal reports showing an impending climate crisis, and instead deliberately downplayed the climate science’s certainty of negative impacts by invoking a false balance claiming that “scientists were more or less split” on the CO2-climate change link and misrepresenting Carl Sagan’s views on the issue.

Further, the API report portrayed a World Coal Study (funded, of course, by the fossil fuel industry) as credible and consistent with other expert assessments, and an independent validation that more coal would be a good thing, in part because of the coal-to-gas process API envisioned would be prevalent.

This combination of pretending not to know what its own scientists have found, misrepresenting what others say, and setting up your own front groups to launder self-serving opinions as expertise, Dr. Franta _{tweeted}_, “shows that by 1980 the fossil industry was not only paying attention to climate science but also actively intervening to prevent climate from becoming a public policy issue.”

Far from the _{perceived notion}_ of an industry’s once-constructive research being buried and then turned into disinformation, Dr. Franta’s analysis _{shows}_ that “from the inception of public awareness of global warming, the petroleum industry sought to pollute public understanding, manipulate science, and delay policy action.”

So please keep in mind the fact that the industry has lied about their responsibility for climate change for decades before treating them like good-faith actors in the policy arena.

Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:

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(Originally appeared at DailyKos)

ref

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2020.1863703

early oil industry disinformation on global warming

Benjamin Franta ORCID

Pages 663-668 | Published online: 05Jan 2021

Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1863703

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ABSTRACT

Determining the onset of organized disinformation about global warming is critical for understanding its political history and evaluating the responsibilities of fossil fuel producers and other relevant parties today.A newly discovered archival document shows the American Petroleum Institute was promulgating false and misleading information about climate change in 1980, nearly a decade earlier than previously known, in order to promote public policies favorable to the fossil fuel industry. This finding demonstrates early use of public-facing disinformation about global warming by the petroleum industry and suggests commercial fossil fuel interests played a more obstructive role in climate change discourse and policy throughout the 1980s than previously understood.

KEYWORDS: Climate change global warming American Petroleum Institute fossil fuel industry disinformation denial

In the historiography of climate change politics, organized disinformation (false or misleading information promulgated by an organization) about global warming is often understood to commence in 1989 with publications from the George C. Marshall Institute (Brulle 2020a) and the founding of the Global Climate Coalition (Brulle 2020b). Some writers (Rich 2018), as well as fossil fuel industry representatives (Walrath 2018), have argued that this apparent lack of organized disinformation prior to 1989 proves that commercial interests bear no or little responsibility for the lack of proactive climate policy throughout the 1980s.A document not yet noticed by historians, however, shows that the American Petroleum Institute (API) was publicly downplaying the threat of climate change as early as 1980.

In August 1980, the API published Two Energy Futures: A National Choice for the 80s (American Petroleum Institute 1980). The policy booklet acknowledged that carbon dioxide was a ‘pollutant’ and that fossil fuels could cause global warming, stating (American Petroleum Institute 1980, p. 80):

When coal (or any other fossil fuel) is burned, carbon dioxide emissions occur. In itself, carbon dioxide is harmless – nature itself is a major source. However, some scientists believe that large concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can, in time, cause climatic changes – specifically, higher temperatures worldwide (the ‘greenhouse’ effect).

After this acknowledgment, however, the API proceeded to cast doubt upon the danger of global warming, invoking the popular astronomer Carl Sagan:

Other scientists are more sanguine about the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some scientists, including Dr. Carl Sagan, Cornell University astronomer, see a cooling phenomenon as counteracting the greenhouse effect.

To support this message of reassurance, the API cited an article in the magazine The Wilson Quarterly (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1980), which itself was a summary of an article by Sagan, physicist Owen Toon, and astrophysicist James Pollack in the journal Science (Sagan et al. 1979).

But the article by Sagan and colleagues did not state that global warming from fossil fuels was not a threat, as suggested by the API. Rather, the scientists proposed that human societies had over thousands of years caused desertification and deforestation of large areas of Earth, gradually increasing the planet’s albedo and lowering globally averaged temperatures by about 1 degree Celsius. Continued desertification and deforestation might reduce the planet’s temperature by another 1 degree Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century, the scientists estimated.

But such cooling, they noted, would require that nearly all of Earth’s surface be deforested, transformed into desert, and/or salinized into salt flats, and even then, global warming from fossil fuels would be only partly counteracted. ‘The surface albedo of the earth will reach an asymptotic limit long before the carbon dioxide abundance will,’ the scientists observed, warning, ‘Global temperature changes of this magnitude [1–2 degrees Celsius] have profound consequences for human populations.’ The API’s public reassurance that Sagan was ‘sanguine’ (i.e. optimistic) about the buildup of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels was false.

Sagan also discussed global warming in his widely read 1980 book Cosmos, where he issued a stark admonition (Sagan 1980):

The surface environment of Venus is a warning: something disastrous can happen to a planet rather like our own. … the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences.

Again, Sagan’s words were far from the posture of reassurance falsely attributed to him by the API.

Having created the false impression that scientists did not view global warming from fossil fuels as a significant threat, the API suggested that expanded fossil fuel use – specifically expanded coal and synthetic fuel production – would be safe (American Petroleum Institute 1980, p. 80):

Members of the World Coal Study concluded that present knowledge of carbon dioxide effects on climate ‘does not justify delaying the expansion of coal use.’ The WOCOL [World Coal Study] report added, ‘It may happen that some effects of CO2 (carbon dioxide) will become detectable on a regional and global scale before the end of the century.’ This finding, WOCOL pointed out, is consistent with the authoritative statement on the carbon dioxide question issued by the World Climate Conference in 1979.

The World Coal Study, directed by MIT business professor Carroll Wilson, was supported by various fossil fuel companies (World Coal Study Records 1977 – 1981) and supervised by an employee of the mining and construction firm Bechtel (Lomask 1986, p. 179–180). The study called for a tripling of coal production and use by the year 2000 under the mistaken assumption that petroleum would soon become scarce and could be replaced only by synthetic fuels derived from coal (Wilson 1980). This coal expansion, the study claimed, could be achieved at low cost without significant negative effects on human health or the environment.

A biography of Carroll Wilson noted the policy goals motivating the effort: ‘In the eyes of its creator [Wilson], WOCOL was more than a project. It was a crusade – an effort by a man, disenchanted with the possibilities of nuclear power, to demonstrate that coal could provide much of the world’s “additional energy needs” during the remaining years of the twentieth century’ (Lomask 1986, p. 178). Indeed, upon completion of the study in 1980, Wilson used it to lobby U.S. President Carter for a tripling of coal production by 1990 among the G7 countries (France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada). When Wilson was told his request was unrealistic, he reportedly replied, ‘Doubling then!’ (Lomask 1986, p. 182). His recommendation was passed to President Carter and adopted by the G7 that year (Owen 1981). In Wilson’s own words, by 1981 he had ‘spen[t] the last year peddling coal all over the world’ (Lomask 1986, p. 199).

The API reassured the public that a major expansion of coal for synthetic fuel production would cause ‘no significant damage to the environment’ and used Wilson’s industry-supported study to suggest such an expansion would be ‘consistent’ with the conclusions of the 1979 World Climate Conference(American Petroleum Institute 1980). But that conference, far from calling for the expansion of fossil fuels, had in fact concluded it was ‘urgently necessary … to foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity’ (Zillman 2009). In Two Energy Futures, the API ignored this warning and instead mentioned the conference only while reassuring the public that a decades-long expansion of fossil fuel production would be safe.

Not only did the API misleadingly characterize Carl Sagan’s view of global warming, the foreseeable effects of synthetic fuel and coal expansion, and the conclusions of the 1979 World Climate Conference, but the trade association also omitted its own knowledge of climate science. As reported by others (Banerjee 2015), the API had created a secret industry-wide task force in 1979 to monitor developments in climate science, and six months before Two Energy Futures was published, engineer John Laurmann of Stanford University gave a briefing on global warming to the group, including representatives from the API, Exxon (now ExxonMobil), Texaco (now Chevron), and Standard Oil of Ohio (now BP) (Nelson 1980). During his lengthy presentation, Laurmann displayed a slide summarizing the ‘likely impacts’ of then-current fossil fuel production trends:

1°C RISE (2005): BARELY NOTICEABLE

2.5°C RISE (2038): MAJOR ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES, STRONG REGIONAL DEPENDENCE

5°C RISE (2067): GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC EFFECTS

Laurmann warned the task force that warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius could ‘bring[s] world economic growth to a halt’ and suggested that avoiding the predicted outcomes would require prompt action, since the adoption of non-fossil energy sources would likely require decades to accomplish. Despite this internal knowledge, the API reassured the public in Two Energy Futures that a worldwide expansion of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels would be safe for decades to come.

In addition to Laurmann’s warning, in 1979 the API prepared a background paper on climate change for members of the task force, predicting that fossil fuels would cause global warming but that the phenomenon would be masked by natural variability and go undetected until around the year 2000 (Campion 1979). Furthermore, in 1979, Exxon produced an internal assessment of global warming, which was known to task force personnel and which predicted myriad climatic effects by the mid-21st century including rising sea levels, ice-free Arctic summers, less habitable tropics, and desertification and drought in the US Southwest unless over 80% of recoverable fossil fuels were left in the ground, coal and shale oil were never extensively used, and non-fossil energy systems were to begin replacing fossil fuels significantly by the 1990s (Knisely and Ferrall 1979).

And over a decade earlier, in 1968, the API was privately informed by scientists it had commissioned at the Stanford Research Institutethat if fossil fuel production continued to grow, ‘Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000, and these could bring about climatic changes. … there seems to be no doubt that the damage to our environment could be severe’ (Robinson and Robbins 1968). The scientists recommended the industry develop ‘systems in which CO2 emissions would be brought under control.’ This knowledge and more in API’s possession was omitted from Two Energy Futures. Instead, the API reassured the public that global warming would not be serious and promoted a massive, long-term expansion of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Two Energy Futures: A National Choice for the 80s shows that the American Petroleum Institute was promulgating disinformation about global warming to the public as early as 1980, earlier than previously known, in order to promote energy and environmental policies favored by the fossil fuel industry. This finding revises the historiographies of climate change politics and organized climate denial and may be relevant for determining the responsibilities of fossil fuel producers today (Frumhoff et al. 2015).

Disclosure statement

The author has served as a consulting expert for climate change litigation, and the findings reported in this article may be relevant to such litigation...many refs

rowe discovery

Distribution Contractors Association’s mission statement says “working together to deliver superior value to the natural gas and the underground utility industry.”

Energy Citizens, which is fighting for oil pipelines and against efforts to end our dependence on gasoline, says it is “paid for by the American Petroleum Institute,” and the API says it “represents all segments of America’s oil and natural gas industry.”

The American Petroleum Industry is currently being sued by the state of Minnesota, which says API is among the “parties who have profited from avoiding the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming and its physical, environmental, social, and economic consequences,” and wants it to pay for “those impacts, rather than Minnesota taxpayers, residents, or broader segments of the public.” API is also being sued by Hoboken, New Jersey, which said Big Oil has been “actively lying about the detrimental effects of their products when in fact their own research indicated otherwise, all in order to generate multibillion dollar profits by producing, marketing, and selling vast quantities of fossil fuels.”

The Climate Investigations Center reported that “API was one of the first trade associations to orchestrate behind-the-scenes climate change denial campaigns. As early as the 1950’s and 1960’s, API worked todownplay the threat of smog to human health in Los Angeles by hiring their own scientists that would disparage leading smog control scientists, while promoting the idea that pollution controls would be too costly.”...

see SRI 1968 study

FORK # 2 exxon, #3 b43

Exxon major member of API and used it to its ends (pivot/fork?)

exxon knew

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty

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,[ROBERT watson] 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.

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."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."

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.

[grfx dialogue]

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.[grfx]

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.

[grfx]

"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.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]

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."

appendix b]

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."

he must mean API (and others?)

1962 Teller API?

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/how-exxon-chevron-and-their-buddies-58986784/

fOOTNOTES:

Exxon accused of misleading investors on climate change

An investor enquiry: how much big oil spends on climate lobbying  https://influencemap.org/report/Climate-Lobbying-by-the-Fossil-Fuel-Sector

Column: A new study shows how Exxon Mobil downplayed climate change when it knew the problem was real

Exxon’s Climate Concealment  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/opinion/exxons-climate-concealment.html?_r=2

Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show

Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings

On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming  https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

Did ExxonMobil Just Admit It’s Still Funding Climate Science Deniers?  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-exxonmobil-just-admit_b_8625514

Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change  https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1509433112.abstract

Two-faced Exxon: the misinformation campaign against its own scientists  https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/25/two-faced-exxon-the-misinformation-campaign-against-its-own-scientists

Rex Tillerson to oil industry: Not sure humans can do anything to battle climate change

Exxon May Have Erased 7 Years of Tillerson's 'Wayne Tracker' Emails, Witness Says

Rex Tillerson Testifies, Denying Exxon Misled Investors About Climate Risk

‘All Rhetoric and No Action’: Oil Giants Spent $1 Billion on Climate Lobbying and Ads Since Paris Pact, Says Report  https://www.desmog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap/

The new science fossil fuel companies fear  https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/10/22/attribution-science-fossil-fuels-climate-change-001290

Report details how ExxonMobil and fossil fuel firms sowed seeds of doubt on climate change  https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-21/oil-companies-exxon-climate-change-denial-report

==

exxon guy busted, CONFIRM BUFFER

https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation

explosive footage was obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform, who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists.

The recordings appear to reveal the secretive behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist for a company that claims in public to support action on climate change, while fighting against legislative attempts to tackle it.

ExxonMobil say they “have supported climate science for decades” and accuse Greenpeace of “waging a multi-decade campaign” against their company and industry.

They insist their “lobbying fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis.”

‘Shadow groups’

Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the US Congress for the last eight years.

Greenpeace UK’s Unearthed platform posed as head-hunters looking to hire a Washington D.C. lobbyist for a major client. They approached Mr McCoy, who agreed to speak over Zoom.

During the covert recordings, which have been passed to Channel 4 News, Mr McCoy claims:

the company secretly fought against legislative action on climate change using third-party organisations

he lobbied key senators to remove and/or diminish climate change measures from President Biden’s US $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill as it proceeds through the legislative process

he regards trade bodies like the American Petroleum Institute as “whipping boys” in order to avoid public scrutiny on Capitol Hill

BUFFER

During the virtual meeting held on 7 May, the investigators asked Mr McCoy questions about ExxonMobil’s current and historical lobbying on environmental issues.

In the excerpts from the footage to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil has aggressively fought science to deny climate change in order to maximise profit and shareholder return. He alleges that ExxonMobil joined “shadow groups” to pursue climate change denial.

Mr McCoy said: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science?  Yes. Did we hide our science?  Absolutely not.  Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that.

“We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”

ExxonMobil told Channel 4 News that they “have supported climate science for decades.”

‘It’s like fishing’

Mr McCoy likens the approach to lobbying congressmen to the way fishermen target fish, claiming that ExxonMobil puts out “bait” and then “reels in” congressmen on issues like carbon tax, electric vehicles, chemicals, taxation and infrastructure.

Mr McCoy said: “When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: ‘Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah.’

“And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programmes, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it’s all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in.”

He added: “I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They’re a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them.”

He says lobbyists aim to have a direct relationship with a member of congress, adding: “You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we’ve asked for everything.”

‘The Kingmaker’

Mr McCoy names 11 senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, dem Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio

We gave all these senators a chance to respond. All the senators declined to comment. There is no suggestion of illegality.

Channel 4 News has established, through Federal Election Commission (FEC) data, that all except two of these senators (Senators Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly) have received financial contributions from ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil insists “our lobbying efforts fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis”.

Mr McCoy described Senator Joe Manchin as “the Kingmaker” in the Senate and he says he spoke to his office on a weekly basis.

The FEC data shows Senator Manchin has received at least $12,500 from the ExxonMobil Political Action Committee in declared disbursements since the beginning of the 2011-12 election cycle.

Mr McCoy described how a “big piece of [his] job is education and advocacy” and says that in his work on behalf of ExxonMobil he argues that US government programmes to roll out electric vehicles are unrealistic. [INVENTED PRIUS AND BATT THEN BAILLED]

He said: “The research and development conversation has taken us a long way because of climate change. And there is a struggle to find solutions and to get the reductions that they’re looking for. And you’re not going to be able to just switch to battery operated vehicles or wind for your electricity. And just having that conversation around why that’s not possible in the next 10 years is critically important to the work that we do.”

‘Whipping boy’

Mr McCoy described a lobbying strategy in which he claims ExxonMobil uses third parties to mask its interests from public view and accountability.

He said: “We don’t want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It’s getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress.”

He added: “There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?”

Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil lobbied Congress to dilute the climate provisions of President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill.

He said: “That’s a completely different conversation when you start to stick to roads and bridges. And instead of a $2 trillion bill, it’s an $800 billion dollar bill. If you lower that threshold, you stick to highways and bridges then a lot of the negative stuff starts to come out.”

“Why would you put in something on emissions reductions on climate change to oil refineries in a highway bill? So, people say yeah that doesn’t make any sense, so then you get to the germane of saying that shouldn’t be in this bill.”

ExxonMobil said: “Our discussion on the bill are not accurately portrayed. Our lobbying efforts are related to a tax burden that could disadvantage us businesses.”

Carbon tax

Mr McCoy appears to suggest that ExxonMobil’s public support for a carbon tax is underpinned by the conviction it will never happen, allowing the company to “support” it in order to appear green.

He said: “I will tell you there is not an appetite for a carbon tax. It is a non-starter. Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans. And the cynical side of me says yeah we kind of know that. But it gives us a talking point. We can say well what is ExxonMobil for? Well we’re for a carbon tax.

“Carbon tax is not gonna happen. I have always said, and I’ve worked on climate change issues for twenty years. There’s a lot of talk around it and the bottom line is it’s going to take political courage, political will in order to get something done. And that just doesn’t exist in politics. It just doesn’t.

Purporting to speak on behalf of ExxonMobil, Mr McCoy also expressed a corporate view that, contrary to science, natural gas is a clean energy source.

He said: “On a clean electricity standard, we think natural gas will play a key role in anything. And not just as a bridge fuel. We think it is a low emission energy source and should be part of a clean electricity standard.”

ExxonMobil statement

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil told Channel 4 News:  “Greenpeace has waged a multi-decade campaign against our company and industry, which has included false claims and unlawful actions at our facilities as well as those of other companies around the world.

“Our lobbying efforts are related to a tax burden that could disadvantage U.S. businesses, and we have made that position known publicly. ExxonMobil stands by our position that increased taxes on American businesses make the U.S. less competitive.

“We have been clear in supporting an efficient, economy-wide price on carbon as the best way to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. While there is not broad support for a tax, we are actively and publicly discussing other options, including lower-carbon fuels and other sector-based approaches that would place a uniform, predictable cost on carbon.

“We have supported climate science for decades. Greenpeace and others have distorted our position on climate science and our support for effective policy solutions.

”ExxonMobil transparently engages with a variety of trade associations, think tanks and coalitions in order to promote informed dialogue and sound public policy in areas pertinent to the Corporation’s interests.

“ExxonMobil exercises its right to engage in lobbying in the United States at both the Federal and State levels to advocate our positions on issues that affect our Corporation and the energy industry.

“We have a responsibility to our customers, employees, communities and shareholders to represent their interests in public policy discussions that impact our business.

“Our lobbying efforts fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis, including the issues we discuss.”

breitbart.com › environment › 2021 › 01 › 24 › expert-biden-actions-against-american-oil-gas-energy-production-could-kill-many-1-million-jobs

Jan 24, 2021Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said in an interview on SiriusXM's Breitbart News Saturday with host Matt Boyle that if President Joe Biden puts a permanent ban on oil and gas development on federal waters and land, it could cost 1 million American jobs.

omfg

msnbc? calls it romney exxon bill, not the bipart infra

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/senior-exxonmobil-lobbyist/

raw story

Channel 4 in the U.K. published a startling expose on ExxonMobil's lobbyists who revealed the top most important U.S. Senators who are the ones behind any legislation that might hurt the oil industry.

While many oil companies are diversifying with natural gas, it appears ExxonMobil is going all-in battling to keep "big oil" alive and well.

"Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the U.S. Congress for the last eight years," explained the report.

"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not," said McCoy on camera. "Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing, there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."

McCoy compared his work with elected officials to fishing with ExxonMobil who supplies the "bait" before it "reels in" the official on issues like a carbon tax, electric cars, taxation and infrastructure.

"When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: 'Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'" McCoy continued. "And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it's all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in."

"I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They're a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them," McCoy also said.

He went on to explain that lobbyists aim to have close relationships with officials.

"You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we've asked for everything," he said.

But it was the shocking revelation that he has 11 U.S. Senators on the hook.

"Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio," were all cited.

He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.

"We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress," McCoy confessed.

"There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?" he asked.

See the video below and read the full story at Channel 4:

api 1021

Mike Sommers

President & CEO

Amanda Eversole

Amanda Eversole

Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Paul Afonso

Paul G. Afonso

Senior Vice President

Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary

Megan Bloomgren

Senior Vice President

Communications

megan Barnett Bloomgren serves as the senior vice president of Communications at the American Petroleum Institute (API), where she leverages her two decades of public affairs experience to direct communications on behalf of the U.S. natural gas and oil industry, including overseeing research activity, paid media campaigns, earned and digital media, and thought leadership.

Prior to joining API, Ms. Bloomgren served as acting Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director at the U.S. Department of the Interior, ZINKE where she directed communications and media, strategic planning, and policy-related actions. Ms. Bloomgren worked on the Presidential Transition Team with the Interior Secretary nomineeto prepare for confirmation hearings and first 100 days, including managing all aspects of earned and digital media, rapid response and coalition building.

Ms. Bloomgren was previously a partner at a public affairs consulting firm where she led global communications campaigns on energy, chemical, and regulatory issues and specialized in message development, crisis communications, coalition building and grassroots advocacy.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Bloomgren directed strategy and operations for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. She previously served as chief spokesperson for the Secretary of Energy, worked as the deputy director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, and was deputy press secretary at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Through her government service, she supported federal communications efforts in more than a dozen countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Ms. Bloomgren got her start working on Congressional campaigns in Pennsylvania and served on the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and 2004 re-elect. Ms. Bloomgren also spent three years as a consultant in Accenture's state and local government practice.

Ms. Bloomgren is a proud native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduate of La Salle University where she served on the university's board of trustees. She and her family reside in McLean, VA.

The beachhead list for the Interior Department, led by Sec. Ryan Zinke, sees many more alumni from the oil and gas industry. :{Ryan Nichols:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:, an Interior employee without a job title listed, formerly served as development director for the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (:{CFACT:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), a prominent college campus-based hub of the climate denial machine.

Nichols currently serves as an associate director for the Republican Party-allied think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, which has a federal budget blueprint already borrowed by the Trump administration and another plan recently released for Sec. Perry and the Department of Energy.

:{Megan :(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}::{Bloomgren:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:, another Interior employee with no listed job title, appears to be serving as the Interior Department’s spokesperson and as a part of its communications team, based on reporting by GreenWire.

Prior to landing the job at Interior, Bloomgren has gone back and forth through the government-industry revolving door. She worked multiple communications jobs in the George W. Bush administration, including at DOE, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Bloomgren also performed press work for the 2004 Bush presidential campaign and later, the Bush Inaugural Committee.

After leaving the Bush administration, Bloomgren began working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. She then moved on to the Republican Party-allied lobbying and public relations firm, :{DCI:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Group.

DCI, as DeSmog revealed, oversaw crisis communications work for Energy Transfer Partners and its Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota and may have helped create fake Twitter profiles depicting young women (and celebrities) espousing pro-pipeline talking points. Among DCI Group’s former lobbying clients is ExxonMobil.

:{Melissa Simpson:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:, listed as a special assistant to Sec. Zinke, until recently worked as director of governmental affairs for Safari Club International (SCI). Safari Club advocates in support of trophy hunting, a practice of hunting prized animals which are often rare or endangered. She also served as counselor and deputy director of external affairs for the Interior Department under George W. Bush. ...

Bill Koetzle

Bill Koetzle

Senior Vice President

Government Relations

Bill Koetzle serves as senior vice president of Government Affairs, leading advocacy efforts in Congress, the Administration and federal agencies on industry priority issues.

Before joining API, Koetzle spent a decade at Chevron, managing the company’s legislative, regulatory and political affairs, including the development of the company’s policy positions and advocacy strategy to achieve top priorities. While at Chevron, Koetzle spent time in Asia leading advocacy on Chevron’s tax and environmental priorities, managing government relations, internal and external communications, and community engagement activities in support of the company’s investments in six countries, including China and Thailand.

Prior to his time at Chevron, Koetzle spent a decade working in leadership and policy development roles in theHouse of Representatives, including as Deputy Republican Staff Director for the Committee on Energy and Commerce,Assistant to the Speaker for Policy and Illinois Director, and Legislative Director for Representative Dennis Hastert (R–Ill.) beginning in 1998. During his time in Congress, Koetzle managed the congressional and district offices for the Representative-turned-Speaker of the House, as well as constituent services and appropriations and was the primary advisor to Speaker Hastert on energy, environment, telecommunications, natural resources and agricultural issues. Koetzle later served as the Senior Vice President for Public Policy at the Institute for Energy Research, a non-profit organization that conducts research and analysis on impacts to global energy markets.

Koetzle graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Irvine. He went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. in political science, also from the University of California at Irvine. Koetzle and his family reside in northern Virginia.

Frank Macchiarola

Frank Macchiarola

Senior Vice President

Policy, Economics & Regulatory Affairs

Debra Phillips

Debra Phillips

Senior Vice President

Global Industry Services (GIS)

Rolf Hanson

Rolf Hanson

Vice President

State Government Relations

Robin Rorick

Robin Rorick

Vice President

Midstream & Industry Operations

Steven Sisneros

Steven Sisneros

Vice President

External Mobilization

Steve Sisneros serves as Vice President of External Mobilization, leading API's efforts to expand and engage a national network of industry advocates who help advance pro-energy policies and promote the critical role energy plays in daily life.

Steve comes to API after having spent the last two election cycles at theDCCC as the Director of Campaigns and Voter Contact, and in 2014 as National Field Director. It was in these positions that Steve honed his skills as a leader in field tactics, digital advertising, direct mail, print and radio advertising, and television. A key architect of the team that designed and executed the Democratic strategy of retaking the House majority in 2018, he is one of today’s top strategists for advocacy mobilization.

Steve brings a depth of knowledge of federal, state, and local-level campaign style tactics. Previously, he worked on numerous campaigns including the 2014 Ohio coordinated campaign, President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, Senator Reid’s 2010 re-election campaign, and issue advocacy work for the DNC in 2009 and for Organizing for Action in 2013. In addition to campaign and advocacy work, Sisneros also worked the 2009 and 2013 bi-annual Nevada legislative sessions.

Steve is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and proud New Mexican. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their two children.

but recall exxon lobbyist who says saf to endorse carbon tax b/c politically impossible? [mcc, manchin...]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change/

American Petroleum Institute, a major fossil fuels lobby group that includes members of companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil, has been opposed to setting a national price on carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. But this week, NBC News is reporting, API reversed that policy — and the group's CEO is acknowledging climate change as a reality.

NBC News' Josh Lederman reports that this change "follows a fierce internal debate within the organization over whether to embrace a carbon price, which several of the group's members had already publicly backed."

Many strident proponents of fossil fuels, from former President Donald Trump to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to Fox News pundits like Sean Hannity, are climate change deniers. But API CEO Mike Sommers, in an interview with NBC News, acknowledged climate change as a reality.

Sommers, discussing API's change of policy on a national carbon emissions price, told NBC News, "It's a recognition of the situation that we're in today and the importance of dealing with this important issue. This is a top priority of the Biden Administration, and we also know that climate change is real and that we need to be part of the discussion on one of the marquee items of our time."

Lederman, however, notes that API "is not endorsing a specific approach to putting a price on carbon." But Sommers, during his interview with NBC News, called for "investments in clean technologies."

Lederman explains, "Although major business and industry groups long fiercely opposed making emitters pay for their emissions, that opposition has ebbed as (the) industry has seen major government action as inevitable and began coalescing around a market-based approach that avoids the federal government issuing mandates. In recent years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and other groups have voiced support for a carbon price."

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insert

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063720073

wheeler on way out the door 12/20 ignores sci

with six weeks left in President Trump's term, EPA has cemented plans to bypass tighter soot standards, despite agency career staff conclusions and concerns about tens of thousands of additional deaths every year.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler has signed a final rule to keep the existing ambient air quality standards for soot in place at least another five years, according to people familiar with the matter both inside and outside the agency, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. A formal public announcement is scheduled for later this afternoon.

An EPA spokesman declined to comment in advance of that announcement.

The decision, which marks a victory for the fossil fuel industry but is certain to be challenged in court, comes as no surprise. In signing the draft rule this spring, Wheeler said he believed the existing limits sufficed to protect public health (Greenwire, April 14).

But his determination bypassed the findings of EPA air office employees who concluded in a report this year that the existing annual limit on soot exposure could be too weak to prevent "a substantial number" of premature deaths each year. An overview of 30 urban areas, for example, tied exposure to as many as 45,000 annual deaths from heart disease and other causes, with minority communities at greater risk. Those findings didn't take into account more recent research suggesting that long-term exposure to soot may also heighten vulnerability to COVID-19 (Greenwire, April 30).

As E&E News has previously reported, critics are already angling to reverse the decision under the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden (Greenwire, Nov. 23). In a letter late last month, for example, Democratic attorneys general from 16 states urged EPA to reopen the review on the grounds that fresh evidence of soot's perils had surfaced.

Equally contentious was the process by which the Trump administration pursued the legally required review of standards for what is formally known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5.

Under a fast-track timetable put in motion in mid-2018, the review is ending roughly two years ahead of its previous schedule.

While Wheeler cited the recommendation of an agency advisory committee in opting to stick with the status quo, that committee is chaired by a consultant who had previously done work for the American Petroleum Institute and was nominated for the position by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In late 2018, in what he later described as a streamlining move, Wheeler fired an auxiliary panel of researchers who were providing additional expertise to the review.

In statements today, environmental and scientific advocacy groups denounced his decision to stick with the status quo.

"The Trump administration rigged the rule-making process to achieve exactly this result by cutting science and scientists out of the picture at every turn," said Gretchen Goldman, research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy, which last year reconvened the fired panel to conduct a competing unofficial review, which found the evidence warranted tighter standards.

"The worst part of all of this is that low income communities and communities of color will bear the brunt of Wheeler's heartless decision," said Al Armendariz, an Obama-era EPA official who is now a senior director at the Sierra Club. "We look forward to the new administration following the scientific evidence and setting the air quality standard that meets legal requirements to protect public health."

Soot is known as PM2.5 because it is no bigger than 2.5 microns in diameter, or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair; its formation is closely associated with the burning of coal and oil products. With an ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and even get into the bloodstream, the tiny particles are associated with an array of respiratory and cardiovascular problems, including a greater risk of premature death under some circumstances.

EPA's current annual exposure threshold for PM2.5, set in 2012, is 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air; the daily limit, dating back to 2006, is 35 micrograms. In this year's report, EPA career staff concluded that the evidence justified an annual standard as low as 8 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Under the Clean Air Act, particulate matter is among a half-dozen common pollutants for which EPA must set and periodically review ambient air quality standards at least every five years. While the agency rarely meets that timetable, the newly signed final rule is intended to keep the existing standards in place through 2025 at a minimum.

On Friday, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed a routine review of the final draft rule, according to a government tracking website. In sending the rule back to EPA, OIRA officials canceled several meetings that had previously been scheduled with the California Air Resources Board, Environment America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, representatives for the three organizations confirmed in email messages and via Twitter.

wiki

A 1968 study by the Stanford Research Institute for the American Petroleum Institute noted:[40]

If the earth's temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur, including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis. [..] Revelle makes the point that man is now engaged in a vast geophysical experiment with his environment, the earth. Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000 and these could bring about climatic changes.

RS june 07

To direct the White House's spin on global warming, Connaughton appointed Philip Cooney as his top deputy. Cooney had the right experience for the job: He worked as "climate team leader" for the

American Petroleum Institute. In 1998, the API took part in an

industry coalition that created the "Global Climate Science

Communications Action Plan." The plan, recently entered into evidence by the House Oversight Committee,

maps out an elaborate disinformation campaign to prevent "precipitous action on climate

change." The strategy was to sow doubt about global warming,

disseminating industry-funded research to challenge "the science

underpinning the global climate change theory."

Now, with Cooney in the White House, the industry had its own anti-

climate man running the disinformation campaign. As the "action plan"

directed, Cooney set out to censor the EPA's science on global

warming and inject the industry's denialist positions into government

documents. "They decided they didn't need to win the debate on

climate," says Piltz, the former official who exposed Cooney's

tactics. "They just had to leave an atmosphere of uncertainty about

it and dissipate the will for political action."

But for all his credentials as a master of spin, Cooney got off to a

rough start. In May 2002, the administration released its Climate

Action Report, a dispatch to the U.N. that documents progress on

climate-treaty obligations. The report was developed by the EPA, but

internal documents reveal that Cooney edited it to reflect positions

advocated by the API and Ford. On the opening page of the chapter on climate impacts,

Cooney inserted a litany of language in bold

intended to cast doubt on the science: "the weakest links in our

knowledge . . . a lack of understanding . . . uncertainties . . .

considerable uncertainty . . . perhaps even greater uncertainty . . .

regarded as tentative."

But the clumsy caveats weren't enough to obscure the report's real

science. With the help of an EPA source, The New York Times filtered

out Cooney's waffling and filed a front-page story that called the

report "a stark shift for the Bush administration. " The report, the

Times observed, detailed "far-reaching effects that global warming

will inflict" and "for the first time mostly blames human actions for

recent global warming."

Cooney was horrified: An obscure government report he had tried to

whitewash now threatened to undermine his former employers in the

energy industry. Panicked, he called on an old friend for help. Myron

Ebell had been a key member of the coalition that crafted the

disinformation "action plan." In fact, casting doubt on global

warming is Ebell's full-time job: He heads the climate-denial

campaign at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that

was underwritten in part by ExxonMobil.

Ebell recalls that Cooney was frantic over the story in the

Times. "We tried to put some qualifiers on that chapter in the report," Cooney told him.

"We'd take the text from EPA, and then we'd

add a sentence like, 'We don't really know if this is really

happening.' So we tried to do it, but I can see now that we made a

total mess of it."

Ebell's advice to Cooney is contained in a e-mail dated June 3rd,

2002. "Thanks for asking for our help," he wrote. "I know you're in crisis mode. . . . I want to help you cool things down, but after

consulting with the team, I think that what we can do is limited until there is an official statement from the administration

repudiating the report."

That repudiation came the very next day. President Bush himself dismissed the report, saying it had been "put out by the

bureaucracy. " Forget the headlines, he said - there was no shift in the administration' s policy.

What happened next, according to internal e-mails obtained by Rolling Stone, reveals just how seriously the White House took its

intelligence fixing on global warming. Cooney was put in charge of damage control and was apparently instructed to craft a letter to the

Times denying that the president had changed course on climate

change. But this time, Cooney's editor was not just Connaughton, but

Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. The collaboration with

Rove raises questions about Cooney's congressional testimony last

March, in which he insisted, under oath, that he had not discussed

with Rove his work at the CEQ.

The letter drafted by Cooney - and vetted by Rove - insists that the

Climate Action Report "reinforces" the "significant scientific uncertainties" emphasized in the president's climate policy. Edits to

the rough drafts of the letter were blacked out by White House

censors, but Rove's pithy endorsement of the final draft

survived. "Great," he wrote in praise of Cooney's spin. "Defends the

report rather than staying focused on the policy." In other words, Cooney had succeeded in emphasizing the report's overhyped

uncertainties, thus shifting attention away from the White House's do- nothing approach to global warming.

Page 6

At the same time, Cooney got a pat on the back from Bill O'Keefe, his

old boss at API. In a letter to Bush's chief of staff, O'Keefe - by

that point a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil - urged the president

to tighten up the White House spin machine and make sure all

communications were "on the same page, with the same message."

O'Keefe also faxed a copy to Cooney with a handwritten note

reading, "P.S. You are doing a great job."

From then on, Cooney wielded a heavier pen when editing official

reports on global warming. Not content to obscure science with

uncertainty, he began to rewrite the science itself. Draft documents

made public by the House Oversight Committee reveal that Cooney now had veto power over federal scientists, including Richard Moss,

coordinator of the Climate Change Science Program Office, and even

James Mahoney, the assistant commerce secretary nominally in charge

of America's climate science.

In one document, Moss and Mahoney attempted to push back on several

of Cooney's more than 100 edits to an EPA document called "Our

Changing Planet" - each of which served to amplify uncertainty and

downplay the threat posed by global warming. Cooney repeatedly

overruled Moss and Mahoney with an aggressive "no" scrawled in the

margins. On another document Cooney marked up, he commanded

EPA officials that "these changes must be made." Beside one strike-

through marked with a star, Cooney wrote, "Red Flag: Do not cite

National Assessment" - dismissing the landmark report commissioned by Bush's father.

Although some of Cooney's edits were revealed in a New York Times

story in June 2005 that led to his departure, the full extent of his

interference has never been reported. His commissarial coup came in

April 2003, with his revisions to the EPA's Draft Report on the

Environment. He began by deleting the sentence "climate change has

global consequences for human health and the environment. " He then

deleted the top-line assessment by the National Research Council,

which establishes an unequivocal cause-and-effect link - "Greenhouse

gases are accumulating in the atmosphere as the result of human

activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean

temperatures to rise." In its place, Cooney wrote the following

mishmash of his own creation: "Some activities emit greenhouse gases

and other substances that directly or indirectly may affect the

balance of incoming and outgoing radiation, thereby potentially

affecting climate on regional and global scales."

The changes sparked a rebellion by the EPA's senior scientists. In an

internal memo uncovered by Congressional investigators, they wrote

that Cooney's edited text "no longer accurately represents scientific

consensus on climate change" and "may leave an impression that

cooling is as much an issue as warming." Whitman was also

furious. "The language that CEQ found acceptable was such pablum,"

she says now. "It was so much below the level of sophistication of

the report that I felt it would have denigrated it all." But her

solution to this problem was to simply delete the section on climate

change - handing Cooney a carte-blanche victory.

Whitman says she killed the section hoping that scientific documents

included with the report would speak for themselves. But the

capitulation helped drive her to the breaking point. Four days after

bowing to Cooney, she resigned as head of the EPA.

Internal documents uncovered by Rolling Stone reveal that Cooney did

far more than edit scientific reports to suit the administration' s

point of view. Just as neoconservative hawk Douglas Feith funneled

false intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs to the vice president,

Cooney steered industry-sponsored junk science on global warming to Cheney.

"What disturbed me most," Whitman says, "was the administration' s record of taking the most extreme of the science --what I call the 'political science' -- and giving it the same weight as the real science."

The most egregious example of cooked intelligence was a study

underwritten in part by the API, Cooney's former employer. The study,

which purported to show that the twentieth century was not unusually

warm, was authored by two astrophysicists, [gotta be Soon and Baliunas:

Baliunas has co-published numerous scientific papers with fellow climate change skeptic Willie Soon including a controversial paper in 2003 that suggested the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. Several members of the Climate Research journal resigned in protest to the flawed peer-review process allowing Baliunas's paper to be published. desmog ]

both of whom were on the payroll of the George C. Marshall Institute, a climate-denial group

funded by ExxonMobil and now headed by Bill O'Keefe, Cooney's former

boss. The paper's publication in a minor German journal in January

2003 quickly created a scandal, with the editor in chief and three

other editors resigning in shame after acknowledging that the paper

was fundamentally flawed and should never have been published.

"It was sham science," says McCarthy, the Harvard scientist. "It's

almost laughable, except that this study was held up by the

administration as a definitive refutation of the temperature record."

But even as the paper was being discredited, it was causing great

excitement in the White House. When Kathie Olsen of the Office of

Science and Technology Policy forwarded the study to Cooney, he

responded with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, Kathie!" Six minutes later,

according to internal e-mails, the study was in the hands of Kevin

O'Donovan, who served as Cheney's point man on climate. The study

also grabbed President Bush's attention, as revealed in an e-mail

sent two days later to a high-ranking White House official: "Bob - if

you din't [sic] already have, this is the study the President was

talking about."

The study gave Cheney's office the quasi-plausible refutation of

climate science it was waiting for. According to a memo reviewed by

congressional investigators, but which the CEQ refused to make

public, Cooney was eager to promote the sham science. The study, he e-

mailed O'Donovan, "represents an opening to potentially reinvigorate

debate on the actual climate history of the past 1,000 years." The

paper, he added, "contradicts the dogmatic view held by many in the

climate science community that the past century was the warmest in

the past millennium. . . . We plan to begin to refer to this study in

administration communications on the science of global climate

change."

One e-mail exchange about the study underscores just how many

industry foxes were guarding the climate henhouse.

When Matthew Koch (a White House energy adviser who today lobbies for API) saw the

study, he wrote to Cooney (the former API lobbyist who is

now "corporate issues manager" for ExxonMobil) and CC'd O'Donovan

(who now works for Shell Oil).

"What??!!" Koch wrote in mock disbelief at the study's claim that the

planet isn't really heating up. "I want to grow oranges in the

Arctic!"

Such joking aside, the administration continues to hold up the

discredited study as a counterweight to the IPCC's scientific, peer-

reviewed findings on global warming. Testifying before the House

Oversight Committee in March, Connaughton lauded the study as a "new

and major piece of science." His only regret, he said, is that "I'm

not a scientist, so I can't find it conclusive."

Although Cooney resigned in 2005, the campaign of disinformation he

implemented had the desired effect. Two months after Cooney returned

to work for ExxonMobil, the Cheney energy plan was passed into law.

A massive giveaway for the fossil-fuel industry, the Energy Policy Act [2005]

authorized $6 billion in subsidies for oil and gas production and

another $9 billion for coal producers. Worst of all, the bill fast-

tracked the construction of coal-fired power plants that would hasten

global warming.

Nor did Cooney's return to the oil industry spell an end to the

administration' s meddling in climate science. Less than a month

later, before the G8 summit on climate change, the administration

killed the opening line of the eight-country report - "Our world is

warming" - and quashed a section that cited "increasingly compelling

evidence of climate change." Last month, in negotiations leading up

to the newest round of G8 talks, the administration blocked another

motion that "resolute action is urgently needed in order to reduce

global greenhouse gas emissions."

"It's the ideological bent of the current administration, " says

McCarthy. "They seem absolutely resistant to any call to action, no

matter what the science says."...

==

icn 920

five States Have Filed Climate Change Lawsuits, Seeking Damages From Big Oil and Gas - InsideClimate News

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14092020/climate-change-lawsuit-connecticut-deleware

connecticut and Delaware have joined a growing list of states, cities and counties that have filed climate change lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, claiming oil and gas companies knew their products caused sea level rise and stronger hurricanes and willfully misled the public about those and other dangers related to global warming.

Connecticut's lawsuit, filed Monday, named ExxonMobil as a sole defendant, while the lawsuit filed on Friday by Delaware named 31 fossil fuel companies and trade groups. They joined Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Minnesota as states that have filed such litigation.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who served 36 years as a senator from Delaware, cited the state's lawsuit in a climate change address on Monday to underscore the costs of global warming and the Trump Administration's failure to address the issue. He called Trump, who was surveying the devastation of wildfires in California, a "climate arsonist."

"Just last week Delaware state attorney general sued 31—31—big fossil fuel companies alleging they knowingly wreaked havoc and damage on climate—our climate—damage that is plain for everyone to see but the President," he said.

The coastal city of Charleston, South Carolina, also filed a climate lawsuit last week, joining close to 20 other cities and counties seeking to hold the fossil fuel industries liable for damages resulting from increased flooding and precipitation, droughts and intensifying storm surges, in addition to sea level rise and stronger hurricanes. The other cities include Baltimore, Oakland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

In Connecticut's suit filed Monday, Attorney General William Tong sued Exxon for violating the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act, which allows for wide-ranging claims of public and private nuisance, trespass, negligence and for violating its Consumer Fraud Act.

"ExxonMobil sold oil and gas, but it also sold lies about climate science," Tong said when announcing the multi-billion dollar climate lawsuit against the company.

This spate of lawsuits comes after a series of recent rulings in similar cases that appear to give the advantage to states, counties and cities, legal scholars say.

The lawsuits also may send further tremors through the financial world that this summer has seen Exxon dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission report that concluded climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, those experts say.

Connecticut Singles Out Exxon for its 'Deceptive Record'

Unlike the other climate lawsuits confronting the oil and gas industry that sweep up the world's largest producers, the Connecticut lawsuit singles out Exxon as the sole defendant because the company's deceptive record is well established, Tong said in an email interview.

"ExxonMobil is a leader in the industry and has been for decades," Tong said. "We have evidence that shows that Exxon knew from its own scientists that climate change was occurring, made a deliberate decision to deceive consumers, and then successfully implemented that plan over the course of decades.

"That's the evidence we have, and it makes our case very straightforward."

The climate lawsuits cite an InsideClimate News series and a later Los Angeles Times story that revealed the extent of Exxon's knowledge about the central role of fossil fuels in causing climate change as far back as the 1970s, based on research performed by its own scientists.

"ExxonMobil's campaign of deception has contributed to myriad negative consequences in Connecticut, including but not limited to sea level rise, flooding, drought, increases in extreme temperatures and severe storms, decreases in air quality, contamination of drinking water, increases in spread of disease, and severe economic consequences," Connecticut's lawsuit says.

The lawsuit seeks money to pay for defending against climate change threats, restitution for remediation costs already made, disgorgement of corporate profits, civil penalties and disclosure of all climate research.

It also calls for the creation of a climate change education fund and an immediate end to the false and misleading information that ExxonMobil has been disseminating for years.

Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

Recent Rulings Weaken the Fossil Fuel Industry's Defense

Although the industry will no doubt put up a strenuous fight against these lawsuits, its chances of winning them have been diminished by a series of court rulings favorable to the plaintiffs, said Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law & Policy Center at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

Frank cited a recent ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered seven cases filed by local governments in California transferred from federal court to state court.

"The decision on where these cases will be heard seems to be pretty well settled," Frank said. "The state court forum gives the advantage to the plaintiffs whereas federal judges may not have had as much sympathy for these cases."

The first salvo in the legal war was fired in 2017 when Marin and San Mateo counties, near San Francisco, and the city of Imperial Beach, south of San Diego, filed climate lawsuits and drew national attention for daring to take on the powerful fossil fuel industry.

A ripple from the mounting number of lawsuits could be the further weakening of the oil industry's standing in financial markets, said Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the Vermont Law School.

Parenteau said a decision by the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop Exxon was a wakeup call to investors, as was last week's decision by federal financial regulators to identify the cost of climate change as a factor in market stability.   Their report called out the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts, flooding—and climate litigation as market stressors.

Now that the industry is potentially facing multi-billion dollar judgments, the pressure will continue to mount on these companies from financial markets to divorce from their oil-only business model, Parenteau said.

"There is going to be a verdict and it's going to be big," he said. "The smart money people see that and they don't want to be holding the bag."

The industry's primary defense has been that climate change issues are not a matter for judicial review but rather of legislative remedy. The courts have largely disagreed, saying as a federal court of appeals did in a case filed by Baltimore, that local jurisdiction was proper. Although those rulings have given momentum to the cities and states, they still face formidable challenges by the industry.

Another possible showdown in the Supreme Court looms later this month when the court will consider whether to take on the jurisdiction question that could provide definitive guidance on the venue of these claims.

While the states, cities and counties, for the most part, want their lawsuits heard in state courts, the industry prefers the federal courts as a venue so that they can argue the Clean Air Act and other federal laws preempt any claim under state law that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels cause climate change and related property damage.

'It is Not About Stopping Climate Change. It's About Delaware Surviving It'

Delaware's lawsuit against 31 fossil fuel entities and trade groups claims negligent failure to warn, trespass, public nuisance and multiple violations of Delaware's Consumer Fraud Act. It seeks monetary damages to compensate the state and punish the companies, including $10,000 per violation of the Consumer Fraud Act.

"Defendants have known for decades that climate change impacts could be catastrophic, and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible," Democrat Kathy Jennings, the Delaware attorney general, says in the lawsuit

The complaint, which targets such oil giants as Exxon, Chevron and Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute trade organization, argues that changes to Delaware's environment are a "direct and proximate consequence of Defendants' wrongful conduct," and disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the matter of who will pay for the mounting financial, environmental and public health costs of the climate crisis, Jennings said during a news conference announcing the lawsuit.

"It is not about stopping climate change. It's about Delaware surviving it," she said.

The lawsuit further blasts the industry for falsely?claiming through advertising campaigns ... that their businesses are substantially invested in lower?carbon technologies and renewable energy sources.

"In truth, each Fossil Fuel Defendant has invested minimally in renewable energy while continuing to expand its fossil fuel production ... None of Fossil Fuel Defendants' fossil fuel products are 'green' or 'clean' because they all continue to ultimately warm the planet," according to the lawsuit.

Shell and Chevron disputed the claims.

"These special-interest-promoted lawsuits designed to punish a few companies who lawfully deliver affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy undermine real efforts to address the complex policy issues presented by global climate change,"  Chevron spokesperson Sean Comey said in an email. "There is no evidence Chevron misled the public about climate change. Those claims are false."

Shell spokeswoman Anna Arata said the courtroom is not the right venue to address climate change, and that change needs to come through "smart policy from government" supported by business sectors, including the fossil fuel industry, to address 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 said

API released a boilerplate response it issues in these cases. Paul G. Afonso, the American Petroleum Institute's chief legal officer and senior vice president, said in a statement: "The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint. Any suggestion to the contrary is false."

Charleston is the First Southern City to File a Climate Lawsuit

The Charleston lawsuit seeks to hold two dozen major oil and pipeline companies accountable for climate change damages to the city. The lawsuit claims their products and the spread of misinformation about fossil fuels have caused increasing and disastrous flooding.

South Carolina's largest city, Charleston is the first in the South to file a climate lawsuit.

Filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Charleston, the suit asks that Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and other companies to pay for the costs to keep the city from flooding.

"As a direct and proximate consequence of Defendants wrongful conduct described in this complaint, the environment in and around Charleston is changing, with devastating adverse impacts on the City and its residents," according to the lawsuit, which asserts six causes of action, including public and private nuisance, strict liability and negligent failure to warn, trespass and violations of South Carolina's Unfair Trade Practices Act

Flooding events have increased substantially in Charleston, from around four days per year around 50 years ago to nearly 89 days per year as of 2019.

The City has incurred significant costs on capital projects to address sea level rise, including rebuilding its aging Low Battery Seawall, installing check valves to prevent tidal intrusion on the City's storm drain system and redesigning and retrofitting its floodwater drainage system to keep up with increased flooding caused by sea level rise, including by constructing more than 8,000 feet of new drainage tunnels, according to the lawsuit.

City officials have estimated the cost of keeping up with rising sea levels at $2 billion.

Says Charleston's lawsuit: "The City seeks to ensure that the parties who have profited from externalizing the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming and its physical, environmental, social, and economic consequences, bear the costs of those impacts on Charleston, rather than the City, taxpayers, residents, or broader segments of the public."

covid // partic holo

icn 820

...As Covid-19 cases and fatalities were escalating in the United States, the Trump administration took several actions on pollution that—in the researchers' view—lent urgency to their work. On March 26, EPA Administrator Wheeler took the extraordinary step of announcing a suspension of environmental law enforcement because of Covid-19—relief that had been sought by the oil and gas industry. Wheeler insisted that companies were only being relieved of reporting requirements, not their pollution limits. But in fact, without self-reporting by the companies EPA would not know whether they were violating pollution limits or not.

On March 30, the EPA finalized a rollback in vehicle fuel economy standards, a step the administration's own regulatory analysis concluded would increase adverse health impacts due to PM 2.5. Meanwhile, any day Wheeler was expected to open for public comment his decision not to strengthen the national air quality standard for PM 2.5.

"At the time of a pandemic that attacks the lungs, it's really inconceivable not to clean the air," Dominici said. "I wanted to put this study out there as soon as possible—considering all of the limitations, and being very open about discussing the limitations—to raise the urgency and the importance of this issue.

"We are in the middle of a pandemic, which honestly, we don't know how to fight, even without what I think are really unwise decisions by the Trump administration," she said.

Dominici checked with some of the major scientific journals, and was assured that they would still be eligible to submit their manuscript for peer review and publication if it was posted as a preprint first.

In New York, mobile morgues were set up outside strained hospitals. U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said that it would be the "hardest and the saddest" week for "most Americans' lives."

Shortly after 8 a.m. on April 7, New York City's deadliest day in the pandemic, with 597 coronavirus fatalities, the Harvard team's study was posted on MedRxiv. The paper didn't mention the Trump administration by name, but took its Covid enforcement policy to task.

"Despite the inherent limitations of the ecological study design, our results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID-19 crisis," the authors wrote.

By noon, The New York Times posted a story about the new study, noting it could have "far-reaching implications" in regard to the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks.

Controversy, and a Revision of Findings

Reaction to the Harvard study was swift, and divided.

Joe Biden, then close to securing the Democratic presidential nomination (Bernie Sanders would drop out of the race the next day), shared the Times story on Twitter. "We're starting to see evidence that long-term exposure to air pollution—which disproportionately affects communities of color & low-income communities—is linked to COVID-19 death rates," he posted. "It's past time we treat pollution like the threat to our health it is."

Fifteen environmental groups cited the Harvard research in the lawsuit they filed the following week against the Trump administration over its pandemic-related rollback of environmental enforcement. "EPA's policy is especially dangerous in light of recent research showing that increased air pollution causes a statistically significant increase in the COVID-19 death rate," said the complaint led by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Meanwhile, former coal industry executive Steve Milloy, who served on Trump's EPA transition team and is a vocal supporter of the president's environmental rollbacks, blasted the study as "totally absurd" on his web site, junkscience.com. He repeated his oft-stated position, which conflicted with the consensus science and even the stance of Trump's EPA, that PM 2.5's link to premature death was not "biologically plausible."

For his part, EPA Administrator Wheeler dismissed the Harvard results as preliminary, then lit into the researchers.

"We look forward to reviewing the Harvard study once it's completed and peer reviewed, but at this point, it's not," he said on April 14, the day he announced his long-anticipated decision not to strengthen the air quality standard for PM 2.5.

"I have to say, at least in the press, that the scientists seem to have a bias," Wheeler added. "They are talking about our enforcement discretion memo, and either they didn't read it or they didn't understand it." Wheeler repeated that there would be no pollution increase due to the enforcement memo, an assertion impossible to document at that point.

Dominici, in an interview, defended the rigor of the team's scientific results, given the limitations of the available data. But she bristled at the notion that concern over the health impacts of air pollution was an improper bias.

"I've worked with EPA and I've been funded by EPA," said Dominici. "My own bias is that I'm biased in favor of protecting the public. And I'm biased in favor of protecting the most vulnerable. So yes, you know, this is a bias I'm really proud to have."

But the Harvard researchers also faced criticism from within the scientific community.

Two scientists who have published extensively on the associations between air pollution and adverse health effects said the Harvard research had so many shortcomings they were not convinced of its results. In an essay on April 21 for The Conversation, Paul Villeneuve, an epidemiologist at Carleton University, and Mark Goldberg, a professor of medicine at McGill University, noted why county-level data was inadequate for drawing conclusions. They brought up a number of potentially problematic factors that the Harvard study had not taken into account, including varying physical distancing policies and the possible underreporting of deaths. Interactions among the factors were so complex, they argued, it was impossible to account for them without  information about individuals.

"Proper peer review must not be bypassed—and the onus for respecting its role falls not just on journalists but also on scientists to communicate the correct information accurately," Villeneuve and Goldberg wrote.

The following week, on April 27, the Harvard team updated and revised their results. They added three more weeks worth of coronavirus fatalities and nearly doubled the number of potentially confounding variables in the analysis—including, for example, the stage of the pandemic and the state stay-at-home orders. The result was a slightly weaker but still significant association between PM 2.5 and Covid-19 deaths: an 8 percent—instead of 15 percent—greater risk of death for every 1 microgram per cubic meter increase in PM 2.5.

"As soon as you get the preprint out, you can receive feedback from scientists all around the world," said Wu. "As a result we have much stronger models in the second version of the paper."

The American Petroleum Institute, however, argued that the revision was evidence of the study's underlying weakness. The update was "an action that suggests some fragility in the overall study results, and sets a precedent that the findings will likely continue to change due to the preliminary nature of the work," API said, in an analysis of the Harvard study that the industry trade group submitted to EPA's science advisory committee.

Cox, chair of the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, had harsher words, in an interview with The Washington Examiner.

"This whole thing is a bogus piece of analysis," he said. "It's technically unsound. It has sensational policy implications, none of which are trustworthy."

Views on the Harvard study—and on the connection between air pollution and Covid-19—were hardening along political fault lines.

"In his inaugural address, Trump spoke of 'American carnage.' He is delivering just that," said former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NRDC president Gina McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator under Obama, in an editorial on May 4. Citing the Harvard study, they blasted Trump for "his push to increase air pollution in the midst of an unprecedented respiratory pandemic—jeopardizing people's ability to survive it."

The reliably conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal shot back the same day, lamenting that "opponents of fossil fuels are flogging a sloppy study that ties pollutants to coronavirus deaths.

"It may be that long-term exposure to PM 2.5 modestly raises the coronavirus death risk, but more rigorous studies are needed to prove this, and shutting down fossil-fuel production now won't save lives," the Wall Street Journal said. "It will deny livelihoods to hundreds of thousands of people."

'A Bit of a Wild West Out There' ...

==

ref

https://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf//BAD8E161CD3160BE852585580047CE29/$File/API+Comments+EPA's+Charge+Questions+to+SAB+COVID-19+April+27+2020.pdf

11 pp

to: April 27, 2020 Zaida I. Figueroa Correa, DrPh, MSc U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of the Administrator Science Advisory Board Staff Office 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW (MC-1400R) Washington, DC 20460

...Our comments are broadly focused on the following two research categories titled: • Environmental Factors affecting transmission and severity of COVID-19 • Human Health Risk Factors affecting transmission and severity of COVID-19 In response to the charge questions, • We discuss study design challenges in the current literature and offer some potential solutions •

We offer a decision-making method that can be used to evaluate and prioritize studies • We provide ideas for other areas of potential research We believe that the Agency has an opportunity to address the question of if, how, and to what extent air quality impacts incidence, progression, and severity, including mortality, on infectious April 27, 2020 Page 3 of 11 diseases, particularly Covid-19.

Additionally, the Pandemic presents a valuable opportunity to study the impact of a variety of policy and regulatory decisions that have impacted the public’s exposure time-activity patterns, as well as changes in outdoor and indoor air quality. However, before any research moves forward, that COVID-19 related mortality data would need to be validated and representative...

The SAB COVID-19 Review Panel document lists exposure to outdoor air pollutants as a longterm research question that could enhance knowledge and capabilities. Considering the Federal Interagency Committee on Indoor Air Quality supports EPA indoor air quality (IAQ) research program, could there be an analogous research question associated with indoor emissions? For example, the long-term research question associated with indoor emissions could be stated as “Does exposure to indoor air pollutants, including indoor emissions, re-suspension, transport from outdoors, and indoor aerosol aging processes, increase the susceptibility to respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2? Or exacerbate existing COVID-19 infection?”

In closing, API supports this SAB activity and looks forward to a report focusing on the critical work that can further public health. If you have any further questions or would like any more information regarding the recommendations discussed, please free to contact me at (202) 682- 8480 or blakeu@api.org. Sincerely, Uni Blake Senior Policy Advisor American Petroleum Institute

sadly, no exstro,[?]

Burns, C.J., LaKind, J.S., Mattison, D.R., Alcala, C.S., Branch, F., Castillo, J., Clark, A., Clougherty, J.E., Darney, S.P., Erickson, H. and Goodman, M., 2019. A matrix for bridging the epidemiology and risk assessment gap. Global Epidemiology, 1, p.100005.

==

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/stratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups/

The

Fracking Files: Stratfor Provided Energy Industry with Intel on ProPublica, Environmental Groups

Industry’s 2009 fears of a muscular fracking opposition have come to pass

ADAM FEDERMAN

DECEMBER 10, 2013

Long before the first anti-fracking bans were passed in North America, the oil and gas industry was taking stock of its adversaries through profiles and briefings produced by Stratfor, the Austin-based global intelligence company. The company is known for its investigations into activist groups on behalf of some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies. The documents – part of a massive cache of emails, reports, and communiques published by Wikileaks beginning in early 2012 – reveal an industry concerned about an impending grassroots backlash to the fracking boom. In hindsight, it appears the industry was right to be worried: Today, opposition to oil and gas fracking is one of the most vigorous strands of the larger environmental movement.

proPublica – which was launched in 2008, just as fracking was becoming a public health issue – led the way on the first reporting about the environmental impacts of gas drilling. In 2009 its leading energy reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, won a Polk Award for his work “documenting the deadly side effects of hydraulic fracturing.” To date the website has published more than 150 fracking-related articles.The Wikileaks revelations show that the oil and gas industry was especially worried about the first hints of negative publicity.

In December 2009 Stratfor drafted a profile of ProPublica, detailing its organizational structure, partnerships with other well-established media outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times, and sources of funding. Stratfor argues that ProPublica’s work has helped to galvanize public opposition to drilling in the Marcellus Shale. “The growth of the Marcellus shale was not a controversial issue until ProPublica stories given to the Albany Times-Union carried the message that, according to ProPublica’s editor in chief, New York was about to ‘put legislative and regulatory protocols into place to give the industry carte blanche to drill wherever it chose.’ Out of this series of articles came the backlash and delays that continue to beset operations in the region."

The Stratfor document, which was sent to at least one corporate client, The American Petroleum Institute (API), describes ProPublica as a “realist organization,” but one that is “reflexively anti-corporate.” The authors write: “ProPublica appears to view major corporations and much of government as decidedly opposed to the ‘public interest.’” They also describe the website’s model of partnering with larger media outlets and distributing stories free of charge. Because of the organization’s critical view of corporations, the Stratfor analysts write, “the net effect of these free stories is to tilt coverage of certain issues, especially in local newspapers.”

(The document goes on to explain that ProPublica has covered natural gas drilling more closely than just about any other issue, with the possible exception of the financial crisis. Of Lustgarten they write, “Each of the stories he writes contends that the practice [fracking] is far more dangerous to neighbors and the environment than both corporations and government admit. Lustgarten portrays the industry as knowingly misleading the public and using political influence to win beneficial responses from regulators.”)

The impetus for the report appears to have come from Walt Retzsch, a senior policy advisor with API. In an internal email, Bart Mongoven, Stratfor’s then-vice president, wrote: “Walt needs to know about ProPublica. He needs whatever we can put together by 5:00. Then by COB Friday, he needs another profile in line with other profiles we have done. I have no context as to why this is coming up now.” In another email Mongoven describes the American Petroleum Institute as “our biggest client.”

Around the same time that the ProPublica profile was written, Stratfor also prepared a background brief on shale gas activism for ExxonMobil. Dated December 15, 2009 it warns that shale gas activism is “likely to soon become an important element of the no Dirty Energy Campaign.” Several months later ExxonMobil announced its acquisition of XTO Energy, which had obtained millions of acres of lease holdings in the Marcellus Shale. As if unsure of its own decision – a $40 billion investment – ExxonMobil demanded the inclusion of an unusual escape clause that allows the company to back out of the deal if Congress regulates hydraulic fracturing to the point that it becomes “illegal or commercially impracticable.”

According to Stratfor, however, such an outcome would be unlikely because environmental organizations were divided over the potential benefits of natural gas. At the time, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope was working with Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest natural gas producers in the US, on a “Clean Skies” initiative. A Stratfor analyst wrote: “Some environmental groups feel pressed to find a way to accept (albeit tacitly) hydraulic fracturing and new shale gas projects generally.” But most local chapters of the Sierra Club and smaller grassroots organizations were opposed. Stratfor picked up on this nascent rift within the environmental community between those who view natural gas as a clean alternative to coal and oil and those who see it as just another dirty fossil fuel. Stratfor underlined the potential for driving a wedge between moderates and radicals within the environmental movement.

(The Sierra Club has since reversed its policy on natural gas and now has a Beyond Gas campaign, but the issue of gas extraction continues to divide environmentalists.)

A similar strategy was outlined in a 2010 presentation on tar sands activism. Titled “Oil Sands Market Campaigns,” the document, first reported by Steve Horn at Mint Press News, divides tar sands activists into four categories–radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. It essentially offers a blueprint on how to neutralize the opposition.

https://www.drillednews.com/post/alleging-consumer-fraud-minnesota-sues-exxon-koch-and-api-for-climate-change-deception

june 24

Minnesota on Wednesday joined the growing number of states and municipalities seeking damages from the fossil fuel industry for knowingly deceiving consumers about climate change and its impacts. But Attorney General Keith Ellison is charting a different and potentially groundbreaking legal course from those lawsuits, by suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute under state laws that prohibit lying to consumers.

To date the majority of this generation of climate suits are nuisance cases. They allege that fossil fuel companies’ efforts to misinform the public on climate change successfully delayed for decades any regulations and other actions to slow or stop it, creating the need for billions of dollars in mitigation costs that municipal and state governments could otherwise have avoided. In those cases, which include among others suits filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., and Boulder, Colo.,, the plaintiffs are seeking damages: They want fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of the cost of climate adaptation.

The Minnesota case is different in a few key ways:

First, there are two of the defendants, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute, or API, the largest fossil fuel industry trade group. The nuisance suits have concentrated on companies with refineries and pipelines, such as Exxon. This suit, however, focuses on knowingly and actively deceiving the public— it is targeting the refiners and distributors not just of fossil fuel products, but of climate change denial, an arena where both API and Koch have been major players.

In 1998, API convened a group of industry stakeholders to draft the blueprint of the industry’s climate disinformation strategy in an effort to keep the U.S. from committing to binding emissions reductions targets under the first international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol. Ten years later, ahead of the pivotal 2008 climate conference in Copenhagen where nations hoped to agree on a strong successor to the Kyoto pact, API spent at least $75 million with one PR firm alone, Edelman, to work against climate action. And that was just one contract in one year.

Koch Industries, along with co-owners and brothers Charles and the late David Koch themselves, have for decades funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and front groups that spread climate disinformation. The long list of examples ranges from the work of Patrick Michaels, the Cato Institute’s director of the Center for the Study of Science to the “documentary” Green Tyranny (which originally aired on Fox News), as well as one of the earliest convenings of climate deniers, “Global Environmental Crises: Science or Politics?” which the  Cato Institute hosted in 1991.

Which brings us to the second key difference: The claim itself. It’s not a nuisance claim, but a consumer protection suit that combines Minnesota statutory and common laws centered on false advertising, deceptive trade practices, and consumer fraud. In that way, it’s closer to the Massachusetts fraud case against ExxonMobil, than to the dozen or so climate liability cases making their way through the country’s state and federal district courts.

“This complaint does not seek to hold these companies accountable for climate change. It seeks to hold them accountable for violating Minnesota’s consumer protections,” said Leigh Currie, Minnesota’s assistant attorney general at a press conference announcing the suit. This is significant because, the complaint’s reliance on state consumer protection laws may help it avoid some of the jurisdictional issues that the nuisance cases have faced.

And then there’s the injunctive relief part, which makes this case unique, and a really interesting one to watch moving forward. Injunctive relief is legalese for a court order that forces some person or entity to stop doing something. In this case, Ellison has asked for injunctive relief to stop deception, a corrective public education campaign in Minnesota on climate change, and full disclosure of all internal research the three defendants have conducted on the issue of climate change.

“This was a 30-year effort to defraud consumers in Minnesota about climate change and the role of fossil fuel products in it,” Ellison said at the press conference, illustrating his point with a series of images of internal industry documents revealing what they knew and when.

Several other speakers at the press event connected the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial efforts to the tobacco industry’s deception of the public about the harms of smoking, including Doug Blanke, a former state prosecutor who now directs the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hammond School of Law.  When he worked in the Attorney General’s office, Blanke spent much of his time on lawsuits holding Big Tobacco accountable. “We were combatting the lies of the tobacco industry — lies that echo through every page of today's lawsuit,” he said. “These strategies are ripped straight from the pages of tobacco’s playbook.”

Minnesota’s suit is also seeking restitution and disgorgement of profits, essentially a handing over of ill-gotten gains. The complaint does not request a specific amount, but  it compares the billions of dollars in profits earned by oil companies from the 1980s to the early 2000s, with the billions of dollars of climate-related costs borne by Minnesota residents, stating, “If Defendants had not misled the public to pad their own pockets, Minnesota would not have already incurred such large costs because of climate change and would not be facing such dramatic future costs.”

Flooding has increased dramatically in Minnesota over the past decade. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over the last half century, average annual precipitation in most of the Midwest increasing by 5 to 10% with rainfall during the four wettest days of the year has increased about 35%. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency notes that temperatures have increased by 1 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit statewide, and that more frequent heavy rains have been causing low areas to flood, resulting in crop, home, and business damages.

Minnesotans are also grappling with immediate impacts of the oil and gas industry on public health and the environment, including air pollution and pipeline-related water pollution. Environmental activist and author Winona LaDuke, a member of the Chippewa White Earth Nation in north-central Minnesota, spoke about the Enbridge pipeline. “I never expected to be spending years fighting Enbridge, but this pipeline company brings more than 70% of the tar sands oil into this country,” she said.

Sam Grant, director of the climate action group Minnesota 350, connected the lawsuit to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We have a choice between freedom to profit or freedom to breathe,” he said. “It ought to be a no brainer that freedom to breathe comes first, because we have to be alive for anything else to happen.”

Grant described low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods in northern Minneapolis where air pollution from fossil fuel facilities has shortened lifespans by at least 11 years compared to the national average. And in a first for climate lawsuits, the complaint itself highlights climate justice, too, right up top on the first page, where it notes, "Warming will continue with devastating economic and public-health consequences across the state and, in particular, disproportionately impact people living in poverty and people of color."

While oil companies don’t like to lose money, especially now when the oil and gas market is turned upside down, it’s possible the “disclosure of all internal research” piece of the Minnesota suit is the thing they’ll fight hardest. A full disclosure of the Koch, API, and ExxonMobil files on climate change could hurt its chances of winning all the  other climate cases, and send the industry hurtling down the Big Tobacco pathway towards a multi-hundreds of billions of dollars settlement with states.

Juwaria Jama, co-leader of the Minnesota Youth Climate Strike, spoke about the fossil fuel industry “infringing on Indigenous and low-income communities to build pipelines and refineries that harm those communities.”

“Because of the deception of these companies, as teenagers we are spending our time fighting for a future that could be stolen,” said Jama, “a last-minute battle to preserve a livable world for myself and subsequent generations. And the most heartbreaking thing is that it could have been prevented.

“These corporations knew the impacts of climate change long before now, and they could have sounded the alarm. Instead they covered up the damage,” she said. “These corporations have gone far too long without being held accountable for our globe and our future.”

==

==

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27032020/coronavirus-covid-19-EPA-API-environmental-enforcement

trump’s Move to Suspend Enforcement of Environmental Laws is a Lifeline to the Oil Industry

BY: ICN STAFF

The American Petroleum Institute sought the EPA’s help for companies hurt by COVID-19. One former EPA official called the suspension “an open license to pollute."

Read More

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heated 320

it  took Maine Governor Janet Mills 12 days since the first case of novel coronavirus hit to implement the type of restrictive social distancing policies scientists overwhelmingly recommend to halt disease spread, including the closure of nonessential businesses.

It took her only five days, however, to delay the state’s ban on single-use plastic bags, using a scientifically questionable theory that reusable bags pose an outsized risk of spreading COVID-19.

Since Mills’ March 17 order, reusable grocery bags in Maine have become taboo. City officials are now discouraging shopping from bringing them to the store, claiming they will threaten grocery story workers. “According to current research and understanding, COVID-19 can survive on various surfaces for hours and in some cases days,” Portland City Manager Jon Jennings said in a news release last week.

And though Mills was the first state governor in America to give credence to this theory, she hasn’t been the last. Over the weekend, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu outright prohibited shoppers from bringing reusable bags to stores. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker did the same on Wednesday. “From now on, reusable bags are prohibited and all regulations on plastic bag bans are lifted,” he said.

This, however, is likely just the beginning of the plastic industry’s war on reusable bags. Because as the pandemic has picked up steam in America, so too has the industry’s push for policy and culture shifts to encourage single-use plastics, and ban reusable alternatives. Their allies in the news media, oil and gas industry, and conservative think tank world are all quickly lining up behind them—and together, they’re putting pressure on the public and the federal government get on board.

Last week, the Plastics Industry Association asked the Department of Health and Human Services to make a national pronouncement supporting single-use plastics and advocating against reusable grocery bags, claiming they will worsen the pandemic. “Study after study after study have shown that reusable bags can carry viruses and bacteria, spread them throughout a grocery store, and live on surfaces for up to three days,” they claimed.

But those three studies don’t actually say what the industry claims. Taken together, they do not provide sufficient evidence that reusable grocery bags pose a greater threat to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic than single-use plastic grocery bags.

Let’s go through them one by one.

1) The 10-year-old American Chemistry Council-funded study that looked at 84 reusable bags in two states and found no disease-causing bacteria

The first piece of research that the plastic industry says strongly suggests a correlation between reusable grocery bags and coronavirus spread was this 2010 study funded by the American Chemistry Council, an industry group which represents plastics interests. Conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona, it was published in the journal Food Protection Trends in 2011.

Analyzing just 84 reusable bags collected in California and Arizona, the studies authors concluded that “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half.” They did not, however, find any pathogenic bacteria or strains of E. Coli that actually make you sick. As Consumer Reports noted at the time, “They only found bacteria that don’t normally cause disease, but do cause disease in people with weakened immune systems.”

“A person eating an average bag of salad greens gets more exposure to these bacteria than if they had licked the insides of the dirtiest bag from this study,” Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, said in the article. “These bacteria can be found lots of places, so no need to go overboard.”

The reason there was bacteria on the bags was because people didn’t wash them. If people washed the bags, the study said, 99.9 percent of all bacteria was destroyed.

2) The study that looked at 30 reusable bags and said essentially the same thing

The second study, published in the international journal Food Control in 2019, found microbes capable of causing food-borne illness on the bags. This time, half the bags tested had coliform bacteria on them and some even had E. coli.

This makes sense, again, because the bags had a bunch of food in them, and were not washed or sanitized. As Johns Hopkins University infectious disease specialist told Bustle at the time, “Reusable shopping bags, like anything, can accumulate micoorganisms from the environment. Unless the bag is visibly soiled, most of the risk is not worth worrying about.”

Of course, this means coronavirus could be on your bag, because coronavirus can live on plastic surfaces for up to 3 days. But neither of these studies indicate that it has any greater risk of being on your reusable bag than, say, your money, your phone, or your hands, which also get a lot of use at the grocery story. Nor do they indicate that reusable bags made of plastic have a greater risk of holding the virus than single-use plastic bags, which could be infected with pathogens during transportation, manufacturing, or handling.

Cameron Wolfe, an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University, told the Wall Street Journal something similar, when talking about how companies like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have stopped filling customers’ reusable cups out of fear of coronavirus. “It’s drawing a pretty long bow to believe this will be meaningfully impactful,” he said. “It’s an incredibly low likelihood that the cup would be the primary vehicle for transmission to occur.”

The article added: “Coronavirus can survive for a period outside the body and is transmitted through droplets like those generated by a cough or a sneeze. If a cup is infected, its owner probably is too, said Mr. Wolfe, making handing over cash and touching door handles potentially just as risky.

“You’d have a better impact if you told customers with active coughs not to come in, or to use hand sanitizer before approaching the coffee stand,” he said.”

3) The study that looked at one reusable bag that someone had literally vomited next to in a bathroom and then gave to a group of children.

Yeah, honestly, like I can’t even go there with this one. You can read about that study here.

Also, coronavirus is not a norovirus. It is literally not the same thing.

No evidence, no problem

There is certainly a chance that coronavirus could live on our reusable grocery bags if those bags come in contact with an infected person—particularly if those bags are made of plastic. A study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the novel coronavirus is most stable on plastic surfaces.

But that also includes single-use plastic surfaces, said Aaron Bernstein, the director of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment. “This suggests that relying on plastic bags may be the best way to ensure the virus persists in the environment and facilitates spread of the disease.”

Clearly, there is still a debate to be had over the efficacy of plastic bag policies for coronavirus—especially since plastic bag bans in themselves are attempts to address climate change and ocean pollution, two other pressing global crises. It would be foolish to prematurely stop an attempt to address two global crises without a baseline sort of consensus that it would even remotely help the other.

The right and its allies, however, appear to have made up their minds. Energy in Depth, a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, wrote an article claiming coronavirus will spread without more single-use plastic bags. The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal have written editorials in support of reversing bag bans. Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative anti-climate group, is taking out ads on Facebook claiming that plastic bag bans help spread the coronavirus infectio.

[graf twt]

it makes sense why so many right-leaning interest groups would come together on this issue. Before coronavirus, single-use plastic products were falling out of favor, as studies showed they were exacerbating climate change and destroying the ocean. Now, the industry is hoping COVID-19 will make everyone forget all that.

“As the coronavirus spreads across the country, single-use plastics will only become more vital,” Plastics Industry Association President Tony Radoszewski said in a statement last week. “We live longer, healthier, and better because of single-use plastics.”

Bernstein, however, is hoping that we remember something else. “In a crisis, we need science to guide us,” he said. “And that means science done by credible investigators who are supported by organizations without a vested financial interest in a specific outcome of their research.”

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no lnx

British Petroleum (BP) is working to clean up its climate image. In the two months since environmental law nonprofit Client Earth filed a complaint against the UK oil giant with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) alleging its ads were misleading, BP has announced intentions to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050,  stop all “corporate reputation” advertising and, now, withdraw from trade associations with approaches on climate that are out of step with its values.

The company announced this week it will resign its membership in the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and will not renew its membership with the Western Energy Alliance (WEA).

The decision came after BP conducted a review comparing the climate-related policies of several trade associations to its own. The company found its policies are not aligned with those of the AFPM, WSPA and WEA.

BP cited WEA’s opposition of federal methane regulation as a main area of misalignment. BP said “recent and developing differences in the area of carbon pricing” have contributed to its decision to leave the WSPA, as has its current focus on stopping a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) initiative in Washington state. But while proclaiming to support a tax on carbon, BP contributed nearly $13 million to a campaign by the WSPA to help defeat a Washington state carbon emissions fee initiative in 2018.

BP listed disagreements over carbon pricing as the main reason for leaving the AFPM.

However, BP will remain a member of the American Petroleum Institute (AP), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), despite finding that its policies are only partially aligned with those groups. According to its review, BP disagrees with the API’s opposition to the federal regulation of methane, disagrees with NAM over its opposition to carbon pricing and differs from the Chamber’s approach to climate science and emissions reduction efforts.

Yet for now, BP will remain a member of these groups, despite the fact that the API, U.S. Chamber and NAM are well-known architects of climate science denial.

“A company like BP that engages with trade associations is doing a constant cost-benefit calculation--to what extent does this group represent BP's interest and its policy advocacy versus pose a reputational risk for the company with its own investors, and with the public," said Kathryn Mulvey, climate accountability campaign manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Clearly the fact that the company is staying with the American Petroleum Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers, despite finding only partial alignment indicates that there's a calculation being made on its part.”

BP is not the first oil major to call it quits with the AFPM. Shell withdrew its membership last year in response to pressure from investors. It continued its membership with the WSPA despite finding “some misalignment” between its own policies and those of the WSPA. Shell appears to have discontinued its WEA membership in 2016.

AFPM president and chief executive officer Chet Thompson said the association is disappointed.

"As a member of our executive committee they know that AFPM is and has been committed to supporting policies that address climate change. Because of that, it leads us to assume that this decision was made based on factors other than our actual positions on the issues,” Thompson said in a statement without specifying what those factors are.

The split could ratchet up the pressure on ExxonMobil and Chevron, along with other oil companies to examine their trade association membership, Mulvey said.

"We would expect it would make it a good deal harder for major oil and gas companies to hide behind third-party lobby groups,” she said.  “We're starting to see a real new norm in terms of transparency, regarding climate policy positions and also action to address misalignment and inconsistency of trade group positions with stated company positions.”

BP said it will conduct its next review in two years and plans to provide periodic, internal updates to its board of directors and stakeholders. It did not rule out potentially withdrawing from more trade associations in the future.

“BP will pursue opportunities to work with organizations who share our ambitious and progressive approach to the energy transition. And when differences arise we will be transparent. But if our views cannot be reconciled, we will be prepared to part company,” said BP chief executive officer Bernard Looney in a statement, adding that the industry has long demonstrated it can collaborate effectively through trade associations.

“My hope is that in the coming years we can add climate to the long list of areas where, as an industry, we work together for a greater good,” Looney added.

Catherine Rheis-Boyd, president of the WSPA resident said her group and its members will continue to talk with BP and other stakeholders regarding the creation of a sustainable energy future.

“Our members know the way the world produces, distributes and consumes energy is evolving, and our industry will remain leaders in investing in and developing the diverse energy sources and technologies we need for the future,” Reheis-Boyd said. “Working together as an industry, we will rise to the challenge of a changing climate.”

The WEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mulvey said while BP is clearly concerned about its reputation and has pledged to be at net zero, whether the company will take the necessary steps remains to be seen. The company has so far only mentioned carbon capture technology and carbon offsets as methods to achieving net zero, promising to provide more details in September, nine months after its announcement.

Meanwhile, the company has pulled its “Possibilities Everywhere” campaign (the source of the Client Earth OECD complaint), but has been advertising its net zero commitment quite a bit on social media and in search engines.

BP’s withdrawal from the three associations does make one thing clear, Mulvey said.

"It lays down a gauntlet for ExxonMobil and Chevron to really step up or they may be understood, by the investor community in particular, to be falling behind their competitors."

BP Calls It Quits with 3 Trade Associations, but Continues Membership in NAM, API, US Chamber

On the heels of its net zero announcement and commitment to stop corporate reputation ads, BP withdraws from three trade groups over climate

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https://heated.world/p/big-oils-first-publicist-advised

Lee’s real legacy: The American Petroleum Institute

Lee’s most controversial legacy may be the advice he gave to the Nazis in the 1930s. But his most lasting legacy is his creation of the oil and gas industry’s first trade group—the American Petroleum Institute—over a decade before, in 1919.

“After the war ended, there was an interest in sort of coordinating an industry position for the petroleum industry to represent their interests to the public,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle tells Westervelt in Season 3, episode 2 of the podcast. “Ivy Lee draws on his experience in the war propaganda board effort to start developing larger institutional public relations efforts. And he works with the head of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which we now know as ExxonMobil, to form the American Petroleum Institute in 1919.”

Today, the American Petroleum Institute remains a powerful PR force for fossil fuels in an era of climate emergency. Representing more than 600 corporations, it is the largest U.S. trade group for the oil and gas industry—and its members spend a cumulative billions of dollars a year trying to convincing the public that oil is good, and American, and necessary for progress.

In fact, earlier this month, Ivy Lee’s brainchild API announced a new “seven figure” PR campaign and advertising push to convince the public that the oil and gas industry is a good-faith partner in the fight against climate change. The group’s campaign comes after decades of funding climate science denial and climate policy delay.

The API has deemed the push “Energy for Progress.” According to the group’s president, Mike Sommers, "What it really is all about is going on offense to tell the story of this industry.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.

If you see something, say something

Today, the American Petroleum Institute’s ads run in nearly every respected media outlet. The New York Times; the Washington Post; on Vox and Politico and MSNBC. They also run on buildings; on billboards; on public transit and elsewhere.

HEATED is tracking these ads on an Instagram account called @fossilfuelads, to visually demonstrate how the industry’s deceptive messaging infiltrates our daily lives.

If you see any fossil fuel ads in your daily life, please send them to fossilfuelads@heated.world....

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https://www.desmogblog.com/

120

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/22/american-petroleum-institute-oil-workers-radioactive-nobel-rollingstone

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1119 desmog

American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas trade association, is promoting a new video touting domestic natural gas production as essential to energy security. The video, titled “America’s Energy Security: A Generation of Progress At Risk?” comes at a time when calls for halting new fossil fuel production and infrastructure are getting louder and coincided with the release of a United Nations report highlighting the misalignment between global climate goals and countries’ plans to develop fossil fuels.

API’s video is part of a broader strategic campaign by the oil and gas industry to quash public support for a national ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and to promote itself as the “natural gas and oil industry.” The lobbying group released its video last week to coincide with the fifth Democratic presidential debate, saying, “some Democratic presidential candidates are now proposing restrictive energy policies that would erase a generation of American progress.”

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DEM!

Wisconsin Governor Signs Bill Criminalizing Pipeline Protesters

Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers has signed a bill making it a felony to trespass on the grounds of an oil or gas pipeline. Critics say the bill was inspired by ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — and pushed through the Wisconsin legislature by the American Petroleum Institute. Opponents of the law include members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation is crossed by the Enbridge Line 5 tar sands oil pipeline. The tribe’s chair, Mike Wiggins, said, “Over and over, we’ve seen peaceful, nonviolent protests met with militarization, threats of violence and actual violence from some of these corporate mechanisms.”

TOPICS:Natural Gas & Oil DrillingWisconsinPipelineProtests

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new phase: / fallback pos:

not real, real but nat'l, hu cause but wreck economy to fix --> look what cool stuff w make for you w/ it! [api superbowl vid not get hunger games //?]

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/16/fossil-fuel-ad-campaigns-climate-science-denial-pr-exxon-lawsuits

no lnx pix twt

Fossil Fuel Ad Campaigns Emphasize 'Positives' After Climate Science Denial PR Lands Industry in Hot Seat

By Sharon Kelly • Monday, September 16, 2019 - 19:09

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

Public relations experts keep a careful eye on the multitude of ways that PR can go wrong: tracking the year’s biggest “PR blunders,” assessing flopped ads for lessons learned, and noting when to remain silent and when to circulate a particular point of view.

PR blunders have been blamed for causing stock prices to dip, powerful executives to lose jobs, and occasionally even forced public apologies from PR representatives themselves.

But it takes a special kind of PR nightmare — a particularly unusual kind in the U.S., with its broad protections for free speech — to prompt investigations by state attorneys general into whether a company’s public messaging was so misleading and harmful that it should be considered illegal.

That is the situation facing one of the world’s most powerful industries, on one of the most consequential issues of our time, climate change. The subject of these investigations isn’t the direct harm from the fossil fuel industry’s actions, it’s the ways that companies communicated about their actions, and how that misled investors or the public.

And right on cue, the fossil fuel industry's PR professionals have been stepping in to help reshape the narratives propping up their bottom lines.

What #ExxonKnew

Exxon Knew billboard

Sign about what Exxon knew about climate change. Credit: John Duffy, CC BY 2.0

ExxonMobil, for example, currently faces investigations by multiple state attorneys general centering on how the oil giant communicated about climate change and the risk of climate regulation to investors and to the public.

In 2015, the New York state attorney general subpoenaed ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy, following an InsideClimate News investigative series, eight months in the making, that was one of three finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Last year, New York’s investigation ripened into a lawsuit, still pending.

“Investors put their money and their trust in Exxon — which assured them of the long-term value of their shares, as the company claimed to be factoring the risk of increasing climate change regulation into its business decisions,” New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement roughly a year ago, when her investigation turned into a lawsuit that claims ExxonMobil defrauded its investors. “Instead, Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.”

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a different investigation into ExxonMobil’s climate communications, this one by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

Alexander Kaufman

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@AlexCKaufman

Big news: SCOTUS just rejected Exxon Mobil's appeal to stop Massachusetts' attorney general from forcing the oil giant to turn over documents detailing what and when it knew about burning fossil fuels causing climate change. http://news.trust.org/item/20190107143238-u421z/ …

U.S. top court rejects Exxon in climate change document dispute

Ruling clears the way for Massachusetts attorney general to obtain records from Exxon Mobil to probe whether it concealed its knowledge of the role fossil fuels play in climate change

news.trust.org

In March, a report by the Climate Investigations Center tallied $1.4 billion worth of public relations, advertising, and communications contracts signed by energy and business trade associations from 2008 to 2017. One organization, the American Petroleum Institute (API), accounted for nearly half of that sum.

The Evolution of Fossil Fuel Messaging — and Climate Science Denial

Amid the investigations into their communications on climate change, many fossil fuel companies have been slowly re-tooling their messaging.

Some have acknowledged a need to transition away from fossil fuels — but at what critics respond would be a very slow pace.

Others have continued to push natural gas as a climate-friendly fossil fuel, despite the industry’s severe climate-changing methane problems. API, for example, has placed ads claiming natural gas can “help meet the growing global demand for sustainable energy” under the Washington Post’s “branded content platform,” as The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner reported in April.

Other campaigns ditch mention of climate change and pollution all together, instead focusing on the benefits of products made from fossil fuels.

During the Super Bowl in 2017, the American Petroleum Institute released an ad campaign called Power Past Impossible, touting the many uses of oil and natural gas and highlighting how dependent modern life is on the byproducts of these fossil fuels.

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins of the UK-based think tank InfluenceMap said in a March statement accompanying a report he authored on public relations campaigns by oil and gas giants. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

The shift doesn’t spell the end of climate science denial — DeSmog’s database of individuals and organizations that seek to cast doubt on climate science or oppose action to prevent some of the worst effects of warming the world includes roughly 225 organizations — and that list continues to grow.

Climate sciences deniers, many with ties to the oil, gas, and coal industries, have also climbed to dizzying heights within the Trump administration, placing them in positions where they can wield power directly and also communicate doubt to the public. Vice President Mike Pence is closely tied to the Koch network and in 2016 said, regarding climate change, “I don't know that that is a resolved issue in science today.”

And of course, there's President Trump himself, who in June responded, “I believe that there’s a change in weather and I think it changes both ways,” when asked by Good Morning Britain if he believed in climate change.

Donald J. Trump

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@realDonaldTrump

Any and all weather events are used by the GLOBAL WARMING HOAXSTERS to justify higher taxes to save our planet! They don't believe it !

But some of the organizations and think tanks in DeSmog's database have gotten a lot quieter when it comes to questioning climate science, even during the Trump administration — and a handful have dissolved entirely.

Take, for instance, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a free market think tank that co-authored a 1991 report that read: “Currently, scientists disagree on whether global warming has already occurred, whether significant global warming will occur in the future, whether warming would be harmful or somewhat beneficial to humans and whether, if harmful, it is better to adjust to the warming or try to prevent it.”

A quarter century later, the organization carried a very different message to an industry conference. “It is no secret that the oil and gas industry has an image problem,” Jacki Pick of the NCPA reportedly told the Tyler Area Energy Summit in Texas in March 2017. “We don't do a very good job of explaining the value of the industry.”

Later that year, the NCPA folded, citing “significant financial challenges over the last three years.”

'A Crisis of Perception'

This year, the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco’s chief executive similarly warned of the oil and gas industry’s image problem.

“My encounters in Davos showed me that fewer and fewer of our stakeholders accept logic and facts, least of all from us. We are therefore facing what I would call a crisis of perception,” Amin Nasser told an industry audience in February, according to The Guardian. “Because it threatens our industry’s very relevance, it puts our ability to supply ample, reliable, and affordable energy to billions around the world at risk, which in turn risks their energy security.”

Ethical oil ad

The oil industry has had image problems before. The “Ethical Oil” ad campaign pitted Canadian oil [peacekeeper un cdn soldier?!] against Middle Eastern oil producers. Credit: EthicalOil.org

In August, a top Chevron executive hinted that a group of major oil and gas companies plans to launch a new branding campaign, which she suggested would be modeled after the “Got Milk?” ad campaigns that launched in 1993.

“I think as an industry, we have an image that we need to change, where people equate what we do to their everyday life,” Kimberly S. McHugh, a Chevron vice president, said at the Summer NAPE Expo in Houston.

“What we do is noble,” she added, “we help humankind.”

That's a message that the fossil fuel industry, particularly as investigations into their past communications continue, may be trumpeting a lot more loudly in coming days.

Or, in the words of McHugh at the NAPE Expo: “The world needs what we have.”

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UCS 1019

...exxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell have all signed on to a set of guiding principles designed to curb methane emissions, pledging to advocate for sound policy and regulations on methane. We need your help to hold them to their word.

Hold Big Oil companies to their word: urge them to support regulation of harmful methane emissions.

Big Oil's biggest industry group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), has supported methane regulation rollbacks since the beginning. Last year when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed plans to repeal laws requiring companies to monitor and repair methane leaks, API was in full support. Major fossil fuel companies are hiding behind API's anti-climate lobbying while claiming to support solutions.

ExxonMobil, one of API's largest members, recently voiced strong support for the direct regulation of methane emissions, noting that "voluntary efforts" by fossil fuel companies "only capture a fraction" of the industry's emissions. BP and Shell have also reaffirmed their support for the EPA's existing rules. As leaders in API, these companies should use their power to remove the group as barrier to safe methane rules—not bankroll lobbyists to do the opposite. It's time we hold them to their word....

new 819

https://www.mediamatters.org/legacy/oil-industry-enlists-minority-groups-publish-pro-drilling-op-eds

As part of a partnership with the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest oil and gas lobbying organization in the U.S., Black and Hispanic business groups have been placing op-eds in local newspapers touting the benefits of offshore drilling, as Reuters recently reported. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to be opposed to offshore drilling than white Americans, according to a Pew poll conducted in January. The op-ed campaign is part of an industry-driven effort to make offshore drilling look more broadly supported and to shift minority opinion by enlisting groups that purport to represent communities of color.

Op-eds push oil industry statistics but fail to disclose oil industry connections

Media Matters identified six newspapers in the Southeast that have published op-eds by minority business leaders or political leaders who argue in favor of increased offshore oil and gas drilling along the Atlantic Coast. Most of these minority authors are affiliated with the Explore Offshore alliance, which they mention in their pieces -- but they neglect to disclose that Explore Offshore is a project of API and that many of the talking points and statistics they cite in their op-eds come straight from API materials.

API announced the Explore Offshore alliance on June 6, billing it as a “bipartisan coalition representing a diverse group of community organizations, businesses, and local associations across the Southeast that support safe and responsible expanded U.S. access to oil and natural gas through advanced technologies.” The minority business groups in the coalition are highlighted on the Explore Offshore homepage, while most other coalition members are listed in less prominent places on the website -- an indication that API wants to highlight Black and Hispanic participation. The minority groups in the coalition include the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce, the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the North Carolina Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce, and the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, plus one minority religious organization, the Hispanic Pastors Association.

Florida:

In Florida, The Palm Beach Post and the Tallahassee Democrat published a pro-drilling op-ed written by Julio Fuentes, president and CEO of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The Tampa Bay Times published a like-minded op-ed co-authored by Miriam Ramirez, a former member of Puerto Rico’s Senate and a co-chair of Explore Offshore Florida, a state affiliate of API's national Explore Offshore coalition.

Fuentes and Ramirez and her co-authors took figures from API’s one-pager about the benefits of drilling in Florida’s waters. Fuentes wrote (emphasis added):

Continued offshore development would put more than 56,000 Floridians to work and add $4.5 billion per year to our economy.

API's one-pager says (emphasis added):

Employment in Florida due to spending by the Eastern Gulf offshore oil and natural gas industry is projected to reach over 56,000 jobs.

…

Contributions to Florida’s state economy due to spending on Eastern Gulf [Outer Continental Shelf] oil and natural gas exploration and development activities could be nearly $4.5 billion per year by the end of the forecast period.

Ramirez and her co-authors wrote (emphasis added):

Economic studies show that the industry’s spending would bring Florida $1.3 billion per year in government revenue within 20 years of opening up the area for oil and natural gas development.

API's one-pager says (emphasis added):

Florida could see a 37.5% share of the Eastern Coast bonuses, rents and royalties generated which are projected to reach $1.3 billion per year within 20 years.

The Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which Fuentes runs, receives support from Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light, two large utilities that are building natural gas-fired plants in Florida. The chamber and the two utilities have backed anti-environment campaigns in the past. In 2016, the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce joined Duke, Florida Power & Light, and other power companies in supporting Amendment 1, a deceptive, utility-backed ballot measure designed to restrict consumer access to rooftop solar power in Florida.

The Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce also receives support from Florida-based, third-party energy supplier Liberty Power, a company that recently paid a settlement to New York state for engaging in deceptive practices and is the subject of a cease-and-desist complaint filed by Connecticut’s Office of Consumer Counsel for allegedly deceiving consumers.

The other Florida minority group that's part of API's Explore Offshore alliance, the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce, has fossil fuel ties as well. It is closely affiliated with the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which has received extensive funding from fossil fuel interests including ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. The National Black Chamber notoriously led minority opposition to the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which would limit pollution from power plants. Eugene Franklin, president of the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce, served on the board of directors of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Both the Florida chamber and the national chamber supported the pro-utility Amendment 1 in 2016.

South Carolina:

In South Carolina, The Post and Courier and The Greenville News published a pro-drilling op-ed by Stephen Gilchrist, chair of the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce and chair of Explore Offshore SC, the South Carolina branch of API's Explore Offshore coalition. Gilchrist also apparently relied on API statistics in his op-ed, writing (emphasis added):

Offshore development could … add $3.8 billion to our state budget per year. This could create 34,000 much needed jobs in the state

But Gilchrist appears to have gotten one of those API talking points wrong by a factor of 20. He claimed that offshore drilling could add $3.8 billion to South Carolina's budget each year, but API’s South Carolina one-pager claims the $3.8 billion would come in over a 20-year period (emphasis added):

Employment due to offshore oil and gas development activities on the Atlantic Coast in South Carolina could reach over 34,000 jobs within 20 years

…

The cumulative effect on the state budget from 2020-2040 is projected to be over $3.8 billion.

Gilchrist has cultivated questionable alliances that many African-Americans in South Carolina would not be comfortable with. In 2015, Gilchrist invited Donald Trump to an event for Black entrepreneurs that was co-hosted by the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. The crowd at the event was “predominantly white,”according to The Post and Courier. In late 2017, Gilchrist invited his friend Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor and white nationalist sympathizer, to a minority business roundtable sponsored by his group.

Virginia:

In Virginia, the Daily Press published an op-ed co-authored by former state Del. Winsome Earle Sears, an African-American, who now serves as co-chair of Virginia Explore Offshore, API's Virginia coalition. Like her cohorts in other states, she drew talking points right from API materials. From her op-ed (emphasis added):

With the exploration and potential for development of offshore energy resources, Virginia could gain 25,000 jobs, many with an average salary of $116,000 — more than double the commonwealth’s average. We’re also projected to attract $1.5 billion per year in private investment

From API’s announcement of its Explore Offshore coalition in Virginia (emphasis added):

By 2035, the oil and natural gas industry could create over 25,000 new high-paying jobs in Virginia

Offshore development could result in $1.5 billion in private investment into Virginia ...

The average salary for oil and natural gas exploration and development jobs is $116,000.

The Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is part of API's Explore Offshore coalition, joined a number of oil and gas trade associations in signing a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management urging the agency to allow more offshore drilling. The Virginia Hispanic chamber has also partnered with Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest and most powerful utility.

Conservative groups with anti-environment agendas and fossil-fuel ties have a history of trying to co-opt minorities

API is mimicking a well-worn strategy in which polluters target minority and low-income communities with industry-funded research and disinformation about energy. For example, in recent years, Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Heartland Institute, among many others, have waged a campaign to hinder the growth of solar energy at the state level. That effort has included the false claim, often advanced via minority politicians and front groups, that net-metering policies designed to make rooftop solar power more accessible would harm minority and low-income people.

Fossil fuel industries and their allies, including the National Black Chamber of Commerce, also targeted minority groups with misinformation about the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which, if fully implemented, would have prevented thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year.

These tactics are especially insidious because research consistently shows that minority and low-income communities suffer disproportionately from the burning of fossil fuels and the impacts of climate change. The third U.S. National Climate Assessment, released in 2014, found:

Climate change will, absent other changes, amplify some of the existing health threats the nation now faces. Certain people and communities are especially vulnerable, including children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and some communities of color.

In early 2018, EPA scientists published a study in the American Journal of Public Healththat found people of color in the U.S. are exposed to more air pollution than white people are, with African-Americans exposed to the most. A number of other studies have documented the negative health effects of air pollution on minority and low-income communities. A joint report released in 2017 by the NAACP and the Clean Air Task Force found that natural gas facilities in particular are harmful to Black Americans:

[M]any African American communities face an elevated risk of cancer due to air toxics emissions from natural gas development: Over 1 million African Americans live in counties that face a cancer risk above EPA’s level of concern from toxics emitted by natural gas facilities.

The air in many African American communities violates air quality standards for ozone smog. Rates of asthma are relatively high in African American communities. And, as a result of ozone increases due to natural gas emissions during the summer ozone season, African American children are burdened by 138,000 asthma attacks and 101,000 lost school days each year.

Blacks and Hispanics also suffer disproportionately from climate change impacts such as extreme weather. Just last year, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria devastated African-American and Latino communities in Houston and Puerto Rico.

Polls have shown that nonwhite people in the U.S. are more concerned about climate change than white people are. A 2015 poll of African-Americans found that 60 percent of respondents ranked global warming as a serious issue, while a 2017 survey of Latinos found that 78 percent of respondents were worried about global warming.

Surveys have also documented strong support among minority groups for clean energy solutions. A 2015 poll found that 66 percent of African-Americans believed that using more renewable energy would create new jobs, and 57 percent believed that shifting to clean energy would decrease their energy costs. A separate poll conducted in 2015 foundthat 84 percent of Latinos believed that the U.S. should mandate greater use of clean energy sources like solar and wind power.

Clearly, minority communities understand the risks of climate change and want clean energy solutions to mitigate those risks.

But API has chosen to partner with minority business groups to erode support for clean energy solutions and promote pro-fossil fuel arguments that would harm the very communities these organizations purport to represent. And, in a decision that demonstrates just how out of touch Explore Offshore is with minority communities, API recruited former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), a confederate apologist, to be a national co-chair.

Newspapers in the Southeast and around the country should not be letting oil industry allies spread propaganda and claim to represent minority interests. Op-eds that more accurately represent Black and Latino aspirations would point out that these communities have the most to lose from expanded offshore drilling and the most to gain from a shift to clean energy.

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2x?

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/20/american-petroleum-institute-1965-speech-climate-change-oil-gas

The warning is clear and dire — and the source unexpected. “This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action,” the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API) told an oil industry conference, as he described research into climate change caused by fossil fuels.

“The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.”

The speaker wasn’t Mike Sommers, who was named to helm API this past May. Nor was it Jack Gerard, who served as API’s president for roughly a decade starting in 2008.

The API president speaking those words was named Frank Ikard — and the year was 1965, over a half-century ago.

It was the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Muhammad Ali felled Sonny Liston in the first round, and Malcom X was fatally shot in New York. The first American ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law establishing Medicaid and Medicare.

It would be another four years before American astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon — and another decade before the phrase “global warming” would appear for the first time in a peer-reviewed study.

And 1965, according to a letter by Stanford historian Benjamin Franta published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, was the year that President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee published a report titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” whose findings Ikard described at that year’s annual API meeting.

“One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth's atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts,” Ikard presciently added, according to excerpts from his speech published in Nature.

Text of a speech by American Petroleum Institute leadership on climate change

Exerpt of API President Frank Ikard's 1965 speech on climate change and fossil fuels.

API Funded Early Research Linking CO2 and Fossil Fuels

That prediction was based in part on information that was known to the oil industry trade group for over a decade — including research that was directly funded by the API, according to Nature.

In 1954, a California Institute of Technology geochemist sent the API a research proposal in which they reported that fossil fuels had already caused carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to rise roughly five percent since 1854 — a finding that Nature notes has since proved to be accurate.

API accepted the proposal and funded that Caltech research, giving the program the name Project 53. Project 53 collected thousands of CO2 measurements — but the results were never published.

Meanwhile, other researchers were reaching similar conclusions. Nuclear physicist Edward Teller became known in 1951 as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” for designing a thermonuclear bomb that was even more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Teller warned the oil and gas industry in 1959 about global warming and sea level rise in a talk titled “Energy Patterns of the Future.”

“Carbon dioxide has a strange property,” Teller said in excerpts published earlier this year by The Guardian. “It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.”

A researcher at Humble Oil Co. (now known as ExxonMobil) checked results from a study of carbon isotopes in tree rings against the unpublished Caltech results, and found that the two separate methods essentially agreed.

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punked by api

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-fuel-companies/

lerner

there  IT WAS in black and white ­— or black, white, and a palette of gentle greens and blues. With a headline predicting that natural gas “will thrive in the age of renewables,” the article made the case that there are limitations on solar and wind power and that — as a subhead spelled out in aquamarine type — natural gas “is part of the solution.” Why was the Washington Post weighing in on the need for continued production of this fossil fuel in the face of climate change?

Or was it? On closer inspection, the report wasn’t coming from the D.C. paper’s newsroom. Though the link takes you to a page published by WashingtonPost.com, the story is actually a publication of WP BrandStudio, the paper’s branded content platform. In other words, the article is really an advertisement, and the copy was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The tagline — “Content from American Petroleum Institute” — is plain to see if you’re looking for it, though easy to miss if you’re not.

It’s not surprising that the trade group representing the oil and gas industry would want to leap to the defense of natural gas now. The notion that the energy source is a “bridge fuel” that will somehow safely deliver us to wind and solar — and past the threat of climate change — has been vaporized by recent science.

The combustion of natural gas does in fact create less carbon dioxide than the burning of coal, as the API “article” notes, pointing out that “new natural gas plants emit 50 to 60 percent less carbon into the atmosphere than new coal facilities.”

But what the piece doesn’t mention is that the drilling, extraction, and transport of natural gas also releases methane. And though carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere longer than methane, methane traps at least 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide before it degrades.

Nor does it reference the fact that the amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased sharply in the past few years and, scientists warn, threatens to derail efforts to limit warming. While there are questions as to which of several global sources of methane — including cows, wetlands, and coal mines — is driving the recent spike in emissions, evidence has tied it to the boom of natural gas production. And that in turn has led many scientists to assail the idea that natural gas is a “greener” fuel. In fact, depending on the leakage rate during production, natural gas may be even worse for the climate than coal.

“This idea that natural gas is better than coal is just a distraction,” said Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell whose research has tied the particular type of methane newly found in the atmosphere to shale gas production. “If you’re serious about keeping the planet below 2 degrees of warming, you can’t do that without cutting down on methane. We need to move away from all fossil fuels as quickly as we can.”

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post piece — or rather, the American Petroleum Institute piece in the Washington Post — doesn’t include any comments from independent scientists like Howarth. Instead, it quotes Wayne Winegarden, a businessperson affiliated with climate-denying organizations such as the Heartland Institute and the Pacific Research Institute.

Fossil fuel companies aren’t the only ones using stories that appear to be part of a journalistic publication, but are actually paid for by advertisers in attempt to improve an image suffering in the coverage done by actual journalists. Native advertising, as it’s called, has spread misinformation on everything from the “superfood” moringa to Thai seafood slavery, and has raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

And WP BrandStudio, which has also produced spots for BP and Lockheed Martin, is hardly the only example of a branded content shop associated with a mainstream newspaper helping fossil fuel companies spin their message. T Brand Studio, a brand marketing unit within the New York Times, has produced pieces for Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.

[pix

sponsored  content by the American Petroleum Institute, published on the Washington Post’s website. Screenshot: The Intercept]

At a time when many publications are struggling to stay afloat — and cover the costs of environmental reporting — native advertising is an increasingly important piece of the financial puzzle. The paid features that mimic actual reporting brought in 20 percent of all advertising income for news media organizations in 2017, according to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and the Native Advertising Institute.

But the issue of fossil fuel companies’ massive spending to greenwash their image is quickly heating up as scientific evidence — and unbiased reporting on it — is pointing to the need to phase out fossil fuels as soon as possible. Industry trade groups spent almost $1.4 billion on PR, advertising and communications contractors over the past decade, according to the Climate Investigations Center, almost half of which came from the American Petroleum Institute.

The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies have spent some $1 billion on “narrative capture” and lobbying since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2016, according to a report published this month by Influence Map. That spending includes $195 million on “often misleading branding campaigns.”

Even before they kicked into high gear to counter the growing public awareness of climate change, some oil and gas companies were engaged in sly, aggressive, and destructive media efforts to counter their opponents.

In 2014, Chevron launched a publication that appears to exist for the sole purpose of defending its refinery in Richmond, California. The refinery had a long history of chemical leaks, fires, dangerous emissions, and unsafe conditions before a leak led to a massive explosion in 2012. The incident sent a “toxic fireball of smoke” over Richmond and prompted 15,000 residents to seek medical help, as the East Bay Express reported after the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board issued its final report on the incident in 2015.

But the Richmond Standard, a local publication Chevron launched in 2013, didn’t cover the report that way — and doesn’t appear to have covered it at all. The Standard “produces news about what is going on in the surrounding community,” according to Braden Reddall, an external affairs advisor for Chevron. And a recent edition of the site, which included an article on the announcement of a date for the coming Little League parade and a review of the local hot dog joint, bears that out.

Despite appearing to be an unbiased news source, the Standard also includes a section of feel-good news about the refinery that includes no mention of the health and safety issues other publications have reported as linked to the refinery. Chevron’s Reddall pointed out in an email that the section on the refinery is “clearly marked as editorial under the ‘Chevron Speaks’ heading.” His email also noted that “The West Contra Costa County region has embraced the publication.”

But not all locals have a positive view of the Standard. “They created it so they could control the narrative,” said Greg Karras, senior scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, a group that has been calling attention to health impacts of the refinery for decades. “When there’s something they want or don’t want and is really important to the business, they want their story about it to get out, rather than rely on independent reporting.”

Chevron seems to have had an even darker purpose in mind when it created the Amazon Post. The website, which has a “breaking news” column and “most read” section, identifies itself in small type as “Chevron’s Views and Opinions on the Ecuador Lawsuit.” But the Post’s real purpose appears to be the targeting of Steven Donziger — an attorney with whom the company has been engaged in a pitched legal battle over massive pollution in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador for more than two decades.

Chevron’s Reddall says that the company maintains the Amazon Post “to express the company’s views and opinions on a fraudulent lawsuit against the company in Ecuador” and that “the information about Steven Donziger chronicles his long history of illegal activity.”

For his part, Donziger, who was part of a legal team that won a $9.5 billion judgment in the Ecuadorian courts against Chevron over the pollution, says that the Post is just one of the tools the giant energy company has used to personally and professionally destroy him. While three Ecuadorian courts, including the highest court in the land, upheld the judgment, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that it should not be enforced because parts of it were “corruptly ghostwritten” in return for the promise of a bribe.

Chevron, which has employed at least 2,000 lawyers and legal personnel from more than 60 firms to work on litigation around the pollution in Ecuador, also filed a lawsuit against Donziger in 2011 alleging that he won the judgment in Ecuador through fraud and racketeering. Kaplan decided the case in Chevron’s favor in a trial held without a jury. And recently that decision was the basis for Donziger having his legal license suspended without a hearing and his bank account frozen. While Donziger has denied that he committed misconduct and contested his suspension in court, the company has delighted over his suffering in the Amazon Post.

There may soon be more fossil fuel company publications entirely devoted to smearing the reputation of individuals, according to Robert Brulle. “They’re likely going to attack Alexandria Ocasio Cortez personally and demonize her. They’ve already begun that,” said Brulle, a sociologist and visiting professor of environment and society at Brown University. “It’s an old strategy — to delegitimize your opponents.”

Brulle also thinks that there will soon be more native advertising from oil and gas companies, which he classifies as “classic propaganda.” “We’re going to see a lot more from API, Exxon Mobil, and other companies,” said Brulle, who notes that the share of oil and gas industry spending on think tanks, such as Heartland, is about a tenth of its expenditures on communications. “As the threat of possible change to the fossil fuel industry increases, they ramp up their resources.”

And of course, change to our energy system is not just possible — it’s necessary.

“Nations have barely a decade to take ‘unprecedented’ actions and cut their emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst consequences of climate change,” as a December article about the climate talks in Poland explained. That article appeared in the Washington Post — the real one.

https://thinkprogress.org/oil-lobby-groups-epa-secret-science-proposal-clean-water-rules-9de63644deed/

no lnx twt?

EPA’s ‘secret science’ proposal being used by Big Oil to undermine clean water rules

Fossil fuel trade groups don't want the EPA to update a 1970s-era list of polluting petroleum chemicals.

KYLA MANDEL

MAR 22, 2019,

Internal emails reveal two major fossil fuel trade groups are lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from updating a decades-old list of toxic chemicals found in petroleum wastewater — and they’re using the Trump administration’s controversial “secret science” proposal to make their case.

The EPA currently monitors for 16 types of chemicals in wastewater, or effluent, released by petroleum refineries under the Clean Water Act. However, in the more than 40 years since the list was developed, scientific understanding around the number of chemicals and their toxicity levels has grown. As a result, the EPA is in the early stages of determining whether the priority list of chemicals needs to be updated.

But according to emails released to the Sierra Club and reviewed by ThinkProgress, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) are lobbying to limit the scope of the EPA’s study.

The fossil fuel trade groups want to ensure that two categories of chemicals known to be toxic to aquatic life, and potentially harmful to humans, are excluded from the study: alkylated polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (alkylated-PAHs) and naphthenic acids (NAs). The industry even goes so far as to state that including these in a study would risk “legal challenges.”

These two sets of chemicals are not currently on the EPA’s priority list. There are hundreds of different variations of PAH chemicals and levels of toxicity (alkylated-PAHs, for instance, are a derivative of the main “parent” PAH compounds). Burning coal and oil is the main source for these chemicals.

Yet, according to Jan Andersson, a chemistry professor at the University of Münster in Germany who has studied the EPA’s list, roughly 97 percent of the PAH chemical compounds found in crude oil are alkylated chemicals, making any lobbying against their inclusion quite significant. Meanwhile, NAs are found primarily in the byproduct of tar sands oil; the non-biodegradable compounds are stored in giant tailings ponds.

Excluding these types of chemicals from the EPA study would therefore serve to preemptively limit the scope of any potential rule changes in the future.

“They’re trying to cook the books at the very earliest stages of a study for petroleum refinery and ignoring the considerable data that’s out there that alkylated-PAHs are absolutely at least as toxic, if not more toxic, than the ones everybody monitors for right now,” Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s Office of Water’s Office of Science and Technology, told ThinkProgress. Southerland worked for the EPA for 30 years before resigning in 2017 in response to the change in leadership.

At high or prolonged exposure, PAH chemicals can cause tumors in aquatic life and birds as well as impact their reproduction, development, and immunity. Studies show that NAs have similar impacts, along with causing liver and heart damage in mice. Some known health effects to humans from PAH exposure include eye and skin irritation, nausea, and diarrhea, as well as longer-term impacts such as kidney or liver damage and asthma-like symptoms.

Scientists are still studying how the various chemicals impact humans; a range of PAH chemicals are classified as suspected or possibly carcinogenic to humans. What is known though, is that alkylated-PAHs are likely more toxic than other types of PAHs. They also take a longer time to biodegrade in the environment.

The ‘secret science’ argument

Issued by the EPA in 1976, the list of 16 types of PAH chemicals is used to determine which chemicals must be monitored for risks to drinking water and human health. Under the Clean Water Act, petroleum wastewater effluent guidelines establish a national floor — a baseline limit — for these chemicals. So, if there is a discharge of waste such as the release of industrial wastewater, stormwater runoff, or oil spills, only these 16 chemicals are tested to determine the level of toxicity.

The simplicity of the list has made the process easily applicable and cost-effective, and other countries have also turned to it as a resource. The list hasn’t just been used to monitor wastewater, either — environmental studies frequently use it as a basis for research. However, as a 2015 article co-authored by Andersson and published in the academic journal Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds notes, the list leaves out three large groups of these chemical compounds, including alkylated-PAHs. As the paper states, crude oil and coal are “rich” in alkyl compounds.

Despite the potential impact on human health and the environment, the levels of these chemicals currently found in petroleum wastewater is unknown; that’s one thing the EPA’s study would determine. PAH concentrations can vary from site-to-site and by the source of the crude oil. The findings would then help guide any necessary changes to the list of chemicals that should be regulated.

As part of its argument against the EPA measuring these chemicals, the trade groups are using the EPA’s proposed “secret science” rule to argue against disclosure of NAs because that would constitute a risk to companies’ proprietary data.

The proposed rule, also known as the “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rule, was introduced last April by former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. The rule has been supported by climate science deniers and effectively aims to restrict the use of scientific evidence in the rule-making process. The plan has been stalled under Administrator Andrew Wheeler, but if adopted, it would require the EPA to rely only on scientific studies where the underlying data used by the researchers is made public. Critics argue the bill would severely limit the kind of science the EPA could use in justifying regulations (excluding public health data, for instance) and would place a number of unnecessary burdens on EPA scientists.

Some in the chemical and fossil fuel industries, both of which maintain close ties with the Trump administration, have also warned that the rule would expose confidential corporate information. In a June 8, 2018 letter attached to an email to Brian d’Amico, branch chief at the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, API and AFPM wrote that using the industry’s own proprietary method of analyzing naphthenic acids would be a “clear contradiction” to the EPA’s proposed secret science rule.

“Independent validation is clearly not possible when a proprietary analytical method is used to generate the data,” the organizations argued. “In the interest of transparency, per its own proposed rule, EPA should abandon the use of this proprietary method in the Detailed Study.”

“Data derived from these methods could result in the EPA facing substantial scientific and legal challenge,” API and AFPM warned.

In other words, under the hypothetical scenario where the EPA decides to update its chemicals list at a time when the secret science rule is officially adopted, it would require the results of the EPA’s effluent study be made public, as that would be considered underlying data used to introduce the new chemicals rule. But doing so would, in the eyes of the fossil fuel industry, violate their proprietary methods used to analyze the chemical and so the chemicals should instead be simply excluded from the very beginning to avoid such a scenario.

“Quoting a rule that has not even gone final yet for the reason why [the EPA] shouldn’t be allowed to monitor it is pretty outrageous,” said Southerland.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment from ThinkProgress about whether or not it will be studying the two types of chemicals the fossil fuel industry has been lobbying against. The API and AFPM also did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Obsolete’ list

The fossil fuel industry is also arguing that the EPA doesn’t have sufficient data to claim that these two groups of chemicals should be regulated. As Roger E. Claff, senior scientific adviser at API, wrote in a February 2018 email to d’Amico, among the concerns is a “lack of toxicity data for decision-making.”

But as Southerland explained, that’s precisely why the EPA is initiating its study; growing scientific findings suggest these chemicals are highly toxic and therefore updates might be warranted. Meanwhile, she said, “API is saying ‘hell no.'”

Andersson made the case for updating the list in his 2015 paper. The 1976 list was created based on what was commercially available at the time, but many more variations of PAH chemicals exist now. Meanwhile, toxicology has improved understanding of the adverse health impacts of a wide range of these chemicals, and “a wealth of new compounds have been added to the inventory of confirmed or suspect carcinogens.”

“This list of compounds is not suitable,” Andersson told ThinkProgress. “Most of them are pretty innocuous… [there are] many that are much more toxic that don’t appear on this list because in 1976, people didn’t know about them. This list looks pretty obsolete.”

‘Collaboration through the years’

The first meeting between the EPA and the fossil fuel trade groups on this issue occurred in May 2016, under the Obama administration. And as a January 2018 slide show presentation to the Trump administration shows, the industry highlighted its “collaboration through the years” with the EPA.

Internal emails released to the Sierra Club show a January 2018 presentation by API to the EPA.

INTERNAL EMAILS RELEASED TO THE SIERRA CLUB SHOW A JANUARY 2018 PRESENTATION BY API TO THE EPA.

Of course, some degree of collaboration is needed in order for the EPA to properly conduct its study and gather the necessary data. However, the internal emails provide insight into the scale of influence the fossil fuel lobby is trying to exert at the very early stages of decision making.

Dalal Aboulhosn, who works on federal water policy for the Sierra Club, said this shows how under the current administration industry “is allowed to come in and pretty much write their wish list.”

On water specifically she said, there has been a pattern of industry approaching the EPA under both Pruitt and Wheeler with policy ideas before the EPA has actually decided to move on the issue. Shortly after, a change is announced.

“It’s very blatant and it’s across the board when it comes to issues in the agency, and we’re seeing it very starkly on water issues,” Aboulhosn said.

Indeed, after arguing last June that “the science and data for the toxicity of NAs and alkylated-PAHs are still a work in progress,” the two trade groups go so far as to suggest that, should the EPA wish to study them, the agency must address these two groups of chemicals “in a project outside of the Study.”

They argue the EPA should make a new official rule in order to create a new “method” for studying these chemicals. This separate project should undergo “the appropriate public notice and comment period required to gain method approval,” the trade groups’ letter states.

This, however, would be highly uncommon given public notice and comment periods typically apply to new regulations, or changes to existing regulations (such as repealing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan or introducing the “secret science” rule); it would also serve to delay the process by several years.

“It sounds like they’re trying to set some new bar to any future detailed studies,” Southerland said, “where no analyses can be done unless there’s a standard method… that would be a bar not just for petroleum refinery but every industry category.”

It quickly becomes a “chicken and egg” situation, Southerland said; you need a study to determine if a new rule is needed, but the industry is arguing you need a new rule before conducting the study.

But as the June 2018 industry letter to the EPA reads, “API and AFPM members believe in due diligence and support EPA in developing sound science.”

==

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032019/pipeline-protest-crackdown-state-law-legislation-south-dakota-conspirators-riot-boosting

This story was updated with a lawsuit filed March 28 over the South Dakota law.

Bills to clamp down on pipeline protests have spread to at least nine new states this year, part of an industry-backed push that began two years ago to heighten penalties for activists who try to block fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

Several of the bills also allow prosecutors to go after people or organizations as "conspirators" or "riot boosters" for merely supporting or coordinating with others who violate the law.

Civil liberties advocates argue that these vague and far-reaching provisions risk violating free speech protections under the First Amendment, and they have already started launching legal challenges.

The latest government move came on Wednesday in South Dakota—one of the states the planned Keystone XL pipeline is slated to cross—when Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a law that enables state and local governments, as well as "third parties," to seek civil damages from people or organizations that engage in "riot boosting."

Lawmakers in North Dakota, a hub of oil and gas development, also passed a bill this week that stiffens penalties for anyone who interferes with the construction or operation of pipelines and other "critical infrastructure." Once the Senate approves some minor changes, it heads to Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, who has not said whether he will sign it.

The North Dakota bill was based on a law that was enacted in Oklahoma in 2017 and then circulated by the industry-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Versions of that legislation have now been introduced in at least 15 states, three of which have enacted it: Oklahoma, Louisiana and Iowa. A version of the bill passed the Indiana legislature this week, too, though the Senate there must also approve some amendments before sending it to the governor.

While the details vary from state to state, the bills generally increase penalties for trespassing on or tampering with a range of facilities, including pipelines, oil storage tanks, railroads and utility infrastructure. Several of them, including North Dakota's, also include language assigning higher penalties—up to $1 million in some cases—for any group found to be a conspirator in violating the law.

The South Dakota law is different. Rather than imposing new penalties for interfering in pipeline construction, the bill enables state or local governments—or a third party working with government—to seek compensation from anyone who engages in "riot boosting," which includes encouraging or directing someone to engage in a riot, defined by the state as the use of force or violence by three or more people acting together.

Someone can qualify as a "riot booster" even if they reside out of state and act indirectly "through any employee, agent or subsidiary." Anyone found liable would be responsible for three times the ordinary penalty.

The bill was introduced at the end of the legislative session and approved over the course of four days, with only one hearing.

Environmental and civil liberties advocates, as well as many Native American tribes, say the bills are an attempt to stifle legitimate protest by creating harsh penalties for minor infractions and by trying to scare off advocacy groups. An organization that holds a nonviolence training, for example, might be targeted under the law if attendees are later part of a protest that ends in a clash with private security forces or police.

"'Riot boosting' is an unusual and new term. You might be asking yourself what that means, and I think protesters will too," said Vera Eidelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has tracked the bills. "I think it poses a unique threat to speech and appears to be targeted at protests. It uses words like 'encouraging' and 'advising' that are very broad and refer to a category of protected speech."

On Thursday, the ACLU sued South Dakota officials in federal court on behalf of indigenous and environmental groups, arguing that the new law and two related statutes violate the Constitution by suppressing free speech and failing to describe what actions could qualify as violations. In a statement, the group said "such vague and broad language invites arbitrary enforcement, will chill protected speech, and will result in indiscriminate targeting of peaceful organizers."

Industry-Backed Group's 'Model Legislation'

The legislation is part of a wave of state bills introduced across the country since President Donald Trump's election in response to high-profile protests like those against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.

Oklahoma state Rep. Scott Biggs said he was responding to those protests when he introduced a bill in 2017 to impose harsh penalties on people or groups who interfere with "critical infrastructure." After ALEC adopted the bill as model legislation, versions quickly spread across several states with active pipeline projects.

The bills' supporters have said they make it easier for prosecutors to go after protesters or vandals who violate the law, and that they do not target free speech.

Advocates have pointed out that the actions in question—trespassing, vandalism—are already covered by existing laws. Instead, they say, the aim of the bills is to intimidate protesters who draw attention to their concerns through civil disobedience, including minor infractions like blocking the gates of construction sites. Advocates say these protests are part of a long tradition of American civil disobedience dating back to the Boston Tea Party.

"Even where these bills are simply introduced, even if they do not move, even if they do not become law, they have potential to chill free speech and curtail activism," said Maggie Ellinger-Locke, a staff attorney with Greenpeace. "We're hearing from people on the frontlines of activism in these states that these bills frighten them."

Pipeline Companies Register Their Support

Energy companies and associations have supported the bills and have continued to push the legislation this year, according to documents compiled by Greenpeace.

TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, registered its support for the bill this year in Missouri along with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and other industry groups. In Illinois, TransCanada was joined by Enbridge and Energy Transfer, two other leading pipeline developers, as well as the American Petroleum Institute.

Sen. Janne Myrdal, who sponsored the North Dakota bill this year and is a member of ALEC's energy task force, did not respond to requests for comment. But she told the Associated Press that she introduced the bill in response to a protester who in 2016 broke into a control site for the existing Keystone pipeline that cuts through the state and manually closed one of the valves.

"There was frustration from law enforcement and residents that there wasn't enough teeth in current law to go after these people and the organizations that support them," she said.[pix]

The protester, Michael Foster, was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though two of those years were suspended. He ended up serving about half a year.

In South Dakota, Gov. Noem's office did not answer emailed questions about TransCanada's role in drafting the bill, but Noem said in February that she had met with representatives of the company to discuss her legislative package, which also includes a bill that requires pipeline developers to contribute to a fund that would help pay for government costs associated with construction.

"I fully support the freedoms of speech and assembly, but we must also have clear expectations and the rule of law," Noem said in a statement issued Wednesday. "My pipeline bills make clear that we will not let rioters control our economic development."

Terry Cunha, a spokesman for TransCanada, said in an email that "we appreciate the efforts of Governor Noem and her administration to help advance Keystone XL construction and other pipelines," adding that "any legislation that deters unlawful activities and encourages the advancement of critical infrastructure projects is a positive step."

Is It Stifling Dissent?

Some activists say the bills are part of a wider effort by the oil and gas industry and its allies in government—through lawsuits, public relations campaigns and legislation—to paint protesters as criminals and even terrorists.

"All of these things I think incorrectly mischaracterize protesters and respond to a powerful pushback against pipelines and other protests, not by trying to engage on the issues but by trying to stifle dissent," Eidelman said. "I think this is really part of a broader trend."

Last year, the ACLU sued the federal government, accusing several agencies of withholding documents detailing preparations for the potential construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The group had submitted records requests seeking information about the preparations, and the documents that did emerge, mostly from state agencies, showed that law enforcement agencies were conducting trainings for potential protests. The ACLU said the activities risked treating activists as criminals even before protests broke out. State officials have said they are simply doing their jobs.

In January, The Intercept reported on similar concerns in Minnesota, where police had been preparing for a year and a half for protests against Enbridge's proposed Line 3 pipeline expansion project by identifying groups opposed to construction and monitoring some activists.

The ACLU and other civil liberties groups said they are continuing to evaluate the state bills and considering whether they may challenge them as unconstitutional. So far,Louisiana is the only state where protesters have been arrested under the new laws. Bill Quigley, a lawyer who is representing several of the activists, said prosecutors have two years to press charges and have yet to do so.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES REGULATION

==

==

cartoon timelines TELLER!

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/03/illustrated-history-american-petroleum-institute-oil-knew-climate-change

By now, it’s no secret that oil companies have been long aware of the risks of climate change from burning fossil fuels. Exxon had “no doubt” that carbon dioxide was a global threat by the late 1970s, and Shell wrote in 1988 that the resulting climate change might lead to “the greatest [changes] in recorded history.”

But decades before, the oil industry was already privy to — and giving its own internal warnings about — the climate threats of carbon pollution from burning its products. In fact, as one science-and-art collaboration illustrated this week, that was happening before humans even landed on the Moon in 1969.

“Today much is being discovered about the history of fossil fuel producers, their knowledge of climate science, and their promulgation of disinformation to the public and policymakers,” Stanford researcher Benjamin Franta told DeSmog. “That information is crucial for understanding how the climate catastrophe was knowingly created and how to fight back — but much of it is in reports and academic articles not read by many.”

However, thanks to Stanford student Nathan Chael, who heard Franta speak about his doctoral research in this area, that information is taking a more artistic and accessible form. Chael suggested that Franta translate his academic work into an illustration and connected him with sustainability consultant and illustrator Alexandre Magnin.

The result of Franta and Magnin’s collaboration is a three-part series of illustrations giving a narrative timeline of Big Oil’s knowledge of the human impact on the climate and its decisions about what to do with that information.

Posted here with permission is episode one in the series, which starts with the oil industry’s early knowledge of fossil fuels’ impacts on the environment in the 1950s and ‘60s. One notable event the pair highlighted in this comic was the 1965 speech by American Petroleum Institute CEO Frank Ikard on the “catastrophic consequence” of carbon pollution.

Magnin will post episodes two and three on his website Sustainability Illustrated in the coming months.

...

==

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/20/american-petroleum-institute-1965-speech-climate-change-oil-gas

The warning is clear and dire — and the source unexpected. “This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action,” the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API) told an oil industry conference, as he described research into climate change caused by fossil fuels.

“The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.”

The speaker wasn’t Mike Sommers, who was named to helm API this past May. Nor was it Jack Gerard, who served as API’s president for roughly a decade starting in 2008.

The API president speaking those words was named Frank Ikard — and the year was 1965, over a half-century ago.

It was the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Muhammad Ali felled Sonny Liston in the first round, and Malcom X was fatally shot in New York. The first American ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law establishing Medicaid and Medicare.

It would be another four years before American astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon — and another decade before the phrase “global warming” would appear for the first time in a peer-reviewed study.

And 1965, according to a letter by Stanford historian Benjamin Franta published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, was the year that President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee published a report titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” whose findings Ikard described at that year’s annual API meeting.

“One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth's atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts,” Ikard presciently added, according to excerpts from his speech published in Nature.

Text of a speech by American Petroleum Institute leadership on climate change

Exerpt of API President Frank Ikard's 1965 speech on climate change and fossil fuels.]

API Funded Early Research Linking CO2 and Fossil Fuels

That prediction was based in part on information that was known to the oil industry trade group for over a decade — including research that was directly funded by the API, according to Nature.

In 1954, a California Institute of Technology geochemist sent the API a research proposal in which they reported that fossil fuels had already caused carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to rise roughly five percent since 1854 — a finding that Nature notes has since proved to be accurate.

API accepted the proposal and funded that Caltech research, giving the program the name Project 53. Project 53 collected thousands of CO2 measurements — but the results were never published.

Meanwhile, other researchers were reaching similar conclusions. Nuclear physicist Edward Teller became known in 1951 as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” for designing a thermonuclear bomb that was even more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Teller warned the oil and gas industry in 1959 about global warming and sea level rise in a talk titled “Energy Patterns of the Future.”

“Carbon dioxide has a strange property,” Teller said in excerpts published earlier this year by The Guardian. “It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.”

A researcher at Humble Oil Co. (now known as ExxonMobil) checked results from a study of carbon isotopes in tree rings against the unpublished Caltech results, and found that the two separate methods essentially agreed.

[

This figure shows the history of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations as directly measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii since 1958. This curve is known as the Keeling curve, and is an essential piece of evidence of the man-made increases in greenhouse gases that are believed to be the cause of global warming. Credit: Delorme, data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA, and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps, CC BY-SA 4.0]

And in 1960, Charles Keeling first published the measurements that became the famous “Keeling curve” — establishing one of the bedrock findings connecting climate change to fossil fuels. The CO2 measurements taken by Keeling back in the late 1950s showed levels of roughly 315 parts per million (ppm) at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and rising.

Those CO2 levels have since climbed upwards to 410.13 (ppm) on the day that the Nature letter was published — CO2 levels that scientists knew both then and now would be dangerously high, as carbon levels in the Earth’s atmosphere have not been over 410 ppm in millions of years.

What the Oil Industry Knew, Then and Now

In his 1965 talk, the API’s Ikard described the role of oil and gasoline specifically in causing climate change. “The report further states, and I quote: ‘… the pollution from internal combustion engines is so serious, and is growing so fast,'” he told the API conference, “‘that an alternative nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.’”

Three decades later, the API urged a different approach to climate science. “It’s not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it,” the API wrote in a 1998 draft memo titled “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” which was subsequently leaked.

As of publication time, an API spokesperson had not replied to questions sent by DeSmog.

It’s worth noting that since 1965, the science connecting climate change to fossil fuels has grown stronger and more robust. A scientific consensus around the hazards of climate change and the role that fossil fuels play in causing it has formed.

“Rigorous analysis of all data and lines of evidence shows that most of the observed global warming over the past 50 years or so cannot be explained by natural causes and instead requires a significant role for the influence of human activities,” the Royal Society explains.

Today, the API continues to call for further research on climate change — and expanding the use of fossil fuels in the meantime.

“It is clear that climate change is a serious issue that requires research for solutions and effective policies that allow us to meet our energy needs while protecting the environment: that's why oil and gas companies are working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,” the API’s webpage on climate change states.

“Yet archival documents show that even before Keeling published his measurements,” Franta's letter published by Nature says, “oil industry leaders were aware that their products were causing CO2 pollution to accumulate in the planet’s atmosphere, in a potentially dangerous fashion.”

see energy corps 2 for grafs and lnx

NOTE DUAL STRATEGY GREENWASH BY CPRP WHILE TRADE GP BUFFER UNDEERMINES IN BKGD

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap

all rhet

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the company show its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only 0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.

"

[algae tiny vid]

Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S.Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell's branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank's research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies used social media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400K in four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Updated: This article has been updated on March 22, 2019 to reflect a statement from Chevron.

==

When it comes to the heat-trapping effects of global warming emissions, methane is 86 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. That's why it was promising to see fossil fuel companies commit to "advocate sound policy and regulations on methane" when they signed on to a set of guiding principles designed to curb methane emissions.

But have they lived up to their promise to work with governments on effective methane regulation? You guessed it—ExxonMobil, BP, and other Big Oil companies haven't just dropped the ball on methane; they're trying to roll it back.

Tell Big Oil to keep their promise and keep us safe from methane pollution!

Big Oil's biggest industry group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), met with the White House to lobby against strong methane inspection standards. So it wasn't surprising that, a few weeks later, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed new methane standards that would significantly cut back requirements for fossil fuel companies to monitor and repair methane leaks.

Methane is emitted in large quantities during oil and gas production. Leaks and emissions from natural gas facilities pose a serious threat to our climate and our health. The new proposal would allow hundreds of thousands of tons of additional methane pollution by 2025.

The same companies that pledged to tackle methane emissions hand-in-hand with our government are paying lobbyists to do the opposite. As funders of API, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron should use their power to remove the lobbying group as barrier to safe methane rules. It's time to hold them to their word.

==

==

API KNEW

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/headlines/report_oil_industry_knew_about_dangers_of_climate_change_in_1954

Leaders of the U.S. fossil fuel industry knew as early as 1954 that carbon dioxide pollution accumulating in the atmosphere posed a growing threat to life on Earth, but failed to warn the public. That’s according to new research published by Stanford historian Benjamin Franta in the journal Nature Climate Change. Franta found that in the 1950s the American Petroleum Institute commissioned a study by a Caltech scientist which concluded global CO2 levels had risen by 5 percent in a century.

It’s the earliest known industry-funded research into climate change, and the findings led in part to a 1965 report by President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee on the threat posed by global warming. Speaking to members of an oil industry conference that year, Frank Ikard, then-president of the American Petroleum Institute, warned, “This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action. The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.” The American Petroleum Institute would instead go on to fund decades of climate change denial while fighting efforts to switch to renewable energy sources.

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/pruitt-epa-hiring-oil-gas-2581508218.html

Pruitt reached out to the oil and gas industry for help in filling vacant positions in the agency, according to emails obtained by the Sierra Club and shared with Buzzfeed News.

"I understand that Administrator Pruitt met with [American Petroleum Institute] executives last week and he made a plea for candidates to fill some of the regional director positions within the agency," a manager at oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips wrote to former Pruitt aide Samantha Dravis last March, before asking where he could send a resume from an interested former employee.

While none of the three candidates the ConocoPhillips manager suggested for EPA were hired by the agency, former EPA officials expressed surprise at the emails. "It would be highly unusual to go to a specific industry to try to recruit," former George W. Bush EPA head Christine Todd Whitman told Buzzfeed. "We did not go out and recruit. There was more applying to us and our sorting through them."

As reported by Buzzfeed:

"Former EPA regional director Judith Enck was shocked to hear about Pruitt's recruiting. 'I think it's troubling the head of the EPA is asking the fossil fuel industry for staff recommendations for chief positions,' Enck told BuzzFeed News.

Michael Brune, Sierra Club's executive director, was also dismayed. 'This is Scott Pruitt trying to outsource the job to protect our air and water to the exact people responsible for polluting them,' Brune said in a statement emailed to BuzzFeed News."

bloomberg 2x?

pleas began almost as soon as Scott Pruitt became Environmental Protection Agency administrator: requests from oil executives, coal miners and energy lobbyists desperate to nab time with the newly confirmed regulator.

There were coal producers -- including Arch Coal Inc., Cloud Peak Energy Inc. and Contura Energy Inc. -- eager to talk to Pruitt about what one petitioner termed his "regulatory reform efforts" at the agency. Oil executives lined up too -- including Marathon Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Officer Gary Heminger, Shell Oil Co. President Bruce Culpepper and John Watson, then the chief executive of Chevron Corp. And no fewer than five state-based oil and gas associations solicited Pruitt’s appearance at conferences and meetings.

The requests were revealed in more than 20,000 pages of email correspondence between top Pruitt aides and outside officials released in response to an open records request by the Sierra Club. Many of the requests are laced with praise or full of congratulations for Pruitt’s work to revise Obama administration pollution regulations.

The EPA chief, under fire for frequent travel, an unorthodox condo rental from a lobbyist and questionable agency spending decisions, has been the one of the most enthusiastic crusaders in President Donald Trump’s campaign against regulations.

Enthusiastic Thank-Yous

Industry leaders were not shy about expressing their gratitude. Renee Zentz, chief executive officer of the Housing and Building Association of Colorado Springs, which invited Pruitt to speak in Colorado, suggested a small private dinner with representatives from the energy industry and other sectors. "Our appreciation for Administrator Pruitt’s commitment to remove or reduce barriers to business cannot be fully expressed," Zentz said. "The idea of hosting a small private dinner or reception is only an effort to say thank you and maximize his trip to Colorado Springs.”

When Kinder Morgan Inc. Public Affairs Vice President Dave Conover asked about a meeting between Pruitt and two other company vice presidents last October, he took pains to highlight the pipeline operator’s ties to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the administrator’s home town. According to an email from Conover, the Kinder Morgan executives wanted to talk to Pruitt about pollution control requirements, the Superfund program, protections for the endangered American Burying Beetle and EPA’s participation in natural gas pipeline permitting.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. lobbyist Michael Birsic leveraged a relationship with one of Pruitt’s deputies to try to arrange a meeting for Heminger, his CEO, to talk about the U.S. biofuel mandate and air regulations.

To ensure Pruitt had direct access to executives at an April 18, 2017, event, Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association staff promised to "remove themselves from the meeting once it begins," according to an April 17 email. Among the planned attendees: Enbridge Inc. Vice President Brad Shamla, BP Lower 48 Senior Vice President Kyle Koontz, Halliburton Co. executive Eric Williams and Devon Energy Corp. Vice President Allen Wright.

Although industry interests dominate the correspondence, documents show state air regulators and environmentalists won some of Pruitt’s time too.

After Glenn Prickett, the co-chief external affairs officer of The Nature Conservancy, met with Pruitt during an Earth Day Texas event in 2017, he followed up with his thanks for being able to share the group’s views “on natural infrastructure, climate change and federal funding levels for conservation and the environment.”

Friendly Audiences

Many of Pruitt’s meetings with and speeches to industry representatives were carefully coordinated, with the apparent goal of ensuring a friendly audience and limiting surprises for Pruitt.

For instance, when he spoke to the American Petroleum Institute’s board of directors at the Trump International Hotel in March 2017, he was directed to use a private entrance on 12th Street.

Before an August 2017 meeting with Pruitt, coal miner Cloud Peak Energy representatives highlighted a “secure entry” as “a definite plus” that would “help facilitate a more honest conversation without the potential outside distractions of a public building.”

And staffers exchanged more than two dozen emails lining up details for Pruitt’s Oct. 19, 2017 address to a Texas Oil and Gas Association’s energy forum near Houston, with the association specifically identifying reporters who were slated to attend. EPA aides volunteered six questions for an on-stage Q&A touching on Pruitt priorities, his definition of “true environmentalism” and the role of EPA regulations in blocking new refinery construction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-08/oil-and-coal-executives-clamored-for-epa-chief-records-show

==

frack api wrote rules

http://extras.denverpost.com/oil-gas-deaths/

Clling the vast oil and gas reserves in Colorado is a dangerous job. Oil and gas companies say they work hard to educate their employees about job hazards and promise to keep their workers safe.

“If there are areas where we need to improve, you can be damn sure we’re going to do it,” said Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a pro-industry trade organization.

“I’m pretty confident that the oil and gas industry probably does some of the best work on safety.”

But a year-long Denver Post investigation shows that there is little consequence when companies let that promise lapse.

A national legacy of encouraging oil and gas development — for energy security, for jobs, for the economy — has created a regulatory vacuum. There is an entire federal agency devoted to mining safety, for instance, but nothing comparable exists for oil and gas. While OSHA has created specific safety standards that companies in other industries must follow, oil and gas businesses successfully beat back such regulations for themselves. The standards — recommendations, really — that OSHA mostly uses to judge safety violations on oil and gas worksites were written by the American Petroleum Institute.

Debate about the industry in Colorado typically focuses on its environmental toll or its potential threat to public health.

Meanwhile, 1,333 workers died in the nation’s oil and gas fields between 2003 and 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nationwide death toll in 2014 of 144 was the highest in more than a decade. By another measurement — the number of worker deaths per active drilling rig — 2014 was the second-most lethal year in Colorado in a decade, according to a Denver Post analysis. There was about one death per every 12 rigs that year.

Oil and gas worker fatalities by rig count

According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there were 51 deaths in Colorado related to the oil and gas industry from 2003 to 2014. Because of worker privacy issues, the BLS would not release years for all of those deaths. Nationally, 1,333 oil and gas workers were killed in the same 12-year time frame.

==

https://www.alternet.org/environment/epa-does-trumps-big-oil-bidding

Trump administration’s zeal for environmental rollbacks has enabled it to fulfill almost all of the top priorities in a “wishlist” drawn up by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading lobby group for U.S. oil and gas companies.

In a document called “comments on specific regulations” sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May, API highlighted eight key changes it wanted to ease the regulation of air and water pollution. An analysis shows that the EPA has now so far either partially or wholly delivered on six out of these eight key demands within the first year of the Trump administration, which solicited input on government rules from a number of trade groups.

This comes as the Guardian and the Center for Public Integrity published an investigation into the way the oil lobby has worked for decades to influence US government policy – and is tightening its hold.

Earlier this year a letter penned by Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory affairs at API, accompanied the lobby group’s wish list for government, and it stated that fossil fuel companies are thriving “despite the unprecedented level of federal regulatory actions targeting our industry”.

Feldman called for the federal government to alter regulations in a way that “promotes access to domestic oil and natural gas resources, streamlined permitting and cost-effective regulations”.

The letter is addressed to Samantha Dravis, an EPA associate administrator who previously held a senior role at the Republican Attorneys General Association and was counsel to Freedom Partners, one of the groups in the Koch brothers network.

The 25-page list of API’s suggested regulatory changes places particular emphasis on eight key demands that peel away standards primarily imposed under Barack Obama’s administration. The EPA’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, previously a harsh critic of the agency who has pledged to rein in its “out of control, anti-energy agenda”, has overseen the delay or repeal moves in line with six of API’s eight highest priorities.

“There’s no question that energy lobbyists are calling the shots in this administration, which has been all too willing to roll back public health protections,” said Jeremy Symons, vice-president of Environmental Defense Fund. “Anyone who doubts that can just look at their record.”

On March 22, Pruitt met with API executives at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. Less than a month later, Pruitt wrote to Feldman, as well as three other oil and gas industry representatives, to tell them he was temporarily suspending regulations that curb leaks from drilling operations while the EPA reconsiders the rule.

In June, the EPA proposed a two-year pause to the rule, which was drawn up under the Obama administration in 2016 and aimed to reduce “fugitive” emissions such as methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In July, a federal court blocked the attempted suspension of the rule.

The EPA has fared better in fulfilling other top API priorities. In June, Pruitt signed a two-year delay to regulations designed to improve the safety of chemical facilities. API argued that the rule, which followed several disastrous incidents at chemical plants, would be burdensome and do little to improve safety.

API said the EPA “should reverse” a separate regulation requiring power plants to follow air pollution rules when they are starting up, shutting down or undergoing maintenance. Pruitt, who previously sued the EPA to halt the rule, is now reassessing it.

Implementation of new standards to reduce ozone, a pollutant that helps form smog, was delayed by a year at Pruitt’s behest in June, a month after the API called for the EPA to reconsider the rule. Several states and health groups have launched legal action against the EPA after it missed a deadline to designate which areas of the country are failing to meet the tightened standards on smog.

Several of API’s lower priority proposals have also been fulfilled, with Pruitt introducing new rules for members of the EPA’s scientific boards which open the way for more industry involvement and, separately, deciding to not introduce new financial responsibility requirements that API feared may have impacted the petroleum industry.

API also secured an early victory in February, when Donald Trump issued an executive order to scrap the “waters of the United States” rule, which was put in place under the Obama administration to protect streams and rivers that provide drinking water to around a third of Americans. The regulation has been opposed by some farmers and owners of golf courses and industrial plants as being too stringent.

“Pruitt and his team have no shame,” said Liz Purchia Gannon, former head of communications at the EPA under the Obama administration. “They have made it clear from the start that oil, gas and coal industries trump science, the American people and public health and environmental organizations.

“What we can see from his schedule is an alarming pattern of meeting with special interest groups before making policy decisions favoring their bottom line at the expense of Americans’ health and the environment.”

When contacted for comment, the API said it was happy for its previous statements to speak for themselves. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

==

==

omg why?

https://www.ecowatch.com/disappointing-backwards-step-critics-blast-u-s-exit-from-global-oil-gas-anti-corruption-effort-2505846330.html

...Bloomberg reported that the withdrawal comes after the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. lobbied against a similar regulation compelling U.S. energy and mining companies to disclose those payments, which President Donald Trump rolled back earlier this year.

"It's pretty disgraceful for the United States," Jana Morgan, director of Publish What You Pay, a coalition that urges financial transparency in the extractive industry, told Bloomberg. "Chinese state-owned oil companies and Russian state-owned oil companies" are disclosing payments.

"So you literally have American companies that are less transparent than Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises," she said.

Democrats also criticized the decision. The Hill reported that the U.S. joined the agreement in 2011 after a joint effort from Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)....

==

ozone particulate PM 2.5 6 cities

why wd DC caller batasch out funding?! b/c thinks look legit?

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/14/debunked-study-exposes-the-huge-flaws-in-epa-science/

EDUC

https://www.ecowatch.com/oil-industry-influence-school-2442333774.html

...Inspiration for these squadrons sprang from a 1946 study surveying 10,000 Americans, according to the 1990 API history. The document's author wrote that, "the more people knew about the petroleum industry, the more favorable were their feelings towards it." To combat the industry's negative reputation, the study suggested "a well-directed program of public education was the right medicine to bring about a cure."

Hill & Knowlton—the public-relations firm that would later help the tobacco industry fend off cancer claims—was brought on to strategize. The firm surmised that the "petroleum industry's legislative difficulties could be traced to misunderstandings by government and the public" and laid out a plan to cultivate '"thought leaders' or 'opinion molders'—educators, editors, columnists, the clergy, business and financial leaders and, of course, key people in government," according to the 1990 document.

In 1960, educators helped revamp API materials that eventually made their way into 25,000 secondary schools. Advertisers were hired to ghost-write scripts hyping oil for popular children's programs like Art Linkletter's "House Party." The widely televised Odyssey: A Quest for Energy was among dozens of educational videos made available through API's vast regional network.

The 1982 film examined renewable energy, but made the best case for fossil fuels—urging that offshore drilling be expanded "into deeper waters" and that federal lands be opened for coal mining in promotional brochures sent to some 14,000 schools. Within months, more than 1,300 schools wanted to screen Odyssey. Indiana officials ordered enough kits to show the film to every high-schooler in the state. API's public relations team meticulously tracked "Odyssey's" reach, estimating that at least five million Americans saw the film.

API did not respond to requests for comment.

API's message was amplified with the help of an unlikely ally—the National Science Teachers Association, which boasts some 55,000 members of mostly K-12 educators. The association worked closely with API and utility executives during the 1970s to develop K-12 energy curricula. When federal funding dried up in the 1980s, the association turned to corporate sponsors to cover costs.

As pressure to act on global warming mounted during the 1990s, API ramped up its strategy to quiet critics, including leveraging its relationship with the teachers association. Months after the language of a global climate treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol was finalized in 1997, an internal memo obtained by The New York Times laid out API's plans to infuse doubt about climate change into K-12 materials. Less than a decade later, the association garnered criticism for distributing API's "Fuel-less" film to teachers while API funded the association's educational website for kids.

Some of API's largest corporate members, including Chevron and Shell, remain top sponsors of the teachers association. Evans, who has led the association since 2013, said he was unable to comment on the organization's past, but defended the group's independence today: "It's NSTA that decides what the content should be."

'Win-win'

With only 14 seniors, the class of 2016 came nowhere near filling a gymnasium in Salineville, Ohio—a town of 1,300 about 50 miles west of Pittsburgh. "In this region, there are phenomenal opportunities," said Rhonda Reda, delivering the keynote speech at the Utica Shale Academy graduation. "Go out there and make a difference."

Named after the rock formation that stretches from eastern Ohio to Canada, the tuition-free charter school founded in 2014 promises "real opportunity" outside of "traditional settings." Instead of hitting textbooks, students work on drilling certifications and intern for oil companies. Attendance is flexible: students must spend more than half their time on campus—an increase from a previous requirement of at least 15 hours weekly.

The academy rents space from two high schools. A third location for K-12 students was shuttered last June after just a year in operation. The academy's website prominently displays the logos of corporate partners like Chesapeake Energy, whose executives meet with school administrators to help carve out the curriculum for the year.

One of the academy's most prominent sponsors, the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program—led by Reda—has stirred up criticism for its pro-drilling message. Like the Oklahoma energy resources board, the Ohio group is industry-funded, state-sanctioned and conducts free teacher workshops. In a meeting with state legislators in 2016, Reda said that 2,700 teachers statewide had attended the workshops since 1997.

Lisa Hoyos of Climate Parents, an affiliate of the Sierra Club that successfully petitioned Radio Disney to sever ties with Reda's group in 2014, criticized educational content that pushes petroleum's benefits but sidesteps its downsides. "They're basically indoctrinating children," she said of the Ohio program. "All the materials [the program is] putting out are about oil and gas, which are the chief culprits, along with coal, in causing climate change."

Before founding the Ohio program in 1997, Reda handled public affairs for the state's Oil and Gas Association. She sits on the communications committee for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which created Energy in Depth—a website run by a public-relations firm that aggressively disputes industry criticism and news media reports, including investigative work done by the Center for Public Integrity. Reda's program helped launch Energy in Depth's Ohio section in 2011.

Reda declined to elaborate on her relationship with lobby groups, but wrote in an email that her organization "does not utilize any taxpayer dollars" and "does not lobby the legislature or take positions on regulatory or public policy." She added that her program "may elect on occasion to collaborate with other oil and gas groups, educational institutions and other experts on specific projects."

Reda's group has helped develop lessons for the National Energy Education Development Project, or NEED, a nonprofit that publishes thousands of pages of K-12 energy lessons online. A 2015 NEED lesson teaches students how to 'frack' a frozen layer cake using chocolate syrup and a syringe-like turkey injector—not unlike Ohio's demonstration using Twinkies.

Oil and gas companies are among NEED's most prominent backers. ConocoPhillips has sponsored NEED workshops since 2008, exposing educators nationwide to packets like "Oil, Gas and their Energy" and "Exploring Oil and Gas." A 2014 NEED guide tells of Sue Ann, who is a sticky pool of oil waiting to be freed, and Stacey, who wants to follow in her father's footsteps and become a blowout specialist on an offshore rig.

Executive Director Mary Spruill said NEED teams up with industry groups to train future workers, but the groups don't play a substantial role in developing content. "We don't send drafts to our partners," she said.

Like Reda, Spruill does not have an education or science background. Lessons from both their groups have been adapted by the "Arkansas Energy Rocks!" website dedicated to teaching kids about the "thriving oil and natural gas industry." Lessons include, "Just a little oil spill," which uses drops of vegetable oil in a pie plate filled with water to simulate an offshore oil spill, and "Persuasion POWER!" which highlights the legislative process with a congressional press release titled, "Consumers desperate for new natural gas pipelines." It's unclear how many schools are using the materials.

The website is a project of the Arkansas Energy Education Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the Arkansas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners. The program's logo and website are registered to the American Petroleum Institute. Listed as a contact for an all-expenses-paid teachers' workshop in 2015 promoting "Arkansas Energy Rocks!" was the personal email address of Paige Miller, an API public-affairs specialist based in Little Rock.

Spruill works closely with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, sitting on an advisory board for the lobby group's five "Petroleum Academies." IPAA, whose chief executive and lobbyist, Barry Russell, is co-chair of the advisory board, has billed the academies as a "win-win" for high schoolers and oil companies in Houston and Fort Worth.

Students are encouraged to put themselves in industry leaders' shoes by competing for lucrative leasing deals as fictional oil companies and delivering oral presentations on topics like "clearing misconceptions of the oil and gas industry."

Despite the hard sell, some students are unsure of their prospects in the petroleum industry. The ongoing oil-price slump has made jobs in the industry scarce and advancements in automation are expected to accelerate the trend.

Even in a state built on fossil fuels, other career options have grown more appealing. Having interviewed administrators at the academies, the Houston Chronicle reported last year that "students were gravitating more toward climate-friendly subjects like algae-based biofuel and super-efficient tiny houses."

==

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01032017/childrens-trust-climate-change-lawsuit-api

Attorneys representing 21 children who are suing the federal government over its responsibility to slow climate change are seeking answers from the oil and gas industry. The plaintiffs want to uncover what role fossil fuel interests played in shaping government climate policies.

The plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States filed a request for documents from the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. trade group for the oil and gas industry and an intervenor on behalf of the U.S. government in the case.

The request seeks a wide range of documents, including any from internal API groups related to climate change and government lobbying. Examples noted in the request include API's CO2 and Climate Change Task Force, its Environmental Strategy Team and its Climate Change Steering Group. It also seeks communications with Exxon and other oil companies discussing climate.

The request specifically seeks memoranda written by individual industry researchers, lobbyists, trade association employees and other fossil fuel advocates. Those people were engaged in early research into climate change and in attempts by the industry to sow doubt about the emerging consensus that global warming is caused by emissions from fossil fuels.

Many of those named figured in an investigation by InsideClimate News in 2015, which included revelations that API's CO2 and Climate Change Task Force monitored and shared climate research between 1979 and 1983. The investigation showed that scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell, were aware of the oil industry's possible impact on the world's climate far earlier than previously known.

Shell warned of the catastrophic risks of climate change more than a quarter of century ago in a 1991 film that was rediscovered and posted online by the Correspondent, a Dutch news outlet, on Feb. 28.

Ties between industry and government strengthened during the early years of the George W. Bush administration when fossil fuel advocates like former API lobbyist Philip A. Cooney gained influence over U.S. government policy regarding climate change.

Cooney became chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, an office that drove climate policy. Government scientists accused Cooney of rewriting federal research reports to sow doubt about man-made climate change. Cooney resigned in 2005 and went to work for Exxon.

In their lawsuit, which was originally filed in September 2015 and updated to include President Trump as a defendant after his inauguration, the plaintiffs accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by knowing about the dangerous climate impacts of burning fossil fuels while supporting their development.

The federal government under the Obama administration, along with fossil fuel companies, requested dismissal of the case, but a federal district court judge in Oregon ruled last fall that the case could proceed....

==

LEC GMU

From: "Henry N. Butler"

Date: 01/03/2013

Subject: Re: Harry Ng

Harry has informed me that API will not be participating in the panels. They don't want it getting back to

EPA in DC that they are involved. However, he and Ben Norris will be providing assistance to the panels.

Best,

Henry

Henry N. Butler

Executive Director, Law and Economics Center

George Mason University School of Law

hnbutler?gmu.edu

703?993?8644

Amwx am. A [Mung-m'am' en's.M..mw.mmw?um mrwm-sh-?mm. a

From: Sarah Lenti

Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:57:59 ?0500

To:

Cc:

Subject: Harry Ng

Hey, Melissa Harry Ng from API was the gentleman who called me today. He is General Counsel and

his number was 202?682?8000.

Hope you have better luck!

Sarah Lenti

202-557?5461

From: Henry N. Butler

Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 8:21 AM

To: Melissa McLawhorn Houston

Cc: Sarah Lenti

Subject: Re: Harry Ng

Melissa,

Not sure if that is necessary. Marty Durbin and Harry [Ng?] reached decision after weighing risks to the efforts

to work with EPA and Dems on the Hill. Harry is going to provide a lot of help to the panels.

We?re in good shape with the panels.

Need to continue progress on AC attendance. [AG?]

Thanks.

Henry

Henry N. Butler

Executive Director, Law and Economics Center

George Mason University School of Law

hnbutlerfc?gmuedu

703-993?8644

1968

http://www.alternet.org/environment/new-evidence-suggests-big-oil-didnt-borrow-big-tobaccos-playbook-lie-public-about

...

“It’s increasingly clear that the fossil fuel industry knew a lot more about the causes of climate change—and its effects—much earlier than anyone else," said Annie Leonard, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, about CIEL’s findings. "It pains me to think how much better shape the planet and vulnerable communities could be in if the fossil fuel industry had taken positive action based on this knowledge instead of trying to profit from it."

Climate activist Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, has been a long-time critic of the oil and gas industry. “The ongoing revelations about the depth of oil industry research into—and obfuscation of—the greatest crisis humans have ever faced are hard to read; thanks to them, we wasted vital time,” he said in a press statement.

In a CIEL video, Muffett explains how “the world's most powerful industry used science, communications and consumer psychology to shape the public debate over climate change,” noting “it begins earlier, decades earlier than anyone recognized.” He points out that in 1968, API commissioned a report titled "Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants,” which revealed rising levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by the combustion of fossil fuel, in the atmosphere. The report’s authors, Elmer Robinson and R.C. Robbins of the Stanford Research Institute, warned of significant climate risks posed by the continued use of fossil fuel. "If the earth's temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis," they wrote, adding, “there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe."

Notably, Muffett said, is the fact that the report's authors "recognized that the most important remaining uncertainties were technological: How would we respond and how would we modify our technology to reduce emissions?" Now, nearly half a century later, the question becomes: Why did the oil industry hide this information from the public? Of course, we know the answer to that question: Profits. Instead of responding responsibly to the dire warnings that came with this information by moving the nation’s energy portfolio and infrastructure to a low-carbon future, the oil industry kept on drilling, kept businesses and consumers burning their primary retail products, which continued to pollute the environment and damage the Earth’s climate.

Seventy years of denial and deception...

update/prequel: exxon knew

smog  API

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05062016/oil-industry-clean-air-fight-smog-los-angeles-dress-rehearsal-climate-change-denial-exxon

most nice hist img out]

When the smog plaguing Los Angeles reached distressing levels in the early 1950s, the city hired Arie Haagen-Smit to study the cause. Not only was Haagen-Smit a scientist specializing in airborne microscopic chemicals, he was also angry about the state of the city's air. His work swiftly determined that the culprit was oil.

Following a hunch, Haagen-Smit built an unorthodox laboratory that accurately demonstrated how nitrogen oxide and uncombusted hydrocarbons from tailpipes and refineries react in sunlight to produce smog. His findings unnerved oil companies, which feared onerous regulation would follow. So when another scientist, Harold Johnston, challenged Haagen-Smit's findings, the industry's main consulting group hired him.

"They said terrible things about Haagen-Smit...I was given the job of overthrowing his theory entirely," Johnston recalled in an oral history years later. "I rapidly concluded that Haagen-Smit was a genius!"

That wasn't what the oil industry wanted to hear. It shelved Johnston's work and let his contract lapse. Then it conducted its own research to discredit Haagen-Smit's conclusions and manufacture doubt around the link between oil and smog.

But that link soon became irrefutable and smog became a pressing concern for regulators—first for California officials in the 1950s and 60s, then for the federal government. As Washington  began to pass modern clean air laws in the 1970s, oil companies lobbied against regulation. They argued that federal standards would be so expensive they would harm the economy.

Industry's response to smog and its fight against clean air standards unfolds like a rough draft of the muscular strategy it deployed 40 years later to deny climate science and the need for an urgent policy response, as documented in ICN's series "Exxon: The Road Not Taken."

"How the oil industry handled smog is a template for how it handled a bunch of issues, the most significant being climate change. There's a DNA here that's palpable," said Carroll Muffett, an attorney who is the president of the watchdog group, Center for International Environmental Law(CIEL). "Through it all, you see the creation of an echo chamber of doubt that takes the small unknowns and uncertainties and magnifies it until all we have is unknowns, when in fact the actual science isn't that way at all."

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's chief lobby, did not respond to questions about its work on smog.

"Why have we generally failed in our efforts to control air pollution?" asked Louis McCabe, the first Los Angeles smog regulator at a conference in 1949. "We have failed because industry believed that air pollution control cost too much. Smoke and dusts were the wages of a prosperous industrial community...There were 'cooperative' programs with the dual objectives of delay and defeat."

The story of how the oil industry has battled smog regulation is based on hundreds of industry speeches, articles, reports and oral histories that span the last 70 years. Many were gathered by CIEL and dozens were unearthed by InsideClimate News in the Library of Congress and other archives.

API continues to fight attempts to tighten the standard for ground-level ozone, or smog, with considerable success. The Obama administration delayed adoption of a tighter smog standard in 2011 under pressure from API and other business groups. The EPA recently proposed a stronger ozone rule, which the API is battling through ad campaigns, its Congressional allies and in the courts.

Regulations Begin to Pit Public Health vs. the Oil Industry

The federal Clean Air Act has proven a powerful and cost-effective policy tool since it came into force in 1970, providing trillions of dollars in health and economic benefits that far exceed the cost of the regulations. One recent Environmental Protection Agency study calculated that the benefits of the 1990 amendments to the law would amount to $2 trillion a year by 2020.

Smog can irritate respiratory tracts, exacerbate asthma and over time, damage lungs and boost the chances of early death. Despite progress, it continues to be a major problem. About 44 percent of the country, nearly 138 million people, live in areas where smog levels are dangerous to human health for at least part of the year.

Annually, about 200,000 people in the United States die prematurely because of air pollution, including smog, according to a 2013 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Los Angeles' smog began to rise to alarming levels in the early 1940s and swiftly became an economic and public health threat. On December 11, 1946, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page article identifying a local refinery as the source. That afternoon, oil executives organized a group to determine the causes of smog, the responsibility the oil industry bore for it and what it needed to do to curtail the pollution. It became known as the Smoke and Fumes committee.

In 1947, California became the first state to grant counties the authority to regulate smog, and Los Angeles set up its Air Pollution Control District. Desperate for a solution, city authorities skipped time-consuming research and brought in experts from cities such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis. In their haste, the officials erroneously blamed sulfur dioxide, another common pollutant. Oil refineries were big emitters, and under regulatory pressure, they spent millions of dollars to reduce sulfur dioxide.

Local academics eventually prevailed upon Los Angeles officials to research smog. The city hired Haagen-Smit, a rising star in plant biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Haagen-Smit was bothered physically by the acrid air and intellectually by the city's haphazard approach in dealing with it, according to Smogtown, a book by Chip Jacobs and William Kelly. But the smog persisted because sulfur dioxide was only a minor contributor to the problem. This mistake stoked the oil industry's mistrust of regulators and their experts.

Haagen-Smit's initial chemical analysis of smog homed in on aerosolized compounds of hydrocarbons that irritated the eyes.

"The volatile material released into the air consists of hydrocarbons, saturated and unsaturated, originating from products derived from the petroleum industry," Haagen-Smit wrote in 1950. "This includes all the material lost at the oil fields, refineries, filling stations, automobiles, etc."

His findings drew swift criticism from the oil industry and automakers. In an air pollution lecture at Caltech, a scientist from the Stanford Research Institute, the industry's main smog consultant, publicly disparaged the work of Haagen-Smit.

The consultant said, "Haagy's research was not consistent with the SRI's findings, and expressed regret that a respected scientist such as Dr. Haagen-Smit could make such a serious mistake," recalled Arnold Beckman, a Caltech chemist who was in the audience with Haagen-Smit. "Well, I could almost feel Haagy's blood pressure rise. He was furious," Beckman recounted. "The validity of his work was being questioned! 'I'll show them who's right and who's wrong,' he muttered as we left the room.

"That was the turning point in his career," Beckman said in a Caltech oral history. "He decided to take a leave of absence to do more work on air pollution, to squelch his critics and to prove beyond doubt the authenticity" of his findings.

Amid Gloomy Skies, the Industry Organizes

To research smog, the Smoke and Fumes committee had hired the Stanford Research Institute, established in 1946 by Stanford University, to manage the experiments. (SRI split from Stanford in 1970.)

"The prime responsibility of Stanford Research Institute is to serve Industry," said the first sentence of a booklet about SRI published in 1952.

Several oil executives served on its board of directors, including W.L. Stewart, Jr., senior vice president of Union Oil Co. and an early chairman of the Smoke and Fumes committee.

Stewart's inclination was to lead earnest research on smog. "We would win the gratitude of the community and, at the same time, warn ourselves in advance if there was something in our operations which contributed to smog so that we could correct it before the authorities and the newspapers were at our throats again," he said in a speech at the 1951 API convention.

Members of the Highland Park Optimist Club in Northeast L.A. are seen here wearing smog-gas masks

Members of the Highland Park Optimist Club in L.A. are seen here wearing smog-gas masks at a banquet, circa 1954. Credit: Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library

In closing, he underscored the moral need for industry to act: "I am not kidding myself or you. It will be expensive, and I am thinking in terms of lots of money—millions of dollars for the oil industry...To me, it is also smart to be leaders, to be good neighbors, to play fair, to practice the golden rule; but, above all, to be the sort of Americans we should like America to be made of."

Stewart's appeal would be echoed 35 years later by Exxon scientists Jim Black, Henry Shaw and Harold Weinberg as they called upon their company to research carbon dioxide from oil consumption and to prepare itself for a possible transition to other fuels. "What would be more appropriate than for the world's leading energy company and leading oil company [to] take the lead in trying to define whether a long-term CO2 problem really exists, and if so, what counter measures would be appropriate," Weinberg, a manager at Exxon Research & Engineering wrote in a memo to a colleague in March 1978.

"This may be the kind of opportunity that we are looking for to have Exxon technology, management and leadership resources put into the context of a project aimed at benefitting mankind."

But just as Exxon later pivoted from that impulse and worked to sow doubt about climate science, decades earlier oil companies faced a similar choice on smog and rejected taking responsibility.

In 1952, the American Petroleum Institute took over the Smoke and Fumes committee from the West coast companies. It funded research into smog, by groups such as the Franklin Institute in Pennsylvania, the Armour Research Foundation in Illinois and the Kettering Lab at the University of Cincinnati. Around that time, less than a year after Stewart's recommendation, API's stance on smog became more defensive as the science grew more definitive, showing refineries and auto exhaust were likely to blame for smog.

SRI scientists and the Smoke and Fumes committee's new executive secretary, Vance Jenkins, pushed back against Haagen-Smit's findings.

In a paper "Smog: Fact and Fiction," SRI scientists maintained that many substances were responsible for smog, not just hydrocarbons.  In another paper, "The Policeman is Coming!" Jenkins wrote, "This new idea is still merely a theory—a plausible but entirely unproved speculation or guess."

But Haagen-Smit's work was taking hold in the wider community. In August 1954, Los Angeles' top air pollution regulator, Gordon Larson, told the county's governing Board of Supervisors that auto exhaust was behind smog, according to the Los Angeles Times. Larson based his statement, the first targeting an exact cause, on Haagen-Smit's work.

In 1955, the industry-backed Air Pollution Foundation asked an Illinois research chemist named Arnold Miller to come to California to resolve the issue.

Miller spent time with Haagen-Smit in his lab. He also went to SRI's lab in Pasadena, which had been unable to replicate Haagen-Smit's results despite their state-of-the-art facilities. The enmity between the two camps was palpable, and they did not exchange information, despite being five miles apart. Miller recalled in 2009 that he saw the "overt disdain" SRI felt toward the Caltech smog scientist.

When he closely copied Haagen-Smit's methodology, Miller achieved the same results and independently validated his work.

Nevertheless, industry continued to pursue alternative theories. One industry-funded study in 1955 examined 10 other American cities and found that they did not have the same eye-watering levels of ozone. The implication was that smog was a particular problem for L.A., and did not need to be addressed with urgency elsewhere.

A 1957 study at the University of California at Riverside investigated damage caused on smoggy days to the leaves of plants. It found that one form of damage was caused merely by ultraviolet light, whether or not smog-forming chemicals were introduced. This would suggest that the sun, not chemical pollution, was to blame.

"The worst thing that can happen, in many instances, is the hasty passage of a law or laws for the control of a given air pollution situation," Jenkins wrote in a 1954 paper. "For many such cases their passage results from a panicky feeling that 'there ought to be a law' and laws drawn for such reasons are likely to be poorly drawn and based on either insufficient or erroneous data."

A New Approach to Defensiveness

Eventually, Haagen-Smit's theory prevailed. The Franklin Institute, which conducted research for the Smoke and Fumes committee, built a 30-foot long spectrometer in 1956 called "Silent Sam" that confirmed his results. With the science now more certain, the oil industry shifted its public posture. It no longer denied hydrocarbons were the main ingredient in smog. Instead, industry executives blamed the auto industry.

At an air pollution conference in Los Angeles in 1955, Philip S. Magruder, chairman of the Western Oil and Gas Association's Air Pollution Control Committee acknowledged that smog "involves our product." However, he then said that daily hydrocarbon emissions from refineries and other industry sources amounted to 120 tons, while the 2.5 million vehicles in Los Angeles County accounted for more than 10 times that amount.

He suggested that once fuel left the oil refineries, the industry was not responsible for emissions from vehicles. The industry could refine gasoline to emit less, but that gas wouldn't work in current car engines, he said.

"We study the requirements of the automotive engines that the automotive industry designs and builds," Magruder said. "Then we make the fuel to meet those needs as best we can."

By the 1960s, the industry was in the crosshairs of regulators. Federal rules addressing pollution had become stricter since the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 allocated funding for research. The Clean Air Act of 1963 and the Air Quality Act of 1967 set nationwide emissions standards.  "If anyone ever tells you he can lick all of the smog problems by changing gasoline, be sure to ask him if the gasoline mixture he's proposing will also perform that other vital function, namely making your modern car run the way you want it to."

The industry worked harder to sway public opinion.

Mobil Oil began a campaign that warned smog controls would be costly. "Just wishing for it won't make the air cleaner," according to a booklet published by the Mobil Oil Corp., which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. "It will cost a lot of money. And sooner or later the cost will fall on the people. All the people."

API promoted the same concept in a 16-page booklet in 1967 titled "Clearing the Air: A Layman's Guide to Atmospheric Purity." It read: "It is obvious that the control of pollution has cost a great deal of money and is going to cost even more in the future."

Fighting Regulation to the Present Day

Throughout the 1960s, the oil industry offered voluntary steps as an alternative to federal rules, which they said would cripple the economy.

The federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare proposed new air quality guidelines for sulfur oxide in 1967. Spokesmen for the coal and oil industries denounced them. They said the guidelines were "'economically unrealistic, scientifically indefensible and technologically impossible,'" wrote Jeanne Logsdon, professor emerita of management at University of New Mexico, in a 1985 paper.

"Industry was largely successful in weakening the stronger proposals in 1967," she added.

Threats of litigation from API and other business groups convinced the Carter administration in 1979 to relax the ozone standard from 80 parts per billion to 120 parts per billion, a 50 percent increase. That was not enough for API, which filed a lawsuit  to overturn the standard completely, according to The Washington Post.

Another major tightening of the rules for smog came during the Clinton administration, again over vigorous opposition from industry.

When President Obama took office, his administration vowed to heed the EPA's science advisers, who said a standard between 60 and 70 parts per billion would best protect public health.

In 2014, after years of inaction, the EPA proposed a new ozone standard of 70 parts per billion, the weakest limit recommended by its science advisers. API has filed suit to halt adoption of the new limit and API's allies in Congress have proposed legislation to overturn it.  But Obama surprised the EPA by delaying the more stringent limit in September 2011. A few weeks earlier, API president Jack Gerard, and other lobbyists had met with top White House officials and drove home the argument that the economies of several battleground states in the 2012 election might suffer because of the tougher standard, according to The New York Times.

"New ozone rules could be the most expensive ever," according to the API website. "Tightening ozone standards could increase costs to the American public, reduce America's ability to compete internationally, and threaten American jobs."

API's position on the ozone rule differs little from its assessment of EPA's Clean Power Plan, instituted in 2015 to address the carbon pollution that causes global warming.

"Meeting climate challenges must go hand-in-hand with ensuring that Americans have the affordable and reliable energy necessary to grow our economy and create jobs. Instead, the EPA rule could impose the greatest costs on those who can least afford it," said Howard J. Feldman, API senior director of regulatory affairs, on the lobby's website.

He added: "We can continue that progress without costly new regulations that could hurt consumers and stifle economic growth."

ICN's managing editor, John H. Cushman, Jr., contributed to this report.

==

4/16

A trove of newly uncovered documents shows that fossil fuel companies were explicitly warned of the risks of climate change decades earlier than previously suspected.

And while it’s no secret—anymore—that the companies knew about those dangers long ago, the documents, published Wednesday by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), reveal even more about the broader industry effort to suppress climate science and foment public doubt about global warming.

Industry executives met in Los Angeles in 1946 to discuss growing public concern about air pollution. That meeting led to the formation of a panel—suitably named the Smoke and Fumes Committee—to conduct research into air pollution issues.

But the research was not meant to be a public service; rather, it was used by the committee to “promote public skepticism of environmental science and environmental regulations the industry considered hasty, costly, and potentially unnecessary,” CIEL writes.

The group continues:

In the decades that followed, the Smoke and Fumes Committee funded massive levels of research into an array of air pollution issues, often conducted by institutes fostered and governed by the oil companies themselves. By the mid-1950s at the very latest, climate change was one of those issues.

The documents also show how Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) scientists actively engaged on climate science in the company’s name beginning in the 1950s, even as they actively funded and published research into alternate theories of global warming.

Among the documents is a report by the Stanford Research Institute presented to the American Petroleum Institute (API) in 1968 warning of the potential consequences of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

That report states:

Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000 and these could bring about climate change. If the Earth’s temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis. [….]

[T]here seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.

“We begin with three simple, related questions,” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett. “What did they know? When did they know it? And what did they do about it?”

“What we found is they knew a great deal,” Muffett said, “and they knew it much earlier and with greater certainty than anyone has recognized or that the industry has admitted.”

Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA, said of the release, “It’s increasingly clear that the fossil fuel industry knew a lot more about the causes of climate change—and its effects—much earlier than anyone else. It pains me to think how much better shape the planet and vulnerable communities could be in if the fossil fuel industry had taken positive action based on this knowledge instead of trying to profit from it.”

The industry’s coverup of climate science was exposed last July by the Union of Concerned Scientists and through reporting by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/oil-industrys-suppression-of-climate-science-began-in-1940s-documents-reveal/