Big 4 FF

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category includes trifecta as well as the odd defector, includes ever-present API

SEE CLIMATE LAWSUITS

SEE CALIF v big5+API

SEE GREENWASH

see defectors

see energy corps

see gas price/ inflation

see FF CEO

SEE FIRE WALL ST

see KNEW

SEE TAX DODGE / SUNSIDY/ LOBBYIST / DARK MONEY

split between US and EU corps on renewABLES AND ev; exxon doubles down on hydrocarbons core expertise thus CSS BS

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heated gmail 9 26

some blame where it’s due.

Fossil fuel companies, obviously. (Truly, no clue how those executives sleep at night.) And I gave you my two cents on big ag.

Also:

Big banks: Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, 60 banks have provided $7.9 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies, with the top four banks alone—JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—providing more than $1.64 trillion.

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AN 9 26 HAAKE

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In the last weeks of August, a valley in the Himalayas and a post-industrial city in the U.S. Midwest found tragic commonality. In Gary, Indiana, a powerful “derecho,” a fast-moving band of damaging thunderstorms, tore across Lake Michigan producing straight-line winds as high as 110 mph. The widespread destruction left tens of thousands of peoplewithout electricity for over two weeks, bringing global relief organizations like World Central Kitchen to the area for the first time. In Nepal, an enormous 2,000 foot wide chunk of glacier ice sheared off a mountain and plunged to the river 7,000 feet below, tearing everyone off the mountainside with it, killing over 1,000 people.

Scientists agree that both catastrophes were caused by the rise in global temperatures.

Eight thousand miles apart, as historically and culturally distinct as two areas can be, both Nepal and Gary emerged as pawns in the same oligarchs’ game of chicken: Can big oil squeeze another decade of ROI on their sunk equipment costsbefore the earth’s post-industrial temperature increases by 3.6°F (2°C)? Scientists have warned since the 1970s that an increase of 2°C will be the tipping point beyond which life on earth will change irreversibly, yet the same game of chicken persists. Fossil fuel profits have continued to soar despite the warnings— now tipping $3,000 a second— with the costs of climate change projected to hit $38 ***T***rillion annually.

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GP OXFAM SAY Q1 23B Q2 2X?! DN?

AN 7 26

As Trump’s tariffs and his war with Iran drive up prices of everything from oil to steel, you’d think big American corporations would be screaming bloody hell. Presumably, Trump’s tariffs and war are squeezing their profits just as they’re squeezing the wallets of average Americans.

To the contrary, corporate America is quietly encouraging both Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs. Why?

One possibility is they’re raking in money off the war as defense contractors and suppliers.

Some surely are, but this can’t account for the acquiescence if not outright support by most big American corporations that have nothing to do with the defense-industrial complex.

Another possibility is they don’t want to p--- off Trump, fearing his retaliation.

But if they were really concerned about the negative effects of Trump’s war and his tariffs on their bottom lines, surely they’d be using their armies of lobbyists and piles of campaign contributions to stop his war and his tariffs. After all, that’s what the armies and piles are for.

There’s a much simpler explanation for corporate America’s silence if not encouragement. In point of fact, both Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs are helping their bottom lines.

Trump’s war and his tariffs are allowing domestic U.S. producers to raise their prices to match the elevated prices of imports. And those who aren’t directly affected are using the higher import costs as excuses to raise their prices, too.

Presto! — corporate profits have exploded, and their stock prices have soared.

But American consumers are getting shafted. Both Trump’s war and his tariffs are pushing up prices for a vast range of goods and services. The result is a massive redistribution of income and wealth from American consumers to big American corporations.

This is the story of the American political economy under Trump that’s rarely if ever told, but it’s critical to understanding why Trump has been getting away with his war in Iran and his tariffs without much political opposition.

Start with oil.

Brent crude is now selling for $90.05 a barrel. If the war drags on it could push crude prices much higher, especially if it further depletes oil inventories, and spreads to Houthi militants starting a naval blockade in the Red Sea and to other Gulf states.

Oil prices are set globally. As global supplies dwindle, oil prices rise across the board — including prices charged by domestic U.S. producers. They’re enjoying a huge windfall.

With crude oil prices averaging $95 a barrel between March and June — up from about $66 before the war — ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental Petroleum have collectively raked in some $31 billion in earnings for the second quarter of this year, according to FactSet estimates.

That’s up from about $12 billion for the same period last year.

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gmail ccI 12 25

CCI

WASH STATE?

READ: Disaster and insurance costs are rising. The middle class is struggling to hang on

⚖️ The New Republic: The Supreme Court’s Ethics Code Is a Joke. Big Oil Knows That.

Plastic recycling has “largely failed” despite polluters’ claims otherwise, a new report from Greenpeace shows. The report adds to the growing evidence of petrochemical and oil companies’ deception around the viability of plastic recycling that the industry has used to avoid public scrutiny for fueling the plastic pollution crisis.

ExxonMobil is asking the Supreme Court to take up Boulder, Colorado’s, climate deception lawsuit, which seeks to hold Exxon and Suncor Energy liable for local climate damages. Escaping these cases is “a big priority not just for ExxonMobil, but for the entire industry,” a top Exxon lawyer recently said.

“If these cases are as frivolous as the oil companies’ briefs pretend, then why in the world are you busting your butt to get a declaration of immunity from Congress?”

Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor and senior fellow at Vermont Law School

Climate deception starts young.Over the past decade, a Shell subsidiary has paid the Queensland Museum in Australia _millions of dollars to fund children’s educational programs_ that do not identify fossil fuels as a primary driver of climate change.

Fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, have been working to undermine and dilute the impact of the European Union’s flagship human rights and climate law, according to _leaked documents_. The companies worked to “divide and conquer the Council” in order to destroy the law that aims to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses and climate damage.

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British energy giant had planned a big switch to green energy. That's been shelved.

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big-oil-spent-over-18-million-in-first-half-of-2025-to-shake-down-california-and-evade-accountabilityhttps://www.apenaction.org/2025/08/04/big-oil-spent-over-18-million-in-first-half-of-2025-to-shake-down-california-and-evade-accountability/

Sacramento, CA — The oil industry is orchestrating a full-scale shakedown of California.

In the first half of 2025, the oil industry and its lobbying arm spent over $18 million to kill key climate legislation, protect its profits, and block efforts to hold it accountable — all while communities suffer from rising costs, pollution, and the accelerating impacts of climate change. The over $18 million figure puts the oil industry on pace for its second highest lobbying and influence spend of all time in California, trailing only behind last year’s final total of $38 million and well ahead of the previous record of $26.2 million in 2017.

Influence spending disclosure reports for the second quarter released for the August 1 deadline show that the industry’s spending binge includes multimillion-dollar misinformation campaigns designed to blame climate policies for high prices — when it’s really Big Oil’s own actions that are driving up costs. From gouging consumers at the pump to suddenly shutting down refineries and squeezing supply, fossil fuel corporations are manipulating the scarcity they created to lobby for further bailouts in the form of deregulation, subsidies, and unlimited oil drilling.

Top 6 lobbying and influence spenders (Jan – June 2025):

AN PRO P 3 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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gmail cci

News & Analysis

November 26, 2024

Maine is suing major oil companies and their top trade association for lying about the dangers of fossil fuels and driving the climate crisis that is now battering the coastal state. The lawsuit marks the 9th state to take fossil fuel companies to court over their decades of climate deception.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey’s lawsuit accuses Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, Sunoco, and the American Petroleum Institute for “failing to warn Mainers and concealing their knowledge about the devastating consequences of the increasing use of fossil fuels on Maine’s people, economy, and environment.”

“For over half a century, these companies chose to fuel profits instead of following their science to prevent what are now likely irreversible, catastrophic climate effects,” said Attorney General Frey, who joined 10 other attorneys general taking Big Oil to court. “In so doing, they burdened the State and our citizens with the consequences of their greed and deception.”

Maine Governor Janet Mills gave her support to the lawsuit, pointing to the toll that extreme weather is taking on the state’s residents and economy. “For decades, big oil companies have made record profits, taking billions out of the pockets of Maine people while deliberately deceiving them about the harmful impacts of fossil fuels – impacts that Maine people see and feel every day,” she said.

Maine is asking for a jury trial in state court. Its lawsuit seeks to make the Big Oil defendants pay for climate damages, stop engaging in deceptive practices, and give up the profits that they illegally obtained while lying to consumers about the dangers of their products.

“With Maine’s lawsuit, the demands that Big Oil faces accountability for decades of climate lies are growing louder and more powerful,” said CCI President Richard Wiles.

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'Polluters must pay': Senators urge Biden DOJ to sue Big Oil over decades of climate lies

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams July 31, 2023

"Thanks to the illegal lies of the fossil fuel industry, climate change is wreaking catastrophic damage upon the United States," four progressive U.S. senators write in a new letter.

A group of progressive U.S. senators on Monday urged President Joe Biden's Justice Department to take legal action against the fossil fuel industry over its deliberate efforts to "mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of massive profits."

"The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws, and the department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions," reads aletter that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The senators pointed to recently unveiled records that show Shell knewas soon as the early 1970s that burning fossil fuels could cause climate change—knowledge that was not reflected in their public messaging and advertising. Exxon also knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change in the 1970s but publicly cast doubt on such a link and funded groups peddling climate denial.

"Despite these companies' knowledge about climate change and the role their industry was playing in driving carbon emissions, they chose to participate in a decadeslong, carefully coordinated campaign of misinformation to obfuscate climate science and convince the public that fossil fuels are not the primary driver of climate change," the senators wrote in their letter to Garland.

"To coordinate their illegal misinformation campaign, the fossil fuel industry funded a multimillion-dollar plan through the American Petroleum Institute that sought to make climate change a 'non-issue,'" the senators continued. "According to this plan, 'victory will be achieved' when 'recognition of the uncertainties [in climate science] become part of the 'conventional wisdom.' Exxon, whose climate predictions from the 1970s have proved remarkably correct, was a primary contributor to this plan."

"Like with Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry's illegal, coordinated campaign of misinformation has proven tremendously profitable."

The oil and gas industry's efforts to mislead the public about climate change "bears a striking resemblance" to the tobacco industry's campaign of lies about the dangers of cigarettes, the senators argued. In 2006, major U.S. tobacco companies were found guilty of violating civil racketeering laws and making deceptive statements about their products.

"Both industries have used the same public relations firms and researchers since the 1950s," the senators wrote Monday. "Like with Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry's illegal, coordinated campaign of misinformation has proven tremendously profitable. From 1990 to 2019, the six largest private fossil fuel companies made $2.4 trillion in profits."

"Thanks to the illegal lies of the fossil fuel industry, climate change is wreaking catastrophic damage upon the United States," the senators added. "Floods, droughts, extreme weather disturbances, and wildfires are causing unprecedented damage. Deloitte estimates that unchecked climate change, driven by the fossil fuel industry, could cost the United States $14.5 trillion over the next 50 years... Polluters must pay."

Dozens of U.S. cities and states have sued the oil and gas industry in recent years, part of a growing global wave of climate lawsuits aimed at holding fossil fuel giants accountable in the face of worsening extreme weather and government inaction.

The Biden Justice Department recently filed a Supreme Court brief siding with local governments in Colorado in a climate lawsuit against oil companies, but the administration has yet to take legal action of its own.

In their letter on Monday, the senators implored the Justice Department to "join the fight and work with partners at the Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement agencies to file suits against all those who participated in the fossil fuel industry's illegal conspiracy of lies and deception under federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and any other applicable federal law."

"The future of our planet depends on it," they wrote.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Green groups fear 'climate catastrophe' as Congo weighs selling rainforest for oil drilling ›

Big Oilshill tells Fox News viewers there’s 'no health risk' from inhaling toxic smoke ›

Study exposes climate claims by Big Oil as blatant corporate propaganda ›

Campaigners rip Shell’s 'cynical case' against ditching Fossil fuels as world records hottest days — so far

[BERLIN, GERMANY - APRIL 16: Wael Sawan, managing director and chairman of Shell Qatar, speaks at the Qatar Business and Investment Forum 2013 on April 16, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. Through its oil and gas revenue, which have allowed Qatar to bring in the world's highest income per capita as well as have one of the lowest unemployment levels in the world, the Persian Gulf country is able to invest outside of Arab countries in industries as diverse as fashion, media, petrochemicals and banking. (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)

Julia Conley

and

Common Dreams

July 06, 2023

two days after scientists recorded the hottest day on record and warned that the milestone is the latest clear sign that all fossil fuel production must be urgently phased out, the CEO of multinational oil and gas giant Shell claimed that transitioning to renewable energy sources is what would endanger the world and expressed what campaigners called "cynical" concerns for the well-being of the Global South.

Wael Sawan, who took over the U.K.-based company last year, told the BBC Thursday that the world's energy system "continues to desperately need oil and gas," contrary to evidence put forward by the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and other experts.

"I think what would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out the oil and gas production so that the cost of living—as we saw just last year—starts to shoot up again," said Sawan.

Cost-of-living increases have raised alarm in communities around the world following the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine—but numerous analyses have pointed to corporate greed and price-gouging, not the decreasing supply of oil and gas, as primary drivers of financial hardship for working people.

Shell reported record-breaking profits of nearly $40 billionlast year, doubling its total for 2021.

"The only 'danger' Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits," Alice Harrison of the international human rights group Global Witness told The GuardianThursday. "Whether blinded by the pound signs or simply willfully ignorant, Shell's CEO is wrong. Ending our dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to green energy will serve both the planet and provide energy security for all. Shell [has] once again made their loyalties clear—profit over people and planet."

Guterres is among the critics who have warned that companies that continue to invest in fossil fuels will not continue to see enormous profits forever, and asCommon Dreamsreported last week, research from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that public pensions in the United States have lost tens of billions of dollars due to their refusal to pull out of the oil, gas, and coal sectors.

"Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness_{," Guterres saidearlier this year. "Such investments will soon be stranded assets—a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios."}_

in his comments to the BBC, Sawan suggested his concern is not with his own company's future, but that of the Global South—where people aresuffering disproportionately from the effectsof the climate crisis and planetary heating, despite causing a tiny fraction of the fossil fuel pollution that originates in wealthier countries.

He said the distribution of benefits from the use of renewable energy must be "globally responsible" so the Global North doesn't hoard energy sources such as solar and wind power.

"Let's be clear, companies like Shell are fueling both the climate crisis and the soaring cost of energy," Jamie Peters of Friends of the Earth told TheGuardian. "They are profiting from the misery of ordinary people while destroying the planet, and they're making a cynical case to continue locking us into the volatile fossil fuel markets that are the root cause of the energy crisis."

As environmental journalist Harry Cockburn noted on social media, for all Sawan's claims of concern for people in the Global South, he made clear that Shell's profits are his top priority as the interview concluded. [twt]

"Cutting production is only dangerous in the kind of upside-down world where profit rules over everything," said the grassroots coalition Stop Cambo, which pressuredShell to pull out of the Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland in 2021. "Even as the planet burns and people are forced to choose between heating and eating."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

"Windfall" profits

The White House and environmentalists have condemned oil companies' ballooning profits. The White House has criticized fossil-fuel companies for not increasing production to help bring down gas prices, and last year floated a tax on oil and gas profits.

A White House spokesperson called Exxon's record profit "outrageous" in a statement to the BBC. The spokesperson, Abdullah Hasan, also blasted Chevron's announcement that it would spend $75 billion on buying back stock from investors.

"Companies clearly have everything they need — record profits and thousands of approved permits — to increase production. The only thing getting in the way is their own decision to keep plowing windfall profits into the pockets of executives," Hasan tweeted.

"A windfall tax on oil and gas profits is needed more than ever, to free up money that's desperately needed to help those struggling with the cost of energy, and as economies around the world face recession," Jonathan Noronha-Gant, senior campaigner with Global Witness, told the Associated Press.

Some jurisdictions, including the European Union and the U.K., have imposed such taxes on surplus energy-company profits, putting the proceeds toward covering citizens' skyrocketing energy costs. In December, Exxon sued to stop the EU's tax.

"We looked at what happened in the EU and said it both is not legal and it's the opposite of what is needed," Woods said Tuesday, calling the tax "a penalty on the broad energy sector."

Dramatic turnaround

Oil companies have seen a remarkable turnaround from 2020, a year when travel ground to a halt, demand for fuel evaporated, dozens of oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy protection, and thousands of industry workers were laid off. Exxon lost $22 billion that year — the first year in decades that it had lost money.

In addition to oil-extracting operations that were taken offline in 2020, refining capacity also fell, contributing to higher gas prices and refinery profit margins.

"The refining business, particularly in the U.S., soared to record levels," McNally, the Third Bridge analyst, said. "The price of crude oil went up but the prices of refined products like gasoline and diesel went up even more. The largest U.S. independent refiner, Marathon Petroleum, delivered record profits, but ExxonMobil and Chevron also compete in refining."

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fossil fuel executives have funded a massive, 50-year-long campaign to lie to the American people, cloud the science, and buy off Republican politicians. Untold millions will die and suffer as a result, but will their ever be one iota of accountability?

If somebody had set your house on fire, killing your child and pets, and then your city demanded that you give that somebody hundreds of dollars a year for the next decade, how would you feel?

That’s pretty much the situation of families across America who’ve lost their homes, family members, and livelihoods to wildfires, floods, extreme heat and cold, mile-wide tornadoes, bomb cyclones, heat domes, hurricanes, and drought caused by today’s climate emergency, but nonetheless have to pay taxes that subsidize the fossil fuel industry executives who helped caused it all.

For over 50 years, the top executives of that industry have known their products would produce this exact result: a crisis that is killing an average of around 7,500 Americans a year (and over a million worldwide) and promises to kill hundreds of millions within a decade or two.

But instead of doing anything of consequence to mitigate the damage of their operations, they instead funded a massive, 50-year-long campaign to lie to the American people, cloud the science, and buy off Republican politicians.

President Biden, as part of his negotiations with Kevin McCarthy, has proposed reducing the budget deficit by $31 billion through cutting about five percent of the subsidies you and I give to the fossil fuel industry every year through our tax dollars. McCarthy, in the pocket of Big Oil, has said he won’t even consider the proposal.

Famed climate scientist James Hansen is working on a paper outlining the dimensions of the disaster facing humanity at the hands of the fossil fuel industry, and it’s shocking. My friend and colleague Thomas Neuburger did a deep dive into it this week in his excellent God’s Spies Substack newsletter that’s well worth the read.

In essence, Hansen is proposing that the world will soon see both a collapse of the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe’s climate capable of growing crops and a worldwide 60-meter rise in sea levels. Possibly in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. As Thomas dryly notes in God’s Spies: “For Americans, 60 meters is about 200 feet.”

Deaths worldwide both directly from such an outcome — and from the wars that will result in the destruction of entire civilizations — will be measured in billions; here in America it’ll certainly be in the millions, and probably the tens of millions. Not to mention it speeding up the ongoing species collapse often referred as the Sixth Mass Extinction.

This is what the fossil fuel industry has brought to us, and to this day is aggressively trying to continue to sell to us. Fully aware of what they are doing.

Last week, the World Meteorological Organization published an in-depth reportwith the top-line conclusion summarizing the damage these fossil fuel executives have already inflicted on our planet and our lives, all while funding climate denial and paying off politicians worldwide:

“Between 1970 and 2021, there were 11,778 reported disasters [worldwide] attributed to weather, climate, and water extremes. They caused 2,087,229 deaths and US$ 4.3 trillion in economic losses.”

The week before that, One Earth published a peer-reviewed analysis of the cost of all this damage, quantifying it by the 21 largest fossil fuel companies around the world. They concluded that those decision-making executives of the fossil fuel industry have inflicted over $5.4 trillion in identifiable economic damages on the rest of us which, instead of paying for, they have greedily converted to their own profit.

The report notes:

The “costs of anthropogenic climate change are chiefly borne by states that compensate their own citizens harmed by climate impacts or contribute to international adaptation finance, by insurance companies with regard to their insureds, and by uncompensated victims of climate change.”

In other words, the fossil fuel companies produced the global warming and cancer-causing emissions, but when people are damaged by them or the weather they are changing, government and insurance companies pay the cost.

The fossil fuel companies and their executives pay nothing, and never have. If they can keep the GOP in their pocket, they hope they never will.

Therefore, Earth One is calling for specific reparations, paid for by those companies:

“We argue that other agents bear substantial responsibility for the cost of redressing climate harm: the companies that engage in the exploration, production, refining, and distribution of oil, gas, and coal.

“The recent progress in climate attribution science makes it evident that these companies have played a major role in the accumulation and escalation of such costs by providing gigatonnes of carbon fuels to the global economy while willfully ignoring foreseeable climate harm.

“All the while they successfully shaped the public narrative on climate change through disinformation, misleading ‘advertorials,’ lobbying, and political donations to delay action directly or through trade associations and other surrogates.” (emphasis mine)

So, what can we do?

I see two possibilities, the first involving the law, and the second using the marketplace and, if that doesn’t work fast enough, the Fifth Amendment’s eminent domain provision.

First, the law:

Article 16 of the 1992 Rio Declaration explicitly calls for fossil fuel producers to pay for the damage their products and extraction processes produce. Thus, Earth One argues, Saudi Aramco (as the largest example) has cost the world so much that they should pay $43 billion a year in reparations for the next 25 years. While that seems like a lot of money, Saudi Aramco’s revenue in 2022 was $604 billion, spinning off $161 billion in pure profit.

Most of it’s executives and stockholders are already morbidly rich; this will put nobody in the poorhouse.

But isn’t the impact of this industry on our planet so consequential that — instead of just reducing their most senior executives’ income/revenue from billions to hundreds of millions — we should actually be holding the decision makers to account?

The legislature of New York State is considering a superfund bill that would move financially in this direction against domestic fossil fuel producers; other states will probably soon follow, although none are yet law.

None, though, yet target decision making senior executives as was done after World War II with the senior executives of the manufacturer of Zyklon B and the bosses and owners of the companies that ran medical experiments in concentration camps.

The discussion isn’t limited to the United States. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported this week:

“As fires blaze in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C., new research has drawn a direct and measurable link between carbon emissions traced back to the world’s major fossil fuel producers and the increase in extreme wildfires across western Canada and the United States.”

They based that reporting on a new peer-reviewed study published the week before in Environmental Research Letters that, the CBC noted:

“[F]ound that 37 per cent of the total burned forest area in Western Canada and the United States between 1986-2021 can be traced back to 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.”

But these companies have not stopped buying off politicians, making it clear that extracting money from the ones causing all this damage and death worldwide may not be enough to provoke real change from the billionaire and multi-millionaire investors and executives making the decisions. Instead, we must motivate those executives themselves.

Another remedy, therefore, comes from the Nuremberg principles that were created in 1950 by the United Nations after World War II. While their original goal was to prosecute Nazis and deter future genocidal actions by dictatorial regimes, they could arguably apply to today’s intentional mass murder at the hands of the world’s fossil fuel executives.

More specifically, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague was created by the Rome Statute on July 17, 1998. It goes beyond the “war crimes” and “crimes of aggression” defined by the Nuremberg principles and specifies both those two along with “the crime of genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”

That last category is clarified as including:

“[I]nhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

The United States has never signed onto the ICC, but actions against fossil fuel executives based in the US can be brought by other signatory nations. If the effort were started outside the United States, for example, Royal Dutch Shell is based in the Netherlands, a full signatory to the Rome Statute.

As of three years ago, two US states had launched fraud investigations into ExxonMobil, although the one lawsuit by New York failed to bring a conviction (it was based on a charge that they had committed fraud against their investors).

Multiple US cities have sued fossil fuel companies for climate change damages, although there has not yet been a “breakthrough” case that could establish a precedent for others. But as damages continue to pile up and our weather becomes increasingly violent, expect more to come.

Fossil fuel companies have been following a business model since their early years in the 19th century of internalizing profits while externalizing (dumping on the public) their costs and damages.

Which brings us to a second possible solution to this crisis: nationalize the companies themselves, so their profits can be used to remedy their harms.

If ever there was an industry that merited nationalization, the fossil fuel industry is it. They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.

America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. And we could acquire controlling interest of the nation’s three largest fossil fuel players — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — for, according to Robert Pollin writing at The American Prospect, fewer than a half-trillion dollars.

For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump’s billionaire tax cuts we could rapidly move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.

All the American government would have to do is to go into the public marketplace and start purchasing the stock of each of these companies at a premium to buy majority shares in each of them. Again, the cost would be less than 1/4th of Donald Trump‘s tax cut. It could probably be done in a matter of months, possibly even weeks.

But is it even possible? Turns out that history says an emphatic, “Yes!”

During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country’s railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation’s radio networks and radio stations. All were returned to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation’s railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation’s largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.

After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation’s steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.

Like with Wilson’s nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who’d put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, President Richard Nixon oversaw the nationalization and transfer of 20 railroads into the newly created National Rail Passenger Corporation, now known as Amtrak.

In 1974 Congress created another nationalized entity to deal with freight rail, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), which absorbed dozens of failing rail companies. Conrail was government held until 1987, when it was privatized in the then-largest IPO in American history.

In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan’s administration oversaw the FDIC, nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn’t re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.

Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, banksters made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.

When the government agency that insured them, FSLIC, went bankrupt itself in 1987, Reagan and Congress created an umbrella agency — the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) — to nationalize 747 of America’s S&Ls with assets of over $400 billion. Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, having averted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.

When George W. Bush was handed the White House by 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation’s airline security system was entirely in private hands.

They failed miserably on 9/11, so Bush didn’t even bother with the normal acquisition process that would protect the hundreds of small contractors running security at airports across the nation: he simply nationalized the entire system and created a government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to take over airport and airline security.

President Bush also partially nationalized the nation’s airlines, creating the Air Transportation Stabilization Board that traded around $10 billion in loans to airlines in crisis (air traffic collapsed after 9/11) in exchange for company stock. We (through our government) ended up holding 7.64 million shares in US Airways, 18.7 million shares of America West Airlines, 3.45 million shares in Frontier Airlines, 1.47 million shares in American TransAir, and 2.38 million shares in World Airways.

Congress had deregulated the nation’s banks in 1999 when Republicans pushed through an end to the Glass-Steagall Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law. The resulting banking system crash in 2008 forced the Bush administration to nationalize the country’s two largest mortgage lenders (they held about 40% of all US mortgages), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The Bush administration then additionally nationalized a 77.9% share in AIG, a 36% share of Citigroup, and a 73.5% share of GMAC, forcing out GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner, who’d been a particularly terrible manager of that company and was actively lobbying against what Bush thought were America’s interests.

As President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, GM and Chrysler were on the brink of collapse. His administration created a new company, NGMCO, Inc., that nationalized the assets of GM and was 60.8% owned by the federal government.

GM was finally fully re-privatized by the Obama administration in 2013. Chrysler went through a similar process, although both the UAW and the Canadian government were part owners when it was temporarily nationalized.

Thomas M. Hanna, Director of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, compiled most of the data above in a brilliant paper titled “A History of Nationalization in the United States 1917-2009.”

Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing — perhaps only temporarily — America’s largest oil and gas companies:

“In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.

“This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.”

Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations.

It literally threatens all life on Earth.

Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with coal baron Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their 2021 Build Back Better legislation.

Squeals of “socialism!” and “Venezuela!” aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation’s interests and have done it before, repeatedly.

And this time it’s not just about saving our banks or fighting a war. This time, it’s literally about saving the world.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Direct threat to action': How climate misinformation plagues Twitter under Elon Musk's leadership ›

Progressives slam Kyrsten Sinema for infrastructure package 'watered down' by Exxon lobbying influence ›

Federal judges say Minnesota climate suit belongs in state court upsetting Koch and Exxon ›

Includes narratives which promote the benefits of oil and gas as energy sources to the functioning of people’s everyday lives.	Number (%): 7749 (31%) Spend: $4,354,825 Impressions: 174,545,645	Oil & gas are affordable
Oil & gas are reliable	Oil & gas are reliable	Oil & gas are reliable
Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas	Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas	Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas
Patriotic Energy Mix	Includes narratives tying the production of domestic oil and gas to energy independence and energy leadership for the US.... In line with the strategic deployment of ads, the geographic distribution of the ads shows that the ads most targeted states with high levels of oil and gas production, such as Texas and New Mexico, and swing states, including Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Ohio. States with specific policy battles affecting the oil and gas sector in 2020, such as Alaska, also sustained significant advertising campaigns....he Advertisers XYX... InfluenceMap used data from 25 advertisers, covering the 10 companies and 5 industry associations from the oil and gas sector with the highest spend on social issues, electoral, and political ads in 2020 on Facebook's US platform. The research also included 10 advocacy groups, all with a spend of over $5000 in 2020, that have reported ties to oil and gas companies and industry associations. ...https://influencemap.org/company/Exxon-Mobil/projectlink/Exxon-Mobil-In-Climate-Change ExxonMobil	$5,040,642
Industry Association	American Petroleum Institute	$2,965,254
Advocacy Group	OneAlaska	$329,684
Corporation	The Williams Companies	$252,977
Industry Association	Texas Oil & Gas Association	$160,511
Corporation	ConocoPhillips (including Power in Cooperation)	$76,938
Advocacy Group	Partnership for Energy Progress	$75,691
Corporation	Enbridge	$64,345
Advocacy Group	Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development	$57,983
Corporation	Energy Transfer	$56,805
Advocacy Group	Texans for Natural Gas	$53,353
Advocacy Group	Great Lakes. Michigan Jobs	$53,145
Corporation	Wink to Webster Pipeline LLC (Joint Venture between ExxonMobil and additional corporations)	$53,027
Corporation	BP	$51,652
Industry Association	New Mexico Oil and Gas Association	$41,614
Advocacy Group	Californians for Energy Independence	$29,457
Industry Association	American Gas Association	$22,248
Advocacy Group	Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy	$13,693
Advocacy Group	Alliance for Michigan Power	$11,528
Corporation	Noble Energy (acquired by Chevron in Oct 2020)	$10,485
Advocacy Group	American Energy Alliance	$8,396
Corporation	Island Energy Services (including Hoala)	$7,042
Corporation	Phillips 66	$5,248

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

Sep 14, 2022

Press Release

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

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

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

The Committee’s memo found:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

june 2022

https://www.vox.com/23058987/sec-climate-finance-disclosure

as drought spreads and sea levels rise, the economic impacts of climate change will run in the trillions of dollars. The insurance firm Swiss Re projects climate disasters would cost the world as much as $23 trillion by 2050, bigger than the impact from the pandemic and the Great Recession of 2009 combined.

It’s reasonable business planning to account for all this foreseeable risk — just like planning for cyberattacks or business disruptions from a pandemic. Last year, for instance, the US had to spend $145 billion dealing with floods, fires, and other climate-related disasters.

Yet somehow, climate change has fallen through the cracks of US financial regulation. Publicly traded companies are required to disclose information about “material” risks that affect their company regardless of their cause, from sanctions to supply chain chaos. But there are no uniform standards for disclosing how much fossil fuel pollution they generate or the impact that climate change could have on their future growth. Instead, companies have been left free to inflate their environmental progress, all with little scrutiny from the public.

This kind of information is, in theory, essential to a functioning free market, so investors can make decisions based on complete information. But fossil fuel interests, conservative ideologues, and corporate trade groups are striving to keep shareholders in the dark on climate risks.

The Biden administration is trying to make companies more publicly accountable for the risk of the climate crisis. A linchpin of Biden’s plan is a draft rule theSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC)proposed in March. Over 500 pages, the SEC rule proposes that publicly traded companies disclose how climate change affects their business outlook and identify a board member or board committee to focus on climate-related risks.

Once the rule is finalized, companies will have to disclose how their operations are affected by extreme weather events and the impact of climate change on the short- and medium-term business outlook. They’ll also have to report the emissions both from their company’s operations and from how their products are used. This is particularly bad news for fossil fuel companies with business models predicated on selling pollution. Until this rule, they haven’t had to fully account for the environmental impact from things like selling gas that’s burned by consumers’ cars.

This is a rule, in other words, that helps the free market act like the free market, giving investors exactly the information they need to make the decisions,” Emory University business law expert George Georgiev said.

As the draft rule’s comment period came to a close, it’s clear any regulation on climate change faces serious headwinds. The loudest protests have come from right-wing groups and corporate-aligned nonprofits that have flooded the public comments with previews of the argument they’ll take to courts.

Plenty of businesses in the financial sector stand to benefit from this rule, like the investing giant BlackRock, which has pledged to align its assets with climate goals. But some could be hurt. The companies that benefit from greenwashing their climate commitments are doing everything they can to protect the chaotic status quo.

Financial transparency on climate change is hardly a radical idea

The SEC has required and standardized public company disclosures since 1933. In recent decades, the SEC has issued nonbinding guidance on how publicly traded companies should consider Covid-19 disruptions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even a feared “Y2K” meltdown at the turn of the 21st century, so the companies would meet their fiduciary duty.

But the SEC has been painfully slow on climate change. Right now, businesses disclose the risks and costs of their business on the climate on a voluntary, patchy basis with no clear standardization.

A 2020 Government Accountability Office surveyed 32 midsize and large publicly traded companies and found little consistency. Airlines, for example, used years anywhere between 1990 and 2017 as the baseline for calculating their climate footprint. Water companies have used completely different measurements for reporting water extraction. Some companies would just report carbon emissions, while others would report total greenhouse gas emissions (including sources like methane).

The proposed SEC rule cites other evidence of companies not paying attention to this risk, like an internal survey of climate-related keywords in companies’ 10-Ks between June 2019 and December 2020. They found only 31 percent mentioned climate change at all.

This information is not just to benefit climate change efforts; it is also useful to investors. It makes clearer, for instance, that a retail company’s warehouses might be threatened by increased flooding, that an airline company might have to ground more flights because of rising heat waves, or that a bank’s backing of major fossil fuel expansion has the strong chance of backfiring in a world that transitions to renewables. Without any regulation and standardization, companies will just continue to try to outshine one another on their environmental and social commitments without hard data to back it. This mismatch will become an existential risk to financial instability if, for example, extreme weather pummels a business that did not prepare accordingly.

Environmental activists have pushed for more from companies by proposing shareholder resolutions at annual meetings that ask for more transparency, but have met with mixed success in shareholder votes that don’t bind the company to taking action.

In this regulatory vacuum, voluntary global affiliations have cropped up, including the Net Zero Assets Managers Initiative, representing some $43 trillion in assets, and Climate Action 100+, representing more than $60 trillion. Another of these groups is run out of the Financial Stability Board as a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), a voluntary system that has grown to more than 3,000 companies. The task force’s recommendations tell companies to consider the short-, medium-, and long-term climate impacts, emissions that result from investment decisions, and their operations’ pollution, and account for the changing climate’s consequences for the business. The hundreds of companies that voluntarily comply with these standards aren’t necessarily green or good for the environment, but it’s an extra gold star for their sustainability transparency.

Eight countries, including the UK, have passed laws that will mirror the TFCD’s recommendations, but the US would remain an outlier without the SEC rule. “Investors put their money where they think there’s a good opportunity and good information,” said Steven Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. “If we don’t have good information, we run the risk of falling behind internationally.”

The SEC’s rule is basically the US playing catch-up, based on standards the mainstream corporate community aligned with TFCD have already backed.

Initially, companies will have to spend extra to comply with the rule — up to $530,000 a year for larger companies by the SEC’s estimate, but it will vary depending on how much companies are doing already on climate disclosure. Typically, the costs of rules shrink over time. Otherwise, the rule itself is quite modest. The SEC is “not saying you should or shouldn’t invest in climate products,” Rothstein said. “They’re just saying, tell investors what you’re doing and do it in a consistent way.”

Environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers argue the SEC could be doing even more. The SEC does not change how companies disclose climate-related activities like PR campaigns and political influence, the kind of activities that tend to be outsourced to nonprofits that shield their activities from the public. In March, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called it a “failure of nerve that shies away from a perfectly legal, necessary response to the climate danger we face” because political efforts remain “the single most material disclosures a company could make to achieve climate safety.”

Right-wing groups claim financial transparency is an attack on free speech

Unsurprisingly, the SEC is facing immense pressure to withdraw this rule because of the same shadowy political spending that companies don’t have to disclose in the first place. Groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have flooded the SEC with comments that argue company free speech would be violated.

Trade groups and right-wing think tanks have argued that requiring companies to report these emissions is akin to violating their First Amendment rights of free speech, pointing to a court case that ruled a regulation requiring the disclosure of conflict-zone minerals would amount to :{“:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{compelled speech”:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}: and violated the companies’ rights.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry lobby, has argued the rule “could raise serious First Amendment issues under recent applying strict scrutiny to content-based laws compelling speech.”

The argument has found purchase with conservative lawmakers, like West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey,who picked up the argument in his 2021 letter to Treasury last year. In Congress, 19 Republican senators argued in their submitted comments that the rule is “not within the SEC’s mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” Another 40 Republican representatives wrote that the rule will act to “undermine and shame public companies,” while Republican attorneys general describes the rule as a “total reordering of [the SEC’s] present disclosure regime.”

The attack on regulation under the guise of First Amendment rights has become more familiar in recent years. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been steadily giving corporations more and more leeway, more and more rights,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a corporate law expert who has published several books on corporate speech.

The court also opened the door to more of these lawsuits, striking down a California law that required nonprofits to disclose their donors, siding with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s argument against disclosing their donors and providing IRS 990 forms to the state. Other legal challenges to campaign finance laws and unions have used the First Amendment.

Legal experts supportive of the SEC rule consider the argument a long shot in courts. “I think that argument is really far-fetched,” Emory’s Georgiev said.

But it’s still worrisome. If it succeeds, whether in courts or as a scare tactic to get the SEC to backtrack, it sets a dangerous precedent for the financial system at large. “If this climate rule is violating the First Amendment, it’s been all nine decades [the SEC has been] violating the First Amendment,” Georgiev said. “They will definitely try it out in courts. At the end of the day, a lot of far-fetched arguments succeed in courts.”

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20892344-comments-to-sec-on-esg-rule#document/p33/a2075289

comments from acc chem, AEI, AFP, API, cato, cei heartland etc CTT, CoC, co2 coalition, conoco phillips, enbridge, inst for free speech, heritage, nam, NMA, noia, lifepoerwed TPPF, WEA western energy? US oil and gas

Comments to SEC on ESG rule

an 8 22

Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman made the case Sunday for prosecuting corporate executives as part of a broader government crackdown on unlawful price gouging and other business practices that have driven up the costs of medicine, groceries, and gas—padding company bottom lines at the expense of consumers.

"Take the massive oil companies, for example," the Democratic candidate wrote in an op-ed for the Pennsylvania Times Leader. "Chevron, Exxon, and Shell have seen their profits increase 200% since last year, but they're still charging us sky-high prices for gas. Companies like Tyson posted over a billion dollars in profits last quarter, while raising prices on meat products our families depend on."

"It's gross, and deeply unpatriotic, for the big corporations to be rolling around in cash while charging us record-high prices for gas and groceries," wrote Fetterman, who is currently Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor. "We'll crack down on this by prosecuting the executives of these huge corporations, including the Big Oil companies and meatpacking companies who are artificially driving up prices, gouging consumers at the pump and at the grocery store."

Fetterman's op-ed comes just over a week after he held his first major public event since suffering a stroke in mid-May, days before the Democratic primary contest that he won handily.

The Democrat's general election campaign in the critical battleground Pennsylvania—a state that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate next year—currently enjoys a double-digit polling lead over his Republican opponent, the former celebrity television personality and ultra-millionaire Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Fetterman is looking to press his advantage by continuing to deploy populist messaging that presents Oz as a carpetbagger whose extreme wealth and ties to corporate interests such as Big Pharma render him unfit to deliver for the working class, whose earnings are being eroded by surging prescription drug prices, housing costs, and other inflationary trends.

According to one recent analysis, pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. have raised drug prices more than 1,100 times so far this year.

"Let's be clear: Dr. Oz just isn't connected to the struggles that Pennsylvanians are facing every day," Fetterman wrote in his new op-ed. "While he's been complaining about rising prices from his New Jersey Mansion, I've been meeting Pennsylvanians on grocery store runs, speaking with them about the challenges they're facing, and finding real policy solutions that get stuff done and make their lives better."

"Working Pennsylvanians are getting screwed," he continued. "While costs are rising and wages are failing to keep up, too many of our leaders in Washington simply aren't doing enough. Out-of-touch politicians got us into this mess, we can't trust an out-of-touch millionaire TV doctor to get us out of it."

In addition to prosecuting corporate executives for price-gouging and other abuses, Fetterman voices support for a range of policy solutions aimed at tackling rising costs and inequality, including:

Enacting a financial transaction tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives;
Ending the stranglehold of healthcare costs on American families by instituting a cap of a thousand dollars per year on out-of-pocket costs;
Passing legislation to allow for the importation of lower-priced prescription drugs from other countries; and
Putting a cap on prescription drug costs.

"If we start getting stuff done, starting with these priorities I've listed," Fetterman wrote, "we can make real change for the towns, cities, and people of Pennsylvania."

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

UN gutierrez; record profits? BP? say make up for pandemic loss?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/oil-winning-war-on-us/

Michael Klare, Oil Rules the World

Heat, heat, heat. It’s a world of firsts, of records that no one could ever have wished for. From my own childhood, I remember the A.A. Milne poem that began:

They’re changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace —

Christopher Robin went down with Alice.

Alice is marrying one of the guard.

A soldier’s life is terribly hard,

Says Alice.

That was written in 1924. Today, with Great Britain breaking historic heat records and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace “curtailed” thanks to blazing temperatures, it would have to be rewritten as: “A soldier’s life is terribly hot, says Alice.”

Yes, Britain just hit an all-time heat record — and we’re talking about a country that’s kept such records for at least a century and a half — when the thermometer reached 40.2 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit, at London’s Heathrow Airport. Records have been falling in a similarly sweltering fashion across a (quite literally) blazing Europe. But Central Asia is once again baking, too, and don’t forget this country, where summer heat records across a drought-stricken West and Midwest are being surpassed daily, even as unprecedented fires have been burning from New Mexico to Alaska. Meanwhile, in the world’s oceans, plankton are dying at a startling rate, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels.

The Washington Post recently published a set of heat maps of parts of this planet. They’re stunning to look at in a moment when Joe Biden, who ran for president on a climate-change-abating platform, traveled to Saudi Arabia to get that Kingdom to pump yet more oil into our world. As *TomDispatch* regular Michael Klare suggests today, the Earth isn’t just sweltering. We’re burning it up, thanks to the major fossil-fuel companies that, having known about global warming and its dangers since at least the 1980s, spent decades funding climate denialism and are now quite literally blazing their own paths through our world, making untold fortunes as the war in Ukraine continues to drive global gas prices up.

When we use the word “tyrant,” we normally mean a singularly autocratic ruler. But Klare is right. The true tyrants of planet Earth in this century aren’t either Vladimir Putin or any of his kith and kin. They’re the CEOs of the major oil companies who remain all too ready to burn our futures (record profits!) to ashes for their own passing well-being. So, as the summer heat rises on a planet setting heat records daily, take a moment to consider with Klare who the real tyrants of planet Earth are (and don’t say I never told you so myself). Tom

The Enduring Tyranny of Oil: War, Inflation, Geopolitical Rivalry, and Soaring World Temperatures

It may seem hard to believe, but only 15 years ago many of us were talking confidently about “peak oil” — the moment of maximum global oil output after which, with world reserves dwindling, its use would begin an irreversible decline. Then along came hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the very notion of peak oil largely vanished. Instead, some analysts began speaking of “peak oil demand” — a moment, not so far away, when electric vehicle (EV) ownership would be so widespread that the need for petroleum would largely disappear, even if there was still plenty of it to frack or drill. However, in 2020, EVs made up less than 1% of the global light-vehicle fleet and are only expected to reach 20% of the total by 2040. So peak-oil demand remains a distant mirage, leaving us deeply beholden to the tyranny of petroleum, with all its perilous consequences.

For some perspective on this, recall that, in those pre-fracking days at the start of the century, many experts were convinced that world petroleum output would hit a daily peak of perhaps 90 million barrels in 2010, dropping to 70 or 80 million barrels by the end of that decade. In other words, we would have little choice but to begin converting our transportation systems to electricity, pronto. That would have caused a lot of disruption at first, but by now we would be well on our way to a green-energy future, with far less carbon emissions and a slowing pace of global warming.

Now, compare those hopeful scenarios to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). At the moment, world oil production is hovering at around 100 million barrels daily and is projected to reach 109 million barrels by 2030, 117 million by 2040, and a jaw-dropping 126 million by 2050. So much, in other words, for “peak oil” and a swift transition to green energy.

Why global oil consumption is expected to hit such heights remains a complex tale. Foremost among the key factors, however, has certainly been the introduction of fracking technology, permitting the exploitation of mammoth shale reserves once considered inaccessible. On the demand side, there was (and remains) a worldwide preference — spearheaded by American consumers — for large, gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. In the developing world, it’s accompanied by an ever-expanding market for diesel-powered trucks and buses. Then there’s the global growth in air travel, sharply increasing the demand for jet fuel. Add to that the relentless efforts by the oil industry itself to deny climate-change science and obstruct global efforts to curb fossil-fuel consumption.

The question now facing us is this: What are the consequences of such a worrisome equation for our future, beginning with the environment?

More Oil Use = More Carbon Emissions = Rising World Temperatures

We all know — at least, those of us who believe in science — that carbon-dioxide emissions are the leading source of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) responsible for global warming and the combustion of fossil fuels is responsible for the lion’s share of those CO2 emissions. Scientists have also warned us that, without a sharp and immediate decline in such combustion — aimed at keeping global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era — genuinely catastrophic consequences will ensue. Those will include the complete desertification of the American West (already experiencing the worst drought in 1,200 years) and the flooding of major coastal cities, including New York, Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Now consider this: in 2020, oil accounted for more global energy consumption than any other source — approximately 30% — and the EIA projects that, on our present course, it will remain the world’s number-one source of energy, possibly until as late as 2050. Because it’s such a carbon-intensive fuel (though less so than coal), oil was responsible for 34% of global carbon emissions in 2020 and that share is projected to rise to 37% by 2040. At that point, oil combustion will be responsible for the release of 14.7 million metric tons of heat-trapping GHGs into the atmosphere, ensuring even higher average world temperatures.

With CO2 emissions from oil use continuing to rise, there’s zero chance of staying within that 1.5 degrees Celsius limit or of preventing the catastrophic warming of this planet, with all it portends. Think of it this way: the stunning heatwaves experienced so far this year from China to India, Europe to the Horn of Africa, and this country to Brazil are only a mild foretaste of our future.

Oil and the War in Ukraine

Nor are heat waves the only perilous consequence of our still growing reliance on petroleum. Because of its vital role in transportation, industry, and agriculture, oil has always possessed immense geopolitical significance. There have, in fact, been scores of wars and internal conflicts over its ownership — and the colossal revenues it generates. The roots of every recent conflict in the Middle East, for example, can be traced back to such disputes. Despite much speculation about how peak-oil-demand scenarios could theoretically end all that, petroleum continues to shape world political and military affairs in a critical fashion.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/oil-companies-record-shattering-profits/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/billionaires-gop-congress/

no lnx table grfx

Just 27 billionaires have spent $90 million to buy GOP congress: report

[ brk windows london? ]

Rupert Murdoch receiving the 2015 Global Leadership Award, Wikimedia Commons

Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams July 19, 2022

A few dozen billionaires are spending tens of millions of dollars on the 2022 midterm elections—mostly to support Republican candidates, including many who have parroted the dangerous lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—in a bid to ensure that Congress is full of lawmakers willing "to make their wealthy benefactors even richer," according to a fresh analysis.

Titled Billionaires Buying Elections, the report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) details how "billionaires are increasingly using their personal fortunes and the profits of connected corporations to drown out regular voters' voices and elect hand-picked candidates who further rig the nation's economy—especially the tax system."

A pair of super PACs tasked with securing Republican majorities in the House and Senate—the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) and the [cnp?] Senate Leadership Fund (SLF)—raised a combined $188.3 million through the first 16 months of the 2022 campaign cycle, according to ATF. Nearly half—$89.4 million, or 48%—came from just 27 billionaires. A whopping 86% of the GOP's billionaire money came from "Wall Street tycoons" who are arguably the biggest beneficiaries of glaring loopholes in the tax code.

The Democratic counterparts of those two super PACs—the House Majority PAC and the Senate Majority PAC—raised a combined $154 million over the same time period. A smaller share—$25.8 million, or 17%—came from 19 billionaires. A majority of billionaire contributions to Democratic candidates also came from the finance and investment sector (35%), but other industries were also well-represented, including cryptocurrency (26%), and tech (18%).

"Unlike candidates and party committees, super PACs can raise unlimited donations from individuals and corporations," ATF explained. "In return they are not supposed to coordinate activities with the campaigns they support but instead act independently, though that rule is often flouted."

Top billionaire donors to congressional super PACs include hedge fund magnate Ken Griffin, who has given more than $28.5 million to CLF and SLF, and private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman, who has pumped $20 million into the GOP's two super PACs.

"Anti-democratic vote-buying," ATF wrote, "has been facilitated by—and is facilitating—the accelerating wealth growth of the billionaire class and the record profits of the corporations they own."

The combined net worth of the nation's roughly 750 billionaires surged by $2 trillion, or 70%, during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The collective wealth of the 27 billionaires bankrolling the GOP's super PACs alone soared by $82.4 billion over that time period, meaning that the $89.4 million they have donated to CLF and SLF constitutes less than 0.1% of their overall pandemic-era gains.

Meanwhile, the return on that modest investment could amount to billions of dollars if Republicans take back Congress in November and preserve their 2017 tax cuts or further slash taxes on superrich people and the corporations they own.

Over a recent nine-year period, the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. paid an average effective federal income tax rate of just 8.2% when the increased value of their stock holdings is included in their income. That is a lower rate than the nationwide average of 13.3% in 2019.

As ATF explained, focusing on contributions to congressional super PACs fails "to capture the full political influence of billionaires, who in addition to personal donations also steer money to favored candidates from related corporations and organizations."

Billionaires are among the ultrawealthy Americans who control corporations through their extensive stock holdings. Many corporate giants have been distorting the upcoming midterms, ATF pointed out, by spending tens of millions to help GOP candidates who have vowed to defend special tax breaks for the top 1% get elected, including 144 far-right members of Congress who voted to overturn President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

According to the report, seven powerful corporations—AT&T,Chevron, ExxonMobil,FedEx, GM, Merck, and UPS—have collectively given nearly $1.5 million to dozens of election deniers and various Republican PACs and election committees this campaign cycle. The companies' demonstrated lack of concern for democracy, ATF noted, likely stems from their desire to keep dodging taxes. In 2021, these firms paid an average federal income tax rate of just 2.7% on a combined $78.4 billion in profits.

Notably, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal who is worth about $5 billion and openly opposed to democracy, has been spending big on his preferred Republican candidates but not through the GOP's congressional super PACs.

Thiel "has so far spent almost $30 million through super PACs supporting the 2022 senatorial bids of two former employees who share his anti-democratic and anti-tax beliefs," ATF found. "J.D. Vance won the Ohio Republican U.S. Senate primary thanks in part to Thiel's $15 million in spending. Blake Masters has a fighting chance in Arizona's GOP U.S. Senate primary in August due to Thiel's $13.5 million in contributions."

Another source of "billionaire dominance of campaign financing, especially on the Republican side," wrote ATF, are so-called "dark money" groups, which are not required to disclose the identity of their donors. Some dark money groups—including Club for Growth, which has received $32 million from billionaire Wall Street trader Jeffrey Yass over the years—are "notorious for having bankrolled insurrectionist members of Congress" like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), ATF noted.

According to the report:

Politically active billionaire Charles Koch has not personally donated to either GOP super PAC this cycle, but his corporation—Koch Industries—has so far given them a total of $1.75 million.

Two of the biggest "dark money" groups, which do not disclose their donors, are essentially sister groups to thetwo congressional GOP super PACs. American Action Networkgave at least $26 million to CLF in the 2020 cycle and $18.7 million so far this cycle.One Nation donated $77.5 million to SLF last cycle and has given $16.5 million so far this cycle.

The ability of the nation's wealthiest individuals to translate their disproportionate economic power into political clout has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision eliminated effective limits on campaign contributions.

According to the report:

Billionaires pumped $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections, almost 40 times more than the $31 million they donated in 2010, when the Citizens United rules were first in effect. In the 2020 election cycle, billionaires contributed nearly $1 out of every $10, while making up just 0.01% of all donors contributing more than $200.

Billionaires donated almost $240 million to the combined campaign efforts of Donald Trump's two runs for president. Over half came from just one billionaire household, that of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (who has since died).

"Billionaires, who are used to buying whatever they want, have increasingly dedicated their almost unlimited resources to buying American elections," Frank Clemente, executive director of ATF, said in a statement.

"The problem is what's good for billionaires—including cutting taxes on the rich and corporations—is bad for working families," said Clemente. "We need to rein in billionaire political and economic power through campaign finance reforms and tax reforms such as a billionaires income tax."

Several legislative proposals have emerged to tax the increased value of assets owned by the nation's wealthiest households each year regardless of whether they sell or keep them, which would ensure that income derived from wealth is taxed more like income earned from work.

Biden's plan would raise an estimated $360 billion over 10 years, while Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) plan would raise an estimated $550 billion over a decade, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D-N.Y.) proposal possibly even more.

Billionaire-backed Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), however, has joined Senate Republicans in opposing such a measure.

https://documented.net/investigations/investor-presentations-reveal-oil-executives-have-no-plans-to-increase-drilling

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/progressives-push-oil-windfall-tax/

Progressives bolster push for windfall tax on oil profits as gas prices soar

progressives are arguing that Wall Street's new prediction of worsening pain at the pump for U.S. consumers this summer underscores the need for Congress to pass Democratic lawmakers' overwhelmingly popular bill to impose a windfall profits tax on Big Oil.

According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, "oil prices will surge to $140 a barrel this summer, with a drop in Russian production and a gradual recovery in Chinese demand adding to the pressure on already low supplies," Insider reported Tuesday.

"But they said consumers will feel as though oil has hit $160 a barrel," the news outlet continued, "because a lack of capacity at refineries means gasoline and fuel prices are rising more than would normally be expected, adding to costs across the economy."

Oil prices have already increased by roughly 50% this year as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and mismatches in supply and demand. As of Tuesday, Brent crude, the international benchmark, and WTI crude, the U.S. benchmark, traded at approximately $119 and $118 a barrel, respectively, while the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas hit $4.92.

Since consumer demand returned following a brief pandemic-driven decline in 2020, investors have pressured oil giants to suppress production to push prices higher. Last year, as average gas prices in the U.S. steadily climbed—reaching about $3.40 per gallon in December 2021, up from $2.10 a year before—25 of the world's biggest fossil fuel corporations enjoyed a record $205 billion in profits.

Oil and gas companies have hiked prices even further in 2022—especially after President Joe Biden's early March announcement of a U.S. ban on imports of Russian fossil fuels. Accusations of war profiteering have grown since petroleum executives in April bragged about their "best quarter ever."

A report published last month by the watchdog group Accountable.US found that "in the first three months of the year, 21 oil and gas companies made over $41 billion in profits, more than doubling profits from just a year ago. This is, on average, $1.2 billion more per company than the same time last year thanks to—as the companies themselves say—high oil prices and the crisis in Ukraine."

Chevron and ExxonMobil respectively raked in $6.3 billion and $5.5 billion in the first quarter of this year, meaning that they quadrupled and doubled their profits compared with the previous year even as the U.S. economy contracted.

"We need a windfall profits tax on Big Oil," Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, tweeted Tuesday [twt]

petroleum executives have faced increased scrutiny from Democratic members of Congress and New York's attorney general in recent weeks, but Jamie Henn, a spokesperson for the Stop the Oil Profiteering (STOP) campaign, has long argued that "the clearest and most popular way to get direct relief to the public and to check Big Oil's rampant war profiteering is with a windfall profit tax."

In March, congressional Democrats led by Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) introduced the bicameral Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax in an effort to crack down on what progressive lawmakers have condemned as "shameless" price gouging by fossil fuel corporations.

According to survey data released just days after the legislation was unveiled, a whopping 80% of U.S. voters—including 73% of Republicans—support the measure, which would hit large fossil fuel companies with a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019. An estimated $45 billion in annual revenue would be redistributed to U.S. households in the form of quarterly rebates.

"There is vast, bipartisan support for this policy," Henn said in late April, "because the public knows oil and gas billionaires are responsible for the pain at the pump."

Despite being brought to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress about their role in jacking up gas prices, U.S. fossil fuel executives—projected to reap up to $126 billion in extra profits this year—have not been shy about how they are capitalizing on the war in Ukraine.

After rewarding themselves and other shareholders with billions of dollars worth of stock buybacks and dividend bumps last year, industry leaders are on track to do more of the same in 2022.

To put an end to such behavior, dozens of progressive advocacy groups have been urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to support the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said can help Democrats avert "big losses" in November's pivotal midterms.

The STOP campaign, for its part, tweeted Monday that a windfall tax on Big Oil's skyrocketing profits provides a "straightforward" solution to high gas prices.

khanna highlighted recent reporting that the Biden White House is "engaging in conversations with" congressional lawmakers about the design of a potential windfall profits tax.

"This tax would help rein in Big Oil's profiteering and put money directly in the pockets of consumers," Khanna said Monday on social media.

Last month, Britain's Conservative government announced that the U.K. will impose a 25% windfall tax on oil and gas profits, which is expected to raise $19 billion to support low-income households struggling with a significant spike in the cost of living.

"If Britain's Conservatives can do it," Reich said Monday, "so can Biden."

However, Khanna and Whitehouse's proposal faces long odds in the Senate, where the anti-democratic filibuster rule requires 60 votes to advance debate on most legislation. Not only is the support of at least 10 Republicans unlikely to materialize, but questions remain about whether corporate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) would back the bill.

"The president is asking for Congress and others for potential ideas," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday. "But the reality is that there isn't very much more to be done... The president has already taken very bold moves."

Henn, meanwhile, has argued that Biden's moves to release millions of barrels of oil from the nation's strategic reserves and suspend seasonal regulations on ethanol blending won't halt "Big Oil's coordinated campaign to gouge Americans."

[[why only one of big 4 out front? chevron

:{https://the:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{intercept.:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{com:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{/2022/05:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{/25/fossil-fuels-disaster-capitalism-russia-ukraine/:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

BACK IN LATE 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began mobilizing troops at the Ukraine border, the fossil fuel industry got its foot soldiers ready too. With the threat of Russian aggression and subsequent sanctions looming, gas prices were on the rise, and the fossil fuel industry wanted the public to know that there was only one culprit: climate policy.

“There are a lot of factors at play as to why energy prices are surging,” Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, or API, :{t:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{old CNBC:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: at the time. “But certainly one of the key factors is that the Biden administration has made an effort to reduce production in the United States. One of their first acts, for example, was cutting off the Keystone XL pipeline. One of their second acts was cutting up leasing and permitting on federal lands, and then they cut off access to ANWR,” referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

He gave roughly the same interview every week for months. On March 7, two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, he repeated it again, telling a CBS reporter, “You know, first they cut off the Keystone XL pipeline. Then they put a moratorium on leasing and permitting on federal lands and on offshore waters. And then they cut off supply from the Alaska natural national wildlife refuge.”

[no lnx]

that’s some consistent messaging! For the record, about 25 percent of fossil fuel drilling happens on public lands; the rest is entirely controlled by private companies. The fossil fuel industry is sitting on at least a decade’s worth of unused leases, so it’s unlikely that a lack of new leases has impacted current production or supply.

The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to transport tar sands oil from Canada to export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico, where two-thirds of it was earmarked for non-U.S. customers. It was nowhere near functional when it was canceled: About 8 percent of the pipeline had been built, and TC Energy, the company behind the project, still needed to find $6.9 billion of the $8 billion construction cost to finish it.

As for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the holy grail for U.S. oil companies, it has been off-limits to oil drilling since 1977. For a brief moment in 2017, the Trump administration reversed that, but no major oil companies — no API members — even bid on leases.These are the only pieces of climate policy Sommers continuously referred to because they’re the only ones the Biden administration has actually managed to pass, but none of them have had any impact on the current supply of domestic oil and gas in the United States or the price at the pump.

But the facts don’t matter if you’re the first one to frame a story and you repeat it often enough.A new report out this week shows that consistent messaging, coordinated messengers, and a massive advertising blitz combined to deliver major policy wins to the fossil fuel industry as early as two weeks from the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“On February 24, within hours of Putin’s invasion, I was just watching these serious patterns emerge,” said Christina Arena, a public relations and climate disinformation expert. Arena worked for the PR firm Edelman when it handled the API account, so she knows a campaign when she sees one. “API and other trade associations were echoing similar talking points immediately, anti-Biden talking points, anti-renewable energy talking points.” That kind of consistency and media training takes months, not days, to prep, she said.

That prompted Arena to reach out to InfluenceMap, a think tank that tracks the influence of corporate lobbying on climate policy. InfluenceMap teamed up with Media Matters for America and Triplecheck to look into what various fossil fuel interests were saying about Russia-Ukraine and how those messages were being amplified. The organizations’ resulting report pinpoints the top messages and messengers, and how they map to big policy wins.

Some of the findings are to be expected. API went big, as did Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The usual suspects amplified the industry’s messaging: Breitbart News, Fox News, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn.All told, API placed 651 Facebook ads from the end of January to April 1, reaching more than 19 million people.On February 24, the day of the invasion, API and its network got busy. “There’s a huge peak where we get to 100 fossil fuel misinformation posts that yielded over5 million likes, comments, and shares,” Arena noted.

[“I think you could call it a disinformation-driven heist of public policy.”

But there are some less expected findings too. After battling gas bans for two years, the gas side of the industry seems to have fully embraced the fact that the climate movement doesn’t see it as its friend anymore. Gas entities that joined the party include the American Gas Association (a trade group for gas utilities), Hess Corp., and Sempra Infrastructure.

The types of messages were also a surprise. After a decade or so of greenwashing, the fossil fuel industry is going full culture war. The report finds three key messages across hundreds of social media posts and media appearances: American fossil fuel production ensures freedom and national security; high gas prices are caused by climate policy, and the solution is more drilling; and climate change is something only liberal “woke” elites care about.

There’s also a push to convince people that some kind of Green New Deal-adjacent policy is in place and that is what’s driving up gas prices. “I think you could call it a disinformation-driven heist of public policy,” Arena said.

And there’s the timeline, and the dividends this campaign has paid to the industry. By mid-March, the Energy Department was starting to grant permits to increase the volume at some liquid natural gas export terminals. “So that’s two weeks maybe from the start of the crisis,” said Faye Holder, the lead author of the InfluenceMap report. “We’ve seen a heavy, heavy use of social media, both in advertising and organic content. And then they’re feeding off of media too. A lot of the things that are retweeted by API, for instance, are Mike Sommers on Fox News.”

By March 25, Biden was announcing a U.S.-European Union liquefied natural gas deal that the Trump administration had tried and failed to get done: 15 billion cubic meters in 2022, with a standing order for 50 billion cubic meters a year until 2030. “That’s just a little over four weeks. That’s a very short interval,” Arena said. “And I feel that interval should alarm lawmakers. It should alarm people in the climate community. That’s disaster capitalism.”

some lnx

...but there are some less expected findings too. After battling gas bans for two years, the gas side of the industry seems to have fully embraced the fact that the climate movement doesn’t see it as its friend anymore. Gas entities that joined the party include the American Gas Association (a trade group for gas utilities), Hess Corp., and Sempra Infrastructure.

The types of messages were also a surprise. After a decade or so of greenwashing, the fossil fuel industry is going full culture war. The report finds three key messages across hundreds of social media posts and media appearances: American fossil fuel production ensures freedom and national security; high gas prices are caused by climate policy, and the solution is more drilling; and climate change is something only liberal “woke” elites care about.

And there’s the timeline, and the dividends this campaign has paid to the industry. By mid-March, the Energy Department was starting to grant permits to increase the volume at some liquid natural gas export terminals. “So that’s two weeks maybe from the start of the crisis,” said Faye Holder, the lead author of the InfluenceMap report. “We’ve seen a heavy, heavy use of social media, both in advertising and organic content. And then they’re feeding off of media too. A lot of the things that are retweeted by API, for instance, are Mike Sommers on Fox News.”

ref

https://influencemap.org/report/US-Oil-and-Gas-and-the-War-in-Ukraine-19009

How the US oil/gas sector is using the war in Ukraine to undermine Paris-aligned climate policy

See coverage in Agence France-Presse, Forbes Middle East, DeSmog, and The Intercept

This research details an active effort from the US oil and gas industry use the war in Ukraine to advocate for long-standing policy asks relating to the continued expansion of oil and gas. The research looks at the month following the invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. This has happened across social media, traditional media, public presentations, investor calls, and direct interactions with America’s policymakers. This lobbying behavior mirrors that seen from the oil and gas industry following the COVID-19 crisis.

The industry appears to be using a number of key narratives to push its pro-fossil fuel agenda, many of which appear to include misleading claims or misinformation. These narratives include blaming the Biden Administration's climate policies for the increase in gas prices, calling for the development of more US oil and gas to lower gas prices and increase energy security, promoting LNG as a clean solution to the US's 'allies'.

These narratives are being used to push for a long-term role for oil and fossil gas in the energy mix and appear to be targeted towards specific policy demands. These include advocating for policies which encourage new and/or increased oil and gas production, and rolling back previous climate policy decisions that limited the production of oil and gas or required climate considerations in new projects.

While calling for policies to increase the production of oil and gas, the oil and gas industry continues to actively oppose a number of state level policies designed to reduce the need for fossil fuels. These include opposing fossil gas bans in new buildings and electric vehicle mandates.

---

report

executive Summary :

This research details an active effort from the US oil and gas industry to use the war in Ukraine to advocate for long-standing policy asks relating to the continued expansion of oil and gas. This has happened across social media, traditional media, public presentations, investor calls, and direct interactions with America’s policymakers. This research focuses on the month following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. 

The main actors identified in this briefing are the American Petroleum Institute, American Gas Association, National Association of Manufacturers, US Chamber of Commerce, and Consumer Energy Alliance. The lobbying evidence collected covers letters to policymakers, large social media advertising campaigns, and public statements by CEOs. The latter of which also includes speeches and media comments from company CEOs and presidents such as Mike Wirth from Chevron and Ryan Lance from ConocoPhillips. 

The research identifies several key narratives used by the industry to push a pro-fossil fuel agenda during this period. Some of these narratives, particularly those about the causes of the current crises appear to include misleading claims or elements of misinformation. These narratives include: o That the Biden Administration's climate policies have caused a decrease in the supply of oil and gas, leading to high gas prices. A similar narrative used is that the Biden Administration's policies have undermined US energy independence, making America reliant on foreign oil. Both narratives have been found to be misleading by AFP fact-checker.

o That the way to fix gas prices and increase energy security/independence is to increase the supply of US oil and gas, which can be achieved through favorable government policies.

o That LNG is a clean, low-carbon source of energy that can help transition the energy mix and achieve emissions reduction goals. This claim has previously been regulated against by advertising authorities in the UK for containing misleading claims. Moreover, increasing the production of oil and gas is at odds with the advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest report "Mitigation of Climate Change".

 InfluenceMap has seen these narratives used by CEOs of major oil and gas companies in the US, particularly during CERAWeek, a major energy conference. For example, Ryan Lance, CEO...

conocoPhillips, stated that “poor energy policy, poor regulatory policy […] rapid push to renewable

energy and a maligning of the of fossil fuel industry" has led to the increase in gas prices.

These narratives have also been heavily pushed on social media. For example, between February

4th and March 31st, 2022, theAmerican Petroleum Institute created and ran an ad campaign

through its astroturf group, Energy Citizens, which consisted of 233 individual ads that were seen

roughly19.6 million times, equivalent to around 10% of all US users of Facebook (Q1 2022). All of

these ads promoted 'American-made energy' or 'energy independence'.

These narratives are being used to push for a long-term role for oil and fossil gas in the energy mix.

The companies and industry associations identified in the research appear to have targeted the

following policy issues:

o Introducing measures that encourage new and/or increased oil and gas production.

o Rolling back previous policy decisions that limit the production of oil and gas or introduce

considerations for climate change in approval processes for oil and gas production.

o Opposing current state-level policies that would reduce the need for oil and gas and

alleviate pressures stemming from demand for oil and gas.

Recent wins for the US oil and gas industry resulting from this lobbying include the rollback of the

FERC's proposal to consider climate change when permitting new gas projects on March 24th

2022, and the approval of two new LNG export terminals on March 16th 2022.]]

ref carbon bombs GUK

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive**/2022/may/11**/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas

no lnx GUK

the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows.

The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital.

The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present.ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades, while recent price rises led BP’s boss to describe the company as a “cash machine”.

The lure of colossal payouts in the years to come appears to be irresistible to the oil companies, despite the world’s climate scientists stating in February that further delay in cutting fossil fuel use would mean missing our last chance “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders in April: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us.”

Details of the projects being planned are not easily accessible but an investigation published in the Guardian shows:

The fossil fuel industry’s short-term expansion plans involve the start of oil and gas projects that will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to a decade of CO2 emissions from China, the world’s biggest polluter.

These plans include 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have already started pumping.

The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to well under 2C.

The Middle East and Russia often attract the most attention in relation to future oil and gas production but the US, Canada and Australia are among the countries with the biggest expansion plans and the highest number of carbon bombs. The US, Canada and Australia also give some of the world’s biggest subsidies for fossil fuels per capita.

The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend every day for the rest of the decade

$103m

At the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in November, after a quarter-century of annual negotiations that as yet have failed to deliver a fall in global emissions, countries around the world finally included the word “coal” in their concluding decision.

Even this belated mention of the dirtiest fossil fuel was fraught, leaving a “deeply sorry” Cop president, Alok Sharma, fighting back tears on the podium after India announced a last-minute softening of the need to “phase out coal” to “phase down coal”.

Nonetheless, the world agreed coal power was history – the question now was how quickly cheaper renewables could replace it, and how fair the transition would be for the small number of developing countries that still relied on it.

But there was no mention of oil and gas in the Cop26 final deal, despite these being responsible for almost 60% of fossil fuel emissions.

Furthermore, many of the rich countries, such as the US, that dominate international climate diplomacy and positioned themselves as climate leaders at the conference, are big players in new oil and gas projects. But unlike India, they avoided criticism.

That lack of scrutiny prompted the Guardian to spend the months since Cop26 piecing together the clearest picture possible of forthcoming oil and gas exploration and production.

Code red

The world’s scientists agree the planet is in deep trouble. In August, Guterres reacted strongly to a stark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate science. “[This report] is a code red for humanity,” he said.

The IPCC states carbon emissions must fall by half by 2030 to preserve the chance of a liveable future, yet they show no sign of declining.

Experts have been warning since at least 2011 that most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves could not be burned without causing catastrophic global heating.

In 2015, a high-profile analysis found that to limit global temperature below 2C, half of known oil reserves and a third of gas had to stay in the ground, along with 80% of coal.

“Simply put, they are lying and the results will be catastrophic,” said Guterres. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

Today, the problem is even more acute. A better understanding of the devastating impacts of the climate crisis has led to the internationally agreed limit for global heating being lowered to 1.5C, to cut the risks of extreme heatwaves, droughts, and floods.

In May 2021, a report from the International Energy Agency, previously seen as a conservative body, concluded there could be no new oil or gas fields or coalmines if the world was to reach net zero by 2050.

More warnings soon followed. An updated scientific analysis found the proportion of fossil fuel reserves that would need to stay in the ground for 1.5C jumped to 60% for oil and gas and 90% for coal, while the UN warned that planned fossil fuel production “vastly exceeds” the limit needed for 1.5C.

In April, shocked by the latest IPCC report that said it was “now or never” to start slashing emissions, Guterres launched an outspoken attack on companies and governments whose climate actions did not match their words.

“Simply put, they are lying, and the results will be catastrophic,” he said. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

The reaction to Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed oil and gas prices even higher, further incentivising bets on new fields and infrastructure that would last decades.

The failure of countries to “build back greener” after the Covid-19 pandemic or the 2008 financial crash was not a good omen, and Guterres said: “Fossil fuel interests are now cynically using the war in Ukraine to lock in a high-carbon future.”

Assessing future oil and gas developments is challenging: the sector is complex and often secretive, public information is scarce and hard to find and assess. But a global team of Guardian environment reporters has worked with leading thinktanks, analysts and academics across the world over the past five months and now we can answer a series of questions that reveal the scale of the sector’s plans.

First, how much production is due to come from the projects that are likely to start drilling before the end of this crucial decade?

Next, where exactly are the biggest projects around the world, the so-called carbon bombs that would explode the climate?

We also followed the money: how much is going to be spent on oil and gas that cannot be burned safely, rather than invested in clean energy? And who benefits most from the fossil fuel subsidies that hide the true damage they cause?

The answers to these key questions lead to an inescapable conclusion: if the projects go ahead, they will blow the world’s rapidly shrinking cap on emissions that must be kept to enable a liveable future – known as the carbon budget.

For all the promises made by many oil companies, the data shows they remain committed to their core business despite the consequences.

zach e forbes

big oil companies contributed $383,000 in support of the lawmakers questioning their executives at a committee hearing on Wednesday, 97% of which went to Republicans, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

Executives from six oil companies are scheduled to testify about gas prices before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s sub panel on oversight. PACs for BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, have supported 10 of the committee’s 19 members.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) the largest recipient on the subcommittee, hauled in contributions of $134,000. PACs for all six firms and API have backed her campaign. The senior Republican on the panel, Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, comes in second with $97,000.

Subcommittee Chair Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the entire committee, have each reported accepting $3,500 from the firms.

The breakdown of the donations to other committee members:

Michael Burgess (R-Texas), $97,000

David McKinley (R-W.V.), $58,000

Billy Long (R-Mo.), $32,000

John Joyce (R-Pa.), $7,500

Scott Peters (D-Calif.), $5,500

Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), $4,500

Going back to 1975, the PACs for the six companies and the industry trade group have made $46.8 million in political contributions.

https://www.mediamatters.org/cable-news/cable-news-discussions-record-high-gas-prices-may-10-failed-hold-fossil-fuel-industr

amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and the world’s response to Russian aggression, energy prices have been understandably top-of-mind for both news media and the general public. Gas prices reached another record high on May 10, setting off a new round of cable news coverage that coincided with President Joe Biden’s speech on the same day about his administration’s attempts to arrest inflation.

Although cable news shows covering these stories performed an adequate job of explaining how the price consumers pay at the pump is determined by a range of different factors in a globalized market, they also allowed the fossil fuel industry to escape accountability for its role in raising prices, despite the fact that oil companies are intentionally restraining oil production in order to return record profits for shareholders.

Cable news rarely connected record fossil fuel industry profits to record gas prices

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC aired a combined 48 segments about record gas prices on May 10, with CNN (23) and Fox (19) airing the majority. Although MSNBC had the fewest segments (6), anchorKaty Tur was the only person across all 48 cable news segments who connected record gas costs with record fossil fuel industry profits.

On the May 10 episode of Katy Tur Reports, she asked Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm about “price gouging” by the fossil fuel industry, saying: “The president said he'll focus on oil companies taking advantage of the situation. The CEO of a major oil company said they saw record prices. Do you see price gouging as part of the problem here?"

[vid ]

this basic context should be part of the broader cable news coverage of gas prices.

Other cable news segments on May 10 took pains to emphasize how the war in Ukraine, European Union sanctions on Russian oil, demand rebound since 2021, and yearly summer trends have contributed to the steep rise in gas prices and could lead to future, record increases.

However, cable news analysis that day almost entirely left out a key driver of high energy prices: the fossil fuel industry.

Although the specific role the industry played in driving the most recent record gas prices is still being puzzled out by economists, Big Oil has been credibly accused by environmental activists of profiteering from economic instability caused by the war in Ukraine. In fact, multiple outlets published stories about record oil company profits just a few days ahead of the breaking news about record gas prices on May 10, including this from Fortune:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, subsequent sanctions on Russia and the exit of Western oil and gas companies from the country sent prices soaring, and fossil fuel companies are reaping the rewards.

British petroleum company Shell announced their quarterly profits on Thursday, posting a record $9.1 billion in earnings. That’s compared to $6.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Although Shell posted the highest profits, other major oil companies also announced major gains.

BP announced it hit $6.2 billion in first quarter earnings, up from the $4.1 billion reported last quarter. French oil major TotalEnergies also reported a $9 billion profit in the first quarter, up 32% from the last quarter of 2021. U.S.-based Chevron reported $6.3 billion in earnings, up from $5.1 billion last quarter.

A Time magazine article published May 11 was even more stark in describing how oil companies plan to use their windfall profits to line their own pockets, instead of making investments to ease the pain at the pump:

For the most part, major oil companies aren’t going to pour these billions of dollars into climate-mitigation investments like carbon capture technologies. Nor have they signaled any immediate intention to bolster oil production, despite calls from heads of state to do so. Their inaction has spurred U.S. and European countries, which are under pressure to keep fuel affordable, to release oil reserves and replace Russian crude oil and liquid natural gas from other sources. Despite those government efforts, oil prices have stayed above $100 per barrel, sustaining an influx of money to fossil fuel companies that are passing it on to stockholders and investors in the form of increased dividends and share buyback initiatives that drive up companies’ share values.

One analysis from the Wall Street Journal found that the nine largest U.S. oil producers spent 54% more in share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter than they invested in new oil developments. Similarly, a recent report covering the 20 largest U.S. oil companies published by the environmentalist organization Friends Of The Earth and consumer watchdog organizations Public Citizen and BailoutWatch, tallied $56 billion in new share buyback authorizations in the roughly seven months since last October, compared with $11 billion announced in the nine months before that.

Not only is the fossil fuel industry dragging its feet on actions that could potentially alleviate high energy costs for American consumers, but it also continues to profit from the global instability caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the industry has a long and sordid history of exacerbating geopolitical conflicts for its own profit.

Journalistic accountability demands that Big Oil’s role in this crisis is included in every segment about rising gas prices or increased energy costs – particularly as right-wing media outlets such as Fox News continue running cover for the oil industry while placing blame for high gas prices almost solely on the Biden administration.

Fox is dedicated to carrying the fossil fuel industry’s water, CNN and MSNBC must do better

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Fox News has absolved Big Oil of any responsibility for energy price increases while desperately trying to blame the Biden administration.This included Fox figures mentioning the canceled Keystone pipeline approximately 141 times in segments about the Ukraine crisis from February 22-28, and mentioning “energy independence” or “energy security” – industry talking points to promote more domestic drilling for oil and gas – at least 632 times from February 24 through April 24.

In reality, the factors determining what consumers pay for gas prices are very complicated, and generally, presidents and their related policies have little effect on the price at the pump and little influence over the complex economics of energy markets, absent leading a rapid transition to a clean energy economy. But this hasn’t stopped Fox News from using the situation in Ukraine to bash the Biden administration’s energy policy.

After Biden’s March 8 announcement that the United States was banning Russian fossil fuel imports, Fox News hosts and guests blamed him for instituting the same policy that they had previously demanded– all while praising oil and gas companies as “the greatest industry around the world,” deflecting Biden’s criticism of them as “unpatriotic,” and arguing they are “basically our national defense.”

Meanwhile CNN and MSNBC’s recent coverage has largely failed to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for exploiting global conflicts and ramping up fuel prices amid their own record profits.

Their last opportunity came during the April 6 House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the fossil industry’s role in driving record high gas prices. Fox News programs devoted 49 minutes of coverage to the hearing, much of which defended Big Oil and blamed the Biden administration, while CNN and MSNBC covered the hearings for only 10 minutes and 4 minutes, respectively. This disparity in coverage effectively allowed Fox to again shape the narrative around climate and energy on cable news. Instead of CNN and MSNBC viewers learning about the myriad factors driving gas prices, including Big Oil profiteering, they were told little, if anything, about the role the fossil fuel industry plays in driving the price at the pump.

Cable news shows must begin holding the fossil fuel industry accountable

Despite the fossil fuel industry’s billion-dollar campaign to erode the public consensus on climate change and its exploitation of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine to agitate for deepened reliance on its products, public polling shows that more than two-thirds of U.S. adults support “developing alternative energy, including wind and solar, over increasing production of fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas.” In addition, poll after poll finds that the majority of Americans want the government to take climate action – but they rarely have the opportunity to learn from TV news about the fossil fuel industry’s role in opposing urgently needed climate and environmental policies.

Reporting on consumers facing record-high prices at the gas pump while oil companies enjoy record-high profits presents just one such opportunity for cable news outlets to inform their audiences about these connections and their links to the climate crisis.

Fox News is a key cog in the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation network, so the conservative network will never cover this reality. But CNN and MSNBC can no longer afford to miss key opportunities to bring accountability to the fossil fuel industry, especially as the public demands answers and the window for meaningful climate action rapidly closes.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any of the terms “gas,” “fuel,” “pump,” “diesel,” “record,” “price,” “soar,” or “high” on May 10, 2022.

We counted segments, which we defined as instances when record gas prices were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion that also included discussion of record gas prices. We defined significant discussion as two or more speakers in a multi-topic segment discussing record gas prices with one another. We also counted headline reports, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host read news highlights covering a range of topics. Within those segments, we then determined whether any speaker also mentioned record fossil fuel industry profits.

We did not include teasers for segments about record gas prices coming up later in the broadcast or passing mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker spoke without another engaging with the comment.

ref no drill = discipline: // disaster capitalism?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/energy/gas-prices-oil-production-wall-street/index.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/guardian-investigation-fossil-fuel-oil-gas-industry-plans-exploration-climate-disaster/

no lnx gfs

...The money

When BPreported its quarterly earnings in a presentation to financial institutions in February, one analyst said he “really enjoyed the camaraderie and the positivity that you’re generating,” before asking about the company’s cash position.

“We’ve given you a lovely little chart,” said Murray Auchincloss, BP’s chief financial officer. “Certainly, it’s possible that we’re getting more cash than we know what to do with. For now, I’m going to be conservative and manage the company as if it’s $40 [a barrel] oil. Anything we could get above that just helps, obviously.” At the time, the oil price exceeded $90; today it is $106.

The oil industry is awash with cash. The money companies have belongs to shareholders, including pension funds, or in the case of national oil companies, to governments and, in theory at least, citizens. But the investment plans of the biggest oil companies are sharply at odds with the goal of halting the climate crisis.

Data obtained by the Guardian from the think tank Carbon Tracker shows a dozen of the world’s biggest companies are on track to commit a collective $387 million dollars a day of capital expenditure to exploiting oil and gas fields through to 2030.

A significant portion of this is for maintaining production at existing projects—some oil and gas will still be needed as the world weans itself off fossil fuels—but the exact amount is not publicly available. Nonetheless, it is clear that at least a quarter of this investment—$103 million a day—is for oil and gas that cannot be burned if the worst impacts of the climate crisis are to be avoided, money that could instead be spent ramping up clean energy.

Even more worryingly, the companies have developed further project options that might lead them to spend an additional $84m a day that would not even be compatible with a devastating 2.7C of global heating.

The world’s governments agreed in the Paris climate accord to limit global heating to well below 2C, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5C. For the latter, stricter goal, no new oil and gas projects are possible.

The Carbon Tracker data, compiled in September, uses a temperature of 1.65C to represent the well below 2C target and finds that 27 percent of the companies’ projected investments are incompatible with this.

ExxonMobil has the largest of these climate-busting investment plans at $21 million a day through to 2030, followed by Petrobras ($15 million), Chevron and ConocoPhillips (both $12 million), and Shell ($8 million).

In terms of the most dangerous investments—those that could help drive temperatures beyond 2.7C—Gazpromaccounts for $17 million a day of this, ExxonMobil $12 million, Shell $11 million and PetroChina $9 million.

“Companies that continue to develop projects based on business-as-usual demand are betting on the failure of policy action on climate.”

If governments act on the scientific advice to rapidly reduce carbon emissions by boosting clean energy and cutting fossil fuel burning, the companies would have to write off these colossal sums as losses, hitting shareholders, pension funds and public finances. If governments do not act, the companies could cash in as the world burns.

Overall, the international oil companies are making the biggest bets, with almost 40 percent of their projected investments incompatible with 1.65C. ExxonMobil is particularly high, at 56 percent.The national oil company average is 17 percent,although 56 percent of Petrobras’s planned capital expenditure is incompatible with 1.65C.

“Companies that continue to develop projects based on business-as-usual demand are betting on the failure of policy action on climate and underestimating the disruptive potential of new technologies, such as renewables and battery storage,” said Mike Coffin at Carbon Tracker. “Such projects are either not needed or they lead to warming well in excess of Paris goals.”

A separate recent analysis based on Rystad Energy data fromApril, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, found that 20 of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies remained on course to spend huge sums—$932 billion—by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields.

Freeing the world from the grip of fossil fuels is made far harder by huge ongoing subsidies for the fuels, making them far cheaper than their true cost when the damage they cause is included—especially air pollution, which kills 7 million people a year. The G20 group of leading economies pledged in 2009 to phase out the subsidies but little has been achieved.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in direct financial supportis received by the producers and consumers of fossil fuels every year—but they benefit from far larger subsidies by not paying for the harm burning fossil fuels causes. When the damage from the climate crisis and air pollution is accounted for, the fossil fuel subsidies reach $6 trillion a year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).The Guardian analysis shows this is equivalent to $11 million a minute globally, $4 million a minute in China and more than $1 million in the US.

The Guardian analysis of more detailed IMF data shows drivers in the US, Canada, and Australia, along with Saudi Arabia, are the world’s biggest beneficiaries of subsidies for road fuels, with some governments under pressure to increase these during the current energy crisis.

The per capita-subsidy for petrol and diesel across the population of Saudi Arabia was more than $1,000 a year in 2020. In the US, the road fuel subsidy per capita is $644 and about $500 in both Canada and Australia.

Japan and Germany also appear in the top 10 of the road fuel analysis, which focused on the 54 large countries with more than 25 million people and that account for 90 percent of global population and subsidies. The UK per capita subsidy for road fuels was only $10 a year, indicating taxes on petrol and diesel in 2020 were close to the level of the damage burning the fuels causes.

The US is also high on the list of the biggest per capita subsidies for all fossil fuels with $2,000 a year, behind only Saudi Arabia ($4,550) and Russia ($3,560). After these countries, only Iran ($1,815) is ahead of Australia ($1,730) and Canada ($1,690).

“Taking the Paris agreement seriously requires a rapid shift away from fossil fuels,” said Simon Black, a climate economist at the IMF. “Getting fossil fuel prices right will help enormously in accelerating this transition.”

The transition

The shift from burning oil and gas cannot happen overnight, and a declining amount will still need to be burned during the transition to a net zero emissions global economy in 2050. The question is whether companies and governments are moving fast enough.

The Guardian wrote to the oil and gas companies named in its analysis and asked for their response.

“Under the IEA net zero emissions scenario, and all Paris-aligned scenarios, all energy sources remain important through 2050, and oil and natural gas remain essential components of the energy mix,” said a spokesperson for ExxonMobil.

However, the role of oil and gas would be vastly reduced in 2050, and the IEA said: “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development [in our net zero scenario].”

ExxonMobilplanned to invest more than $15 billion on initiatives to lower greenhouse gas emissions over the next six years, the spokesperson said, including carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels. The company aimed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 but only from its own operations, not the fuels it sold, therefore covering only a small fraction of the emissions from the oil and gas it sells.

A spokesperson for Shell cited recent company statements: “As a result of [our] planned level of capital investment, we expect a gradual decline of about 1-2 percent a year in total oil production through to 2030, including divestments.

“By 2025,Shellexpects its expenditure on [low and zero-carbon] products and services across its businesses will have increased to around 50 percent of its total expenditure,” a recent report by the firm states. In 2022, the proportion is expected to be more than 35 percent. In 2021, “Shell achieved its annual investment targets in renewables and energy solutions of $2bn-3bn,” the report says.

“Our goal is to support an orderly transition that matches supply to demand and focuses on [financial] returns.”

ConocoPhillips also cited a recently published net zero emissions plan:“Our goal is to support an orderly transition that matches supply to demand and focuses on returns on, and of, capital while safely and responsibly delivering affordable energy.”

The document states that profits from oil and gas projects are significantly higher than from investments in renewable energy.

ConocoPhillips has allocated $200 million in 2022 to reduce emissions from its operations. To reduce emissions from the burning of the fossil fuels it supplies, the company advocates an “economy-wide price on carbon that would help shift consumer demand from high-carbon to low-carbon energy sources”.

“Petrobras plans its investments considering that the Paris agreement will be successful and global temperature will be kept below 2°C,” a spokesperson for the company said. “Oil will remain important in the coming decades, even in accelerated transition scenarios.”

The spokesperson said the IEA’s scenario for 1.65C indicated some investment in upstream projects was needed. “We are planning for highly resilient assets competitive in scenarios aligned with Paris due to their low production cost and low emissions. Petrobras is following its strategy of maximizing the value of its portfolio, [with 99 percent of the investment on exploration] focusing on deepwater and ultra-deepwater assets.”

TotalEnergies pointed to its recent sustainability report, which it said “showed our stakeholders that we are already on the right track.” The company has a target of a 30 percent cut in emissions from oil and gas sales by 2030 and to increase the proportion of its energy sales that are renewable from 9 percent in 2021 to 20 percent in 2030.

Saudi Aramco and Eni responded to the Guardian but declined to comment. The other companies did not respond to the Guardian’s request....

not BP akin gump?

no lnx many

BUSINESS

CLIMATE CHANGE

GREENHOUSE GAS

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

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

By Zach Boren

Alexander C. Kaufman

Lawrence Carter

Sep. 28, 2020,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Undisclosed Groups

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

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

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

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

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

United States Of AstroTurfing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Methane Haze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australia’s Climate Loophole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Methane Haze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australia’s Climate Loophole

...

https://www.**desmog**.com/consumer-energy-alliance-cea/ 4 22

Background

The Consumer Energy Alliance (:{CEA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:) is an energy industry PR and government affairs organization founded by Republican lobbyist Michael Whatley of :{HBW:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Resources, a leading proponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Canadian tar sands industry. [1], [2], [3]

CEA‘s member groupsinclude petroleum giants BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron, among many others. It has received “operational support” from the American Natural Gas Association, and additional funding from the American Petroleum Institute. The CEA engages in targeted media messaging and government lobbying to advance pro-industry agenda items such as offshore drilling, deregulation, and refineries expansion. [4]

https://www.courthousenews.com/big-oil-must-face-california-city-and-county-lawsuits-over-climate-change/

cn seems legit

sAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The Ninth Circuit affirmed Tuesday that lawsuits seeking to hold the world’s largest energy companies financially liable for climate change and the rising sea levels that threaten California’s coastal communities should stay in state court, setting the stage for a legal offensive comparable to one that won multibillion-dollar awards against Big Tobacco.

The rulingcomes after a three-judge panel took a second look at a jurisdictional dispute between the energy companies and four municipalities after being ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.

San Mateo County, Marin County and the cities of Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach in San Diego County sued Chevron, BP and three dozen other oil, gas and coal companies in separate state courts in July 2017, claiming the fuel companies created a public nuisance by hiding for nearly 50 years that fossil fuel consumption was heating and damaging the earth.

After the cases were removed to federal court, the local governments fought to remand them to state court, arguing state law claims of public nuisance should be decided by California’s judicial system.

The energy giants objected, insisting the claims are governed by federal law because they implicate “uniquely federal interests,” including matters of interstate and international commerce and environmental policy.

In March 2018, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria remanded the cases to their respective state courts.

A unanimous three-judge Ninth Circuit panel upheld Chhabria’s ruling two years later, finding the federal court lacks jurisdiction to consider state law claims. Writing for the majority, U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee, rejected the oil companies’ argument that because they provided fuel to the U.S. government through service contracts, they were “acting under” a federal officer’s directions.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted the energy companies’ petition for certiorari and sent the cases back to the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its ruling in light of the high court’s 2021 decision in BP p.l.c. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, where it held that a federal appeals court can review a federal judge’s entire remand order. In that case, the city of Baltimore sued 26 oil companies for creating the greenhouse gases responsible for rising sea levels.

But Ikuta and her fellow panelists, U.S. Circuit Judges Morgan Christen and Kenneth Lee, declined to change their minds, sticking to the long-standing principle that federal courts should narrowly limit their reach to protect the jurisdiction of state courts.

“Our adherence to this doctrine does not change merely because plaintiffs raise novel and sweeping causes of action,” she wrote. “We therefore reject the broad interpretations of removal jurisdiction urged on us by the energy companies and affirm the district court’s remand order.”

The panel also rejected the argument that the energy companies’ conduct occurred on federal land and must be governed by federal law. The judges found that while some of the companies operated on federal land, such as the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve run by Chevron predecessor Standard Oil, the companies fail to account for how much of their conduct took place on federal enclaves. “The connection between conduct on federal enclaves and the counties’ alleged injuries is too attenuated and remote to establish that the counties’ cause of action is governed by the federal law applicable to any federal enclave,” Ikuta wrote.

The companies had also argued that the cases should stay in federal court because a portion of their fossil-fuel extraction took place on the Outer Continental Shelf, which falls under federal jurisdiction. “We reject this argument, because the connection between such conduct and the injuries alleged by the plaintiffs here is too attenuated to give rise to jurisdiction,” Ikuta wrote, reasoning that the counties’ lawsuit claim only local injuries, and focus on the companies’ “concerted campaign” to hide the harmful effects of fossil fuels from the public. “These allegations do not refer to actions taken on the Outer Continental Shelf,” she wrote.

The cities and counties praised the opinion as “clear and reasoned” in a statement.

“We appreciate the panel’s thorough review of this matter and are eager to return to the state courts where we filed our cases more than four years ago,” the plaintiffs said an email sent through the law firm Sher Edling LLP. “It is time to go to trial to hold these defendants accountable for deceiving consumers about the dangers associated with the use of their products, and to protect our taxpayers from having to bear the enormous costs resulting from that deception.”

The same Ninth Circuit panel found U.S. District Judge William Alsup lacked jurisdiction when he dismissed similar lawsuits brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. The judges remanded the cases to Alsup so he can reconsider if alternative grounds justify keeping the two lawsuits in federal court, though their ruling Tuesday means those cases will likely end up in state court as well.

In an email, BP head of corporate communications Megan Baldino said the company could not speak about pending litigation. Chevron spokesman Braden Reddallsaid in an email that the company “respectfully disagrees” with the panel’s decision.

“Plaintiffs’ claims are based on allegations about worldwide carbon emissions and address global climate change — national and international issues that can be governed only by federal, not state, law. The court acknowledges that cases such as this one “raise novel and sweeping causes of action,'” Reddall said, noting that like Alsup, the Second Circuit had dismissed nearly identical claims as “sprawling” and overly ambitious. “Although the court has decided that plaintiffs’ claims for now can proceed past this preliminary stage, Chevron looks forward to additional challenges that should put an early end to this meritless lawsuit.”

2/3/22 oversight :

4 BP, Press Release: From International Oil Company to Integrated Energy Company: BP Sets Out Strategy for Decade of Delivery Towards Net Zero Ambition (Aug. 4, 2020) (online at www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/news-and-insights/press-releases/frominternational-oil-company-to-integrated-energy-company.pdf);

Chevron, Press Release: Chevron Sets Net Zero Aspiration and New GHG Intensity Target (Oct. 11, 2021) (online at www.chevron.com/stories/chevron-sets-netzero-aspiration-and-new-ghg-intensity-target);

ExxonMobil, Press Release: ExxonMobil Announces Ambition for Net Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050 (Jan. 18, 2022) (online at https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/News/Newsroom/News-releases/2022/0118_ExxonMobil-announces-ambitionfor-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050);

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Shell Energy Transition Strategy (2021) (online at www.shell.com/promos/energy-and-innovation/shell-energy-transitionstrategy/_jcr_content.stream/1618407326759/7c3d5b317351891d2383b3e9f1e511997e516639/shell-energytransition-strategy-2021.pdf).

5 As More Companies Make Net-Zero Pledges, Some Aren’t as Good as They Sound, Time (Nov. 15, 2021) (online at https://time.com/6117635/companies-net-zero-greenwash/)

https://payupclimatepolluters.org/slippery-six

Big Oil’s “Slippery Six” To Testify Before Congress on Oct. 28

Congress members want these oil and gas executives to answer for their campaigns to deceive the American people about their role in causing climate change.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform is asking the executives of six major fossil fuel companies and trade associations to testify at an October 28 hearing about their companies’ role in a “long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.”

MEET BIG OIL'S SLIPPERY SIX

ExxonMobil

Learn more about ExxonMobil's deception >>https://payupclimatepolluters.org/blog/exxonmobil-ceo-darren-woods

Groundbreaking reporting from InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and other outlets has shown that #ExxonKnew about the dangers posed by its fossil fuel products for decades, but engaged in a widespread campaign of deception to protect its profits.

The company now faces climate liability lawsuits from 26 states and municipalities — more than any other Big Oil company — and is under increased scrutiny after its senior federal lobbyist was caught on tape bragging about its deceptive tactics and admitting that Exxon executives do not want to testify before Congress out of fear of being “ripped to shreds.”

The American people deserve answers, and as Exxon’s CEO, Woods must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask him to explain:

Exxon Knew About the “Catastrophic” Impact of its Products Since the 1970s

As early as 1977, senior Exxon scientists warned executives about the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels would raise global temperatures and cause drastic changes to the climate. “Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical,” Exxon scientist James F. Black wrote in 1978.
On at least two separate occasions between 1981 and 1982, Exxon scientists warned executives of the potentially “catastrophic” impacts of global warming resulting from the use of their fossil fuel products.
Exxon’s climate scientists and modelers were some of the best in the world, 40 years ago predicting today’s temperature increases and atmospheric CO2 levels with.
Exxon and its subsidiaries took climate risks into account in planning and building major engineering and infrastructure projects, all while publicly denying the hazards of its products.
In 1995, Exxon developed a primer on climate science for the Global Climate Coalition that read, “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.” The primer went on to dismiss contrarian theories as unconvincing arguments against greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.

Exxon Worked to Discredit Climate Science and Spread Climate Denial and Disinformation

Despite a decade of clear internal agreement with the scientific consensus on climate change, Exxon’s public position by the late 1980’s became to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse effect.” In an extensive campaign that stretched for at least 20 years and included front groups, scientists-for-hire, advertorials, and publications, Exxon led companies and industry trade associations in sowing doubt to delay action, much like the tobacco industry.
From 1998 to 2019, Exxon put at least $37 milliontoward funding nearly 70 organizations that pushed climate denial and sought to discredit climate science. More than $14.6 million was given after the company pledged to stop funding denialist organizations in 2008.
“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew were wrong,” former Exxon scientist Martin Hofferttestifiedunder oath to Congress in 2019.

ExxonMobil Lobbyist Admitted to Company’s Climate Deception, Fear of Testifying

In June, ExxonMobil’s senior federal lobbyist, Keith McCoy, admitted on tape that the company has used “shadow groups” to undermine climate science and oppose government action, and that the company only publicly supported a carbon tax because it would never pass and was a good “talking point.”
In that same recording, McCoy said: “We don't want it to be us to have these conversations, especially in a hearing … 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. The main thing that they’re looking at is to get ExxonMobil in front of a Congressional hearing so they can rip us apart.”

Exxon Continues to Pollute While Falsely Depicting Itself as Committed to Climate Solutions

Exxon has long promoted marketing campaigns that mislead consumers about its commitment to clean energy, such as “A Greener Energy Future. Literally,” which touted the company’s goal to have the technical ability to produce 10,000 barrels of algae biofuel per day by 2025-- an output equivalent to only 0.2%of Exxon’s current refinery production.
Exxon claims to support the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. To achieve that goal, oil and gas production must decline 4% and 3% annually between 2020 and 2030. In contrast, ExxonMobil’s plans to hold oil and gas production steady at its current level through at least 2025, and the company has no plans to reduce emissions from its products, which account for 83% of Exxon's CO2 emissions. Exxon anticipates fully replenishing reserves by 2040, even though emissions from existing oil and gas reserves alone would be enough to push warming past 1.5°C.

Exxon Borrows from Big Tobacco’s Playbook to Sow Doubt and Frame Climate Change as a “Risk” Instead of Reality

In a 2017 peer-reviewed study, Drs. Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes analyzed over 180 climate communications from ExxonMobil between 1977 to 2014 and found that more publically accessible documents expressed greater doubt about climate science and the gravity of the issue. For example, 80% of internal documents acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused, while 81% of company advertorials expressed doubt.
In a 2021 follow-up study, Supran and Oreskes used computational linguistic analysis to demonstrate that, in Exxon’s public climate communications from 2000 onward, there was no term more highly associated with “climate change” and “global warming” than “risk(s)”. The authors concluded that the company’s framing of climate change as a risk creates doubt and uncertainty, effectively downplaying Exxon’s role in the climate crisis and contradicting the findings of its own scientists who characterized the threat of climate change as “catastrophic.”

Chevron

Learn more about Chevron's deception >>

Public reporting has shown that Chevron and its predecessors knew about the dangers posed by their fossil fuel products for decades, but engaged in a widespread campaign of deception to protect their profits.

Chevron now faces lawsuits from 18 states and municipalities that are seeking to hold the corporation accountable for lying about the damages it knew its products would cause. It is also the first Big Oil company to be the subject of a Federal Trade Commission complaint for deceptive business practices.

The American people deserve answers, and as Chevron’s CEO, Wirth must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask him to explain:

Chevron Knew About the “Catastrophic” Impact of Its Products Decades Ago

A representative from Texaco (now Chevron) participated in an industry taskforce on CO2 and Climate and attended a 1980 meeting that discussed an industry report predicting global warming from fossil fuel use would lead to “globally catastrophic effects.”

Chevron Worked to Discredit Climate Science and Spread Climate Denial and Disinformation

Chevron subsidiary Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining was a member of a communications front group formed by coal companies in 1991 to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” The Information Council for the Environment was responsible for public campaigns that included advertisements in The New York Times and other influential publications with messages like “Who told you the earth was warming…Chicken Little?” and “Doomsday is cancelled. Again.” ICE’s campaign also included radio commercials read by Rush Limbaugh, a nationwide public relations tour, mailers, and more.
Representatives from Chevron helped draft a 1998 oil and gas industry multimillion dollar communications plan with a stated goal to sow uncertainties about climate science among the public and “those (e.g., Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change.” According to the document from the American Petroleum Institute, “Victory Will Be Achieved When … Average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’”... and when those who support the international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, are seen as being “out of touch with reality.”

Chevron Misled the Public about the Threat of Climate Change While Preparing Its Own Assets for a Warming Globe

In 1974, Chevron received a patent for drilling equipment that could withstand increased interference from lateral ice masses, and allow the company to drill in areas with increased ice movement as temperatures rose. Texaco (now Chevron) also sought a patent for equipment that would allow the company to drill areas of the Arctic that would only become accessible as the region warmed.

Chevron Continues to Pollute While Falsely Depicting Itself as Committed to Climate Solutions

Chevron has launched paid media campaigns that tout the company as a leader in clean energy, but the oil giant ended its small renewable power group in 2014, and between 2010 and 2018, it invested just 0.2 percent of its annual capital expenditure in low-carbon energy.
These same campaigns disingenuously promote natural gas as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite the fact that natural gas is a significant source of CO2 and methane emissions that may present more of a climate threat than coal when all emissions sources, including leaks and uncapped and abandoned wells, are considered.
Robert Redlinger, who was director of a Chevron effort to develop large renewable energy projects until leaving in 2010, explained to Grist: “When you have a very successful and profitable core oil and gas business, it can be quite difficult to justify investing in renewables. It requires significant commitment at the most senior levels of management. I didn’t perceive that kind of commitment from Chevron during my time with the firm.”

BP America

Learn more about BP's deception >>

Public reporting has shown that BP knew about the dangers posed by their fossil fuel products for decades, but engaged in a widespread campaign of deception to protect their profits.

BP now faces lawsuits from 19 states and municipalities that are seeking to hold the corporation accountable for lying about the damages it knew its products would cause.

The American people deserve answers, and as BP America’s CEO, Lawler must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask him to explain:

BP Knew About the “Devastating Consequences” of Fossil Fuels Decades Ago, But Worked to Block Climate Action

In 1991, BP produced an educational documentary about the weather that included a stark warning: increased CO2 from using fossil fuels could have “devastating consequences” including sea level rise, more frequent storms, and catastrophic floods.
Despite a clear understanding of the dangers of climate change, BP joined the Global Climate Coalition, a powerful industry group that coordinated the ultimately successful opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas regulations by casting doubt on the very impacts BP predicted.

BP Continues to Pollute While Falsely Depicting Itself as Committed to Climate Solutions

In 2000, BP began a $200 million campaign to rebrand the company as “Beyond Petroleum,” complete with a new sunburst logo. The company highlighted a $45 million investment in solar energy, but BP spent $12 billion on oil and gas in 2002—25 times more than on wind and solar.
BP exited the solar business in 2012 and the wind business in 2013, following the company’s 2012 agreement to pay $4.5 billion in criminal fines and fees to the federal government and an estimated $7.8 billion in private settlements over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
A PR professional who worked on the campaign later admitted that it was “just advertising” to portray BP as a company “trying to find newer, smarter, cleaner ways of powering the world. Only they didn’t go beyond petroleum. They are petroleum.”
Between 2010 and 2018, BP invested just 2.3% of its capital expenditures in low carbon projects. The company reports that it increased low carbon spending to $750 million in 2020 (5% of capital expenditures) but BP’s criteria for this spending are unclear; past projects supported by a “low carbon transition” fund included “shares in companies developing new ways to find and use fossil fuels.”
According to a report by InfluenceMap, BP spends $30 million a year on climate branding and more than $50 million a year lobbying against policies to reduce emissions.

BP Pioneered the Personal “Carbon Footprint” Concept to Shift Blame for Climate Change to Consumers

In 2004, BP launched one of the most consequential marketing campaigns in history: the “carbon footprint calculator,” which the oil giant told consumers was for “helping you to go carbon neutral.” The “carbon footprint” went on to be adopted by hundreds of environmental groups and governments around the world, successfully shifting the burden of reining in climate change from oil and gas companies to individuals. By shifting the burden of lowering emissions to consumers, rather than the corporate polluters that produce and sell fossil fuels, BP embedded a concept in contemporary culture that has been critical in helping Big Oil evade responsibility for its central role in the climate crisis.

BP Greenwashes, Makes Phony Commitments to “Net Zero” Emissions

In December 2019, BP’s ‘Keep Advancing’ and ‘Possibilities Everywhere’ marketing campaigns — their biggest in a decade — were the subject of alegal complaint from ClientEarth, an environmental law firm, which charged BP advertising with misleading the public by focusing on low-carbon projects when 96% of the company’s annual expenditure was on fossil fuels.
One month later, in January 2020, a leaked package of branding materials revealed that in the face of this legal challenge BP was wrestling yet again with how to present themselves as leading the way on climate solutions, even as they were still increasing production and refining of oil and gas. One slide, in particular, asked how the oil giant could become more “authentic” and “inspirational” like teen climate activist Greta Thunberg.
One month after that, on February 12, 2020, the company announced that they were ending the advertising campaigns, while simultaneously announcing “a new ambition to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner.” But due to a number of loopholes, including the exclusion of the company’s joint ventures with Russian oil giant Rosneft, an estimated 46% of the carbon BP extracts is excluded from its net zero ambition.
In March 2020, the UK National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (UK NCP) found the Client Earth complaint “material and substantiated, despite the complaint not proceeding due to BP ending its ad campaign.”

Shell

Learn more about Shell's deception >>

American Petroleum Institute

Learn more about API's deception >>

ublic reporting has shown that API and its members knew about the dangers posed by their fossil fuel products for decades, but coordinated and engaged in a widespread campaign of deception to protect their profits.

API now faces lawsuits from two states and four municipalities that are seeking to hold the trade association accountable for deceiving the public about the central role that fossil fuels play in climate change.

API representatives have previously testified before Congress as a deliberate tactic to provide cover for its individual oil and gas company members, according to a senior Exxon lobbyist: “We don’t want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing,” said Keith McCoy, in a leaked 2021 interview. “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.”

Explore the #SlipperySix

The American people deserve answers, and as API’s President, Sommers must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask him to explain:

API Led Early Efforts to Study Climate Change and Predicted “Globally Catastrophic Events”

In 1965, API President Frank Ikard warned the trade association’s annual meeting that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels could cause “marked changes in climate” and that the problem was so serious that alternative fuels were likely to become a “national necessity.”
API funded high-level research into the issue, including a 1968 report by the Stanford Research Institute that concluded “there seems to be no doubt the potential damage to our environment could be severe.”
A 1980 report prepared for API’s C02 and Climate Task Force warned of “globally catastrophic events” resulting from the continued burning of fossil fuels.

API Disavowed its Early Knowledge and Coordinated the Industry’s Campaign to Discredit Climate Science and Prevent Action

In a 1996 letter to the White House, API dismissed “statements that we face catastrophic consequences if emissions are not reduced” as “inconsistent with the current state of climate science” — in direct contradiction to the industry’s own findings.
That same year, a book published by API argued that “no conclusive—or even strongly suggestive— scientific evidence exists that human activities are significantly affecting sea levels, rainfall, surface temperatures or the intensity and frequency of storms,” in direct contradiction of the scientific consensus at the time and with their own scientific findings from years before.
In 1998, API prepared a multimillion dollar communications plan for the oil and gas industry with a stated goal to sow uncertainties about climate science among the public and “those (e.g., Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change.” 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.’”... and when those who support the international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, are seen as being “out of touch with reality.”
After President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, API’s CEO claimed, “We intend to be part of the solution and look forward to a continuing dialogue on meeting this global challenge.” However, the association proceeded to run ads, organize rallies, and spend millions lobbying to successfully block climate legislation.

API Falsely Depicts Itself As Committed to Climate Solutions

While API now claims to “support global action that drives greenhouse gas emissions reductions and economic development,” they continue to provide misleading information to soften or even block climate action. Their strategy has evolved from outright climate denial to a savvier approach of “greenwashing” ad campaigns, ranging from a Super Bowl ad to website articles such as “Five Ways We’re Helping to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”
API’s “We’re on it” campaign claims that “America’s natural gas and oil companies are … leading the world in cutting greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest levels in a generation.” The association asserts that increased use of natural gas is the “number one” reason CO2 emissions have declined. But this claim excludes methane emissions and undercounts the contributions of renewables or energy efficiency, which an analysis by Oil Change International calculates together are responsible for 68.1% of emission reductions. Further, recent science indicates that when methane leaks are taken into account, natural gas's impact on the climate is likely equivalent to coal. Rolling back emission standards was also a top policy priority for API during the Trump administration.

API Has Historically Done the Dirty Lobbying Work for the Oil and Gas Industry

Like many trade associations, API and its lobbyists have provided cover for its member companies to promote themselves as caring, green corporations, while API lobbies for rollbacks of environmentalprotections.
For example, for over a decade prior to March 2021, API firmly opposed a tax on carbon emissions, allowing individual member companies to publicly support a price on carbon as a “talking point,” according to former Exxon lobbyist McCoy, who also said Exxon supported a carbon tax because they believed it would never happen.

API Continues to Work Against Efforts to Tackle Climate Change

API is fighting President Biden’s federal leasing moratorium by misrepresenting the moratorium as a ban, and by running ads that highlight how oil and gas fees contribute to school funding. But a pause on new leasing will not affect the royalties that provide the majority of funding to state and local school budgets, nor is any new leasing necessary to increase product: the industry already holds 7,700 unused leases covering 13 million acres of public land. While feigning concern for schoolchildren, API actually lobbied to lower the royalty rates that contribute to school budgets.
Between August 8 and September 30, 2021, API spent $423,000 on ads attacking climate provisions in the Congressional reconciliation package.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Learn more about the Chamber's deception >>

New research found that the Chamber of Commerce knew about the dangers posed by the burning of fossil fuels for decades, but deliberately skewed their external messaging to sow doubt and uncertainty about climate science whenever key climate policy proposals were on the table.

Citing data from U.K.-based think tank InfluenceMap, a recent report from the Senate Committee on the Climate Crisis called the Chamber of Commerce one of “the two most influential opponents of climate action,” along with its founding organization, the National Association of Manufacturers.

Explore the #SlipperySix

The American people deserve answers, and as the Chamber’s President and CEO, Clark must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask her to explain:

The Chamber of Commerce Knew About the Dangers of Climate Change Early On

According to research from Brown University, the Chamber had knowledge of the link between fossil fuels and climate change since at least the 1980s.
Harvey Alter, a resources and policy official at the time, gave an internal speech to the International Chamber of Commerce in 1989 during which he detailed the dire climate consequences of burning fossil fuels with astounding accuracy -- including flooding in Bangladesh, drought in California, and the spread of vector-borne disease.
Despite that knowledge, by 1991, the Chamber was already claiming that, “While possible global warming is cause for concern, genuine scientific disputes remain as to the existence, causes, and potential consequences of global climate change.”

The Chamber Worked Diligently on Behalf of Big Oil Member Corporations to Promote Climate Denial, Downplay Climate Risks and Obstruct Action

Between the introduction of the Kyoto Protocol and the EPA’s Endangerment Finding in 2009 (which found that the EPA had the authority to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act), crucial years for the development of the United States’ stance on climate policy, the Chamber launched concerted messaging campaigns using “sixteen unique discourses of delay” to encourage skepticism about climate science and enforce the idea that climate action would hurt jobs and the economy.
The Global Climate Coalition, an industry front group where the Chamber of Commerce was a member and consistently served on its board of directors, led a massive lobbying and PR campaign for over a decade to spread climate denial and disinformation, even while its own scientists reinforced the consensus that burning fossil fuels would indeed cause dangerous global warming.
In 2009, several member companies, including utility companies Exelon, PG&E, and New Mexico utility PNM, publicly exited the Chamber in response to its extreme climate denial.
In the same year, while the Chamber claimed to support “common sense” climate legislation, the Chamber submitted a petition to the EPA challenging its Endangerment Finding and again refuting the science behind climate change and even suggesting it might be beneficial.
During this year’s Chamber of Commerce Energy Summit in East Texas, Senator John Cornyn told an enthusiastic audience that those concerned about climate change and demanding action were part of a “cult” and that climate change “isn’t science, it’s religion.”

The Chamber is the Most Powerful Lobbying Force on Capitol Hill -- and Uses That Power to Oppose Climate Action.

Representatives from fossil fuel companies and utilities like Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Phillips 66, Entergy, and other major corporations sit on the Chamber’sboard of directors.
In 2019, the Chamber began to claim that climate “inaction is simply not an option” and purported to support businesses’ so-called climate leadership. But a report by Change the Chamber, a nationwide coalition working to hold the Chamber accountable, details the Chamber’s recent lobbying efforts to oppose and weaken U.S. climate policy, including public health protections, at the expense of the American public.
As referenced in that study, the Chamber successfully lobbied to alter the EPA’s National Environmental Protection Act to ensure that the agency would no longer measure how new fossil fuel infrastructure might contribute to climate change. The Chamber also successfully lobbied the Senate to vote down three moratoriums on oil offshore drilling, and to vote down a joint resolution to nullify the EPA’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
The Chamber has spent nearly $150 million on Congressional candidates opposed to climate action since Citizens United, according to a 2020 Senate report.
In 2017, the Chamber funded a misleading economic study about the costs of joining the Paris Agreement that was widely cited by President Trump as reason for the U.S. to withdraw.
The Chamber is now threatening to pull its support from lawmakers who back President Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, which includes crucial climate legislation, and has vowed to “do everything we can to prevent this tax raising, job killing reconciliation bill from becoming law.”

The hearing, part of a wider Congressional investigation into climate disinformation, could be a watershed moment for holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for causing and lying about the climate crisis, similar to when the “Seven Dwarves” of Big Tobacco were forced to answer questions from Congress in a televised 1994 hearing — and were caught lying under oath.

But Big Oil’s “Slippery Six” have not yet publicly agreed to testify.

The fossil fuel industry’s campaign of deception lies at the heart of the growing number of lawsuits brought by states and municipalities across the country to hold many of these same companies accountable for lying about the role their fossil fuel products play in causing climate change.

SHELL DEFECTOR (when was court loss?]

https://news.yahoo.com/1-shell-quit-u-refining-105931571.html

reuters

UPDATE 7-Citing climate differences, Shell walks away from U.S. refining lobby

By Ron Bousso

April 2, 2019

* Shell to leave AFPM in 2020 over climate "misalignment"

* Shell releases first report on links with industry groups

* Investor welcomes report as "industry first" (Adds comment from French oil major Total)

By Ron Bousso

LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc on Tuesday became the first major oil and gas company to announce plans to leave a leading U.S. refining lobby due to disagreement on climate policies, citing its support for the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

In its first review of its association with 19 key industry groups, Shell said it had found "material misalignment" over climate policy with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and would quit the body in 2020.

The review is part of Shell's drive to increase transparency and show investors it is in line with the 2015 Paris climate agreement's goals to limit global warming by reducing carbon emissions to a net zero by the end of the century.

It is the latest sign of how investor pressure on oil companies, particularly in Europe, is leading to changes in their behavior around climate. Last year, Shell caved in to investor pressure over climate change, setting out plans to introduce industry-leading carbon emissions targets linked to executive pay.

Its chief executive, Ben van Beurden, has since repeatedly urged oil and gas producers to take action over climate and pollution, staking out a more radical position than the heads of other major oil companies.

"AFPM has not stated support for the goal of the Paris Agreement. Shell supports the goal of the Paris Agreement," the Anglo-Dutch company said in its decision.

"The need for urgent action in response to climate change has become ever more obvious since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. As a result, society's expectations in this area have changed, and Shell's views have also evolved," van Beurden said in the report.

The company has disagreed with AFPM on a number of issues for some time, according to two lobbying sources. Shell said it also disagreed with AFPM's opposition to a price on carbon and action on low-carbon technologies.

Shell and AFPM have also been at odds in recent months over regulation over the use of renewable fuels. While Shell and other large refiners invested in cleaner fuel technology, AFPM has fought hard against standards requiring refiners to blend or subsidize the blending of biofuels into the gasoline pool - saying it hurts independent refiners.

Shell and rivals Exxon and BP have in recent years left the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative political group, over its stance on climate change.

AFPM Chief Executive Chet Thompson thanked Shell for its "longstanding collaboration."

"We will also continue working on behalf of the refining and petrochemical industries to advance policies that ensure reliable and affordable access to fuels and petrochemicals, while being responsible stewards of the environment," Thompson said in a statement.

AFPM counts around 300 U.S. and international members includingExxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, BP Plc and Total SAthat operate 110 refineries and 229 petrochemical plants, according to its 2018 annual report.

French oil major Total said in a statement to Reuters that consensus required by organizations such as AFPM does not always reflect its position, and that it regularly monitors the relevance of its participation.

"In this case, Total takes a pro-active approach in order to convince its peers, particularly on climate issues. In case of differing points of view, Total publicly defends its position, and is ready to reconsider its participation in case of disagreement," the company said.

Total said it was fully aware of climate issues, has publicly recognized them and takes them into its strategy.

Shell's review was welcomed by Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, which invests in Shell and led discussions with the company over its climate policy.

"This is an industry first," Matthews said. "With this review Shell have set the benchmark for best practice on corporate climate lobbying not just within oil and gas but across all industries. The challenge now is for others to follow suit."

WALK AWAY

Shell also found "some" misalignment with nine other trade associations, including the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's main lobby.

Shell said that while it had some climate-related differences with theAPI, it welcomed the lobby's advocacy on a range of state and federal issues such as trade and transport, as well as the API's efforts to reduce methane emissions.

Shell said it will continue to engage with the API and other groups over climate policies and monitor their alignment.

Shell last month urged President Donald Trump's administration to tighten restrictions on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, instead of weakening them as planned.

(Reporting by Ron Bousso; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in New York and Bate Felix in Paris; Editing by Louise Heavens, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler)

https://qz.com/1962079/oil-companies-are-dropping-oil-lobbies-over-climate-change/

by Samanth Subramanian

Looking into the Future of Capitalism

Published January 27, 2021

Earlier this month,oil major Total took the unusual step of abandoning the American Petroleum Institute (API), the influential trade group that has advocated for the industry’s interests in Washington for more than a century.

As an explanation for quitting the group, Total cited API’s support for the rollback of curbs on methane emissions, its opposition to electric vehicle subsidies, and its funding of electoral candidates who opposed the US’ participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

its departure is the starkest example yet of a broader shift of oil companies quitting their memberships in industry bodies and lobbying groups—particularly those that, like API, have been accused of obstructing climate change initiatives.

On its website, API commits to “delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change.” On the ground, however, it has been found to have repeatedly stymied new climate-friendly legislation and supported moves such as Donald Trump’s decision to invite drillers into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

In 2019, Total left the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a more niche lobbying group.Shell quit that group as well, as did BP,which additionally left the Western States Petroleum Association and the Western Energy Alliance.

Shell and BP remain members of API, however, as do other major companies such as Siemens Energy, Chevron, LafargeHolcim, and Echinor. A Shell spokesperson told Quartz that the company is “now updating and assessing its membership in 36 global trade associations (API among them)” but that groups like API aren’t expected to be “monolithic in their platforms or advocacy approach.”

A Siemens Energy spokesperson said the company supports decarbonization of the world’s energy system, but that this transformation would not happen overnight: “Natural gas will remain an important interim solution for our global energy system for years to come. Our customers and API share this vision.”

Megan Baldino, the head of corporate communications for BP, said the company monitors its trade association memberships, “especially those we view as only ‘partially aligned’ with us on climate-related issues. We remain committed to trying to influence those associations from within and will publish a trade association update” in the second quarter of this financial year.

Echinor, LafargeHolcim, and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.

agnes Hall, the campaigns director for 350.org, an advocacy group pressing for laws to combat climate change, identified a buildup from activists and institutional investors as the driving force behind some of these realignments. This buildup has occurred over the course of several years, intensifying since 2015, when the Paris Agreementwas signed.That year, 25 institutional investors with more than £45 billion ($62 billion) in assets urged nine listed companies to quit European trade groups such as FuelsEurope and Cefic.

Investors and asset managers have also been demanding more transparency about trade group memberships and lobbying expenditure. Hall said that more than 1,300 investors worth over $14 trillion have pledged to divest from fossil fuels.

Evelyn Dietsche, a senior business lead at the research institute swisspeace, which studies companies in high-risk business environments, also pointed to frictions within firms as a reason for these shifts in stances. “Within these companies, you’ll have some people tasked with looking for the opportunities in the transition to gas or renewable fuels and the company’s future in that, and you’ll have others who, at least until recently, focused their attention on prolonging the status quo,” she said. “At some point, it should become untenable to gloss over that ambiguity.”

But Hall, at 350.org, called these publicly announced departures from trade associations “a clear greenwashing strategy.”

“If Total, BP, Shell, and the oil majors wanted to be coherent with what they try to pass as climate leadership, they would not only leave trade associations pushing back on ambitious climate policies, but they would also immediately start a rapid transition of their business model,” she said.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Shell-warns-U-S-trade-groups-it-may-leave-over-16084555.php

ENERGY

Shell threatens to leave US trade groups over climate disagreements

Paul Takahashi Staff writer

April 8, 2021

Shell’s move reassessing its trade group memberships comes as the European oil giant moves from its longtime fossil fuels business to meet its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

European oil major Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday urged U.S. oil and gas trade groups to take stronger positions in the fight against climate change under the threat of leaving them.

The Netherlands-based oil major took aim at the American Petroleum Institute, the Texas Oil & Gas Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pushing them to support and advocate for climate policies in line with the Paris climate agreement. The 2015 agreement aims to limit the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Shell’s move reassessing its trade group memberships comes as the European oil giant moves from its longtime fossil fuels business to meet its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

“We must be confident that our participation in industry associations is consistent with our views on climate action,” Van Beurden said. “Our memberships should strengthen and not undermine our support of the goal of the Paris Agreement and the global drive to achieve net-zero emissions.”

A BALANCE: API says U.S. must grow oil and gas while reducing emissions

API and the U.S. oil and gas industry face mounting pressure from their European members, which have moved aggressively over the past year to address climate change. Shell, Total and BP are investing heavily in wind and solar power, as well as electric vehicle charging stations, to prepare for a low-carbon future.Their largest American counterparts, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, have been slower to adopt renewables,instead working to reduce carbon emissions from their oil and gas operations through investments in carbon capture and storage technology.

Shell said API, the largest U.S. oil and gas trade association, has not stated publicly that it supports net-zero emissions, even though its chief executive said in January that the group supports the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. The company urged API to explicitly support the goals of the Paris Agreement, carbon pricing and direct regulation of methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas.

“Shell continues to urge API to take a more proactive and constructive approach to climate-related policy and advocacy, in line with the goal of the Paris Agreement,” the company said.

API spokeswoman Bethany Aronhalt said that the oil and gas industry is tackling climate change by working to reduce emissions while at the same time incentivizing lower-carbon innovations.

PULLING THE REINS: API president criticizes energy transition as moving too fast

Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden

“The scope of this challenge is big enough for a variety of solutions, and every company has a unique approach,” Aronhalt said in an email. “As an association representing 600 companies of varying sizes and segments of the industry, we know there is more that unites us than divides us, and each member brings an important voice to our advocacy efforts. We look forward to continuing to partner with Shell to advance innovative solutions for a lower carbon future and ensure API is at the forefront of the debate over how to address climate change while maintaining access to affordable, reliable energy around the world.”

Pressure is mounting on API and other oil and gas trade groups to change their views on climate policies.

Total in January said it will leave API over “certain divergences” in approaches climate change. The French oil major, which has a significant presence in Houston, said it disagreed with API’s opposition to electric vehicle subsidies and its endorsement of political candidates who argued against U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement.

Total is developing 16 solar farms in the U.S., including nine in Texas, to achieve its net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goals and to generate 40 percent of its sales from renewable power by 2050.

HISTORIC MOVE: Shell admits its oil production is now on the decline

BP, which also has ambitions to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, said in January that it is monitoring its membership in trade associations, particularly those it views as being only “partially aligned” with the company on climate-related issues.The company, however, said it remains committed to trying to influence those associations from within and will give an update on its memberships by the middle of this year.

Shell said it sees many benefits of its memberships in the trade associations, and believes that it is more effective working on climate change policies as a member of an association rather than on the outside. But it warned that in cases where it finds “material misalignment” with an association, it will not hesitate to reassess its membership. Shell in 2019 left the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers association after it found substantial disagreements with the group over climate policies.

“When we see little possibility of change, we are prepared to walk away,” Van Beurden said.

paul.takahashi@chron.com

twitter.com/paultakahashi

BUSH 43

RFK2 crimes ~ nature?

Ch 6 blueprint for plunder

energy co 48.3m to b2 and gop 2000, 58m since inaug 96 31 of 48 trans team energy

ties; cab and staff 4 cab sec, 6 powerful WH and 20 high level apptees

rove owned 250K enron stock early 2001 while energy pol made; also BP, amoco,

royal dutch shell 97 but involved in all decisions (scooter sold a bunch early 2001

dept comm ceo of cabot chem; undersec chief econ for exxon

secret task force; Nat Energy Pol Dev gp right after inaug 97 but Fed Advisory

Comm Act says any mtgs of pvt and public be disclosed, so official members all gov

as end-run 98 DC #2 spenser abrams (2000 failed relect sen after one term MI 700K

from car industry) killed fuel effic; Joe Allbaugh dir F Energy Reg Comiss (tx

"iron triangle) wife lobby for reliant, entergy and txu); also Don evans tx,

norton (1/3 sen camp energy co's), amd Paul O'Neill SIC vowed to sell alcoa stock

but stalled till after rep out, stock went up 30% 99 thot he cd have good impact,

but realized not goal 101

may 17 01 rep released --> energy bill ; exxon record profits, 2x prev yr 99

for 1st x, GAO sued for info, recently appt judge denied, no appeal , but Sierra C

and Jud watch won. scotus delayed till after election;scaliahad gone to oil co

duck hunt junket refused to recuse, tho many demands 100 docs heavy redacted, and

nothing from CD mtgs 100

task force got input fromAPI, Am Gas assoc, nat mining assoc and edison 101 400

co's combined in Alliance for Energy and ec growth to lobby.

B2 campaign workers became lobbyists; mtgs w/ task force; am gas at least 8 480 K

cantrib 1999-02 etc, api, exelon, westinghouse,enron 10x, 6 w DC (who refused to

cap CA energy prices) 103 RELIANT engineered CA scam 103 Westar exec email said

$ to DeLay PAC was price for "seat at table" of the task force 103. DC says just

b/c someone gave $ to camp does not mean shd not have "express views " to gov 103

suskind bk says DC orchestrated idea of energy crisis, permitted no discuss and

said pres wd not read anyone's reports p 104 day before rep released, foto op w/

green energy

chevron big input, apilang on exec order verbatim 104-5...