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A growing number of energy companies could come under increased scrutiny over their involvement in funding science and public relations campaigns denying the risks of climate change.

The New York attorney general made news a few weeks ago when he announced an investigation into oil major ExxonMobil for its alleged cover up of climate science. The investigation is looking into the possibility that ExxonMobil funded and gathered hard science on climate change, and once coming to the inevitable conclusion that the burning of fossil fuels could lead to regulatory blowback, the oil major proceeded to bury the conclusions and instead fund climate-denying science to obfuscate and head off political action.

While the news could yet blow up into a significant scandal, for now it is too early to tell what the outcome could be. However, more companies could come under fire from a growing number of attorneys general over their involvement in similar practices. After all, ExxonMobil is only the largest in a long line of companies that have pushed back against climate change policy.

The money flowing from energy companies to anti-climate change think tanks and lobbying organizations is relatively well known, and the links between the two are not hard to find. Donations to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), for example, is one of the more infamous relationships between oil and climate change lobbying. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) says that ExxonMobil has donated at least $1.7 million to ALEC between 1998 and 2014, a figure that CMD says is conservative. ALEC, in turn, pushed a legislative agenda to cloud the science on climate change, lobbying lawmakers across the U.S. and sowing doubts about the science of climate change.

European oil companies have taken a more proactive stance on addressing climate change. In October, for example, 10 large oil companies including BP, Shell, and Total, signed a joint letter stating their support for UN action on climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media

November 24, 2015

Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The abstract and full text of the study can be found here: Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,” Dr. Farrell told the Washington Post which was first to cover the news of the study’s release. “This counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own,” Dr. Farrell said.

From PNAS’s press briefing note about the article by Dr. Farrell:

Corporate funding likely influences the nature and content of polarizing texts pertaining to climate change, according to a study. Political polarization has become a hallmark of climate change policy discussion, with multiple groups in various sectors contributing to public discourse regarding climate and energy. To quantify the influence of corporate funding in climate change discourse, Justin Farrell analyzed more than 39 million words of text produced by 164 organizations active in the climate change counter-movement between 1993 and 2013. The author examined the ideological content of the produced texts, as well as the funding behind the organizations that produced the texts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australian Aboriginals Fear Gas Fracker Aubrey McClendon’s Down Under Drilling Plans

September 9, 2015

Australian Aboriginals Fear Gas Fracker Aubrey McClendon’s Down Under Drilling Plans

Children of the Garawa aboriginal clan group. Picture: Lauren Mellor

Energy companies the world over would love to think they could be first in the queue at the next big global frontier for fossil fuel energy.

Aubrey McClendon was a key figure in creating the last big energy boom in his own backyard, using the controversial hydraulic fracturing technology to release gas from shale in the United States.

Now McClendon’s company American Energy Partners (AEP) thinks it has found that new global frontier in a vast and remote corner of Australia’s Northern Territory (NT).

AEP has made two major investments in the NT in recent weeks where drillers hope McClendon will kick-start another fracking boom. McClendon built his former company Chesapeake Energy from the ground up to become a major player in the United States shale gas fracking boom.

At one point, only ExxonMobil was producing more gas than Chesapeake.

But already McClendon’s hopes of recreating a US-style gas “fracking” boom in Australia are coming up against resistance from Aboriginal Australians — one of the oldest continuous cultural groups on the planet.

Land grab

Exploration licences cover many millions of acres of land in the NT and many of those are with a view to drilling for gas using hydraulic fracturing — a process where large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are pumped at pressure to create small cracks in the rocks to release the gas.

A key to McClendon’s success in the U.S. was in acquiring rights over huge land areas of prospective shale gas, a tactic he appears to be trying to mirror in Australia. Chesapeake Energy called this a “land grab” business strategy.

McClendon is also known for his financial risk taking, a trait that caused one analyst at business magazine Forbes to dub him “America’s most reckless billionaire

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lobbying: The National Petroleum Council

May 4, 2015

I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT LOBBYING: THE NATIONAL PETROLEUM COUNCIL

The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly “makes recommendations” to the U.S. Secretary of Energy — as in its recent report “Arctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources,” which advocates changes to regulations that “are limiting Arctic exploration activity.”

So the NPC looks, walks and quacks like lobbyists. But legally it’s a “federal advisory committee,” a little-known type of organization that in appearance and often in reality provides yet another way for corporations to get what they want out of the government.

There are more than 1,000 federal advisory committees, including one about organ transplantation. The Department of Energy alone has 21 others in addition to the NPC. In theory all these federal advisory committees could provide a useful way for a range of experts and regular people to provide feedback on complex issues like the fossil fuel industry. In practice, the NPC is dominated by the industry itself. Of the NPC’s 210 members (all selected by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and his predecessor), 173, or 82 percent, are from oil and gas companies, corporations that provide them support services, and large utility consumers.

You don’t even have to be a U.S. citizen or represent a U.S. corporation so long as you’re a big enough player in the oil industry — other members include Russell Girling, Canadian CEO and president of Transcanada (the company behind the Keystone XL); Canadian president and CEO of Enbridge, Al Monaco; and Michel Bénézit of the French multinational Total S.A. Members of the financial industry, such as the managing director of JPMorgan Securities, have a seat at the table as well.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the Fracking Lobby Setting the EU Energy Agenda?

April 15, 2015

Is the Fracking Lobby Setting the EU Energy Agenda?

A European expert panel on unconventional hydrocarbons has been almost entirely taken over by the fracking industry reveals a new investigationby Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe and theCorporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

The advisory group, set up by the European Commission, is tasked with assessing ongoing fracking projects in Europe along with the safety and appropriateness of other unconventional technologies. Of those not employed by the Commission, over 70 percent of the panel have financial ties to the fracking industry.

The panel’s five leading chairmen include two executives from shale firms Cuadrilla and ConocoPhillips, two officials from pro-shale ministries in the UK and Poland, and a director of IFP Energies nouvelles, who is also an advisor to the Shale Gas Europe lobby group.

Less than 10 percent of those on the panel represent civil society and environmentalists. And two thirds of the academics and research organisations involved have links to the shale industry.

In-House Lobby

Shell, Total, ExxonMobil and GDF Suez are also represented on what has been dubbed “an in-house shale gas lobby” on EU energy strategy.

^{Graphic provided by Corporate Europe Observatory}

Panel members openly recognise that the group’s intent is to prime future EU policy-making on shale gas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How ExxonMobil’s PR Machine Impacted The Climate Change Debate

April 14, 2015

How ExxonMobil’s PR Machine Impacted The Climate Change Debate

Our DeSmog UK epic history series continues asExxonMobil uses its PR power to change the public’s mind on climate change.

The basic tenet of ExxonMobil’s strategy was clear: it would use PR, not to change their image, but to change the public’s mind.

Exxon’s longstanding senior environmental advisor was a large, bullish, but “brilliant”, nuclear engineer, heroically named Arthur G Randall III. He went by the name of “Randy”.

Though Randy was nearing the end of his career, he was a powerful force within ExxonMobil’s Washington network.

The Action Plan

In April 1998, four months after BP boss Lord Browne praised the new Kyoto Protocol to limit emissions, the hardliners came together to create an “Action Plan” to combat America’s growing fondness for fighting climate change.

The “Global Climate Science Communications Team” was led by the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry lobby group bankrolled by Exxon and increasingly used as a political cover for their activities.

Randy was one of just a few industry representatives present; apart from this, the group was dominated by think tank representatives from the Heartland Institute, the Marshall Institute, and Frontiers for Freedom.

The group had a singular clarity of vision. The problem was that the public was sympathetic to the Kyoto Protocol. But this was alterable.

Media Outreach

The environmentalists’ Achilles heel was the public’s understanding of the science. By recruiting and training “a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach”, industry representatives would ensure that “a majority of the American public” recognise that significant uncertainties exist in climate change.

They would have a direct outreach programme to engage with colleges, the press and politicians “about uncertainties in climate science.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ExxonMobil CEO Wrong About “Resilience” Of Tight Oil Production

March 12, 2015

ExxonMobil CEO Wrong About “Resilience” Of Tight Oil Production

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is wrong about the resilience of U.S. tight oil production.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported:

“…Mr. Tillerson pointed out that the collapse in natural-gas prices similarly had led the number of rigs drilling for that fuel to drop to 280 from north of 1,600 in 2008. Gas output jumped 50% in that time, he said. That is what you call resilience…While he didn’t see a perfect parallel between shale gas and shale oil, he said there were “lessons” to be learned.”

His point is that we should not expect a big drop in U.S. tight oil production just because the rig count is falling. He bases this prediction on what happened with gas production in 2008-2009 and afterward. That is wrong.

The fact that gas production didn’t decrease much in 2008-2009 despite a huge drop in rig count is incorrectly attributed to the high productivity of shale gas wells. The truth is that shale gas wasn’t a big component of total gas production at that time.

Let’s look at the rig count drop in 2008-2009. The chart below shows the various components of U.S. gas production and the gas-directed rig count.

Natural gas production components and gas-directed rig count, 2007-2014.

Source: Baker Hughes, EIA, DrillingInfo and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.
(click image to enlarge)

The gas rig count fell from 1,601 in September 2008 to 675 by July 2009. By September 2009, gas production had decreased about 4.5 Bcf per day (4.5% of total). Shale gas only amounted to 12% of total gas supply at that time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Week In Energy: ExxonMobil On The Hunt

February 14, 2015

This Week In Energy: ExxonMobil On The Hunt

Oil prices continued to pick up steam for the week ending on February 13. Brent crude traded above $60 per barrel for the first time in 2015, a psychological threshold that caught the markets by surprise and points to a potential price rebound quicker than many had previously thought.

The price surge is underpinned by a continued pull back by the industry. There were also several catalysts this week that pushed oil higher. Apache Corporation (NYSE: APA) reported its fourth quarter earnings this week, and announced a significant draw down in its drilling plans for the year. One of the biggest drillers in Texas, and in the Permian basin in particular, Apache plans on reducing its drilling fleet by 70%, and revised its estimated production growth down to essentially zero.

Also, Royal Dutch Shell’s (NYSE: RDS.A) CEO Ben van Beurden warned investorsabout the potential for prices to spike in the next two years or so. Echoing prior comments from OPEC officials, van Buerden said that severe cutbacks in investment and drilling could result in a supply shortage, not necessarily in 2015, but in the coming years.

Several other background indicators supported oil prices, including positive news coming out of Europe. German GDP figures beat estimates, reducing fears of a European-wide recession. The markets also raised hopes that a resolution to the Greek debt situation would be less intractable than previously thought. Greek officials are meeting with international creditors on February 13. Moreover, the U.S. dollar weakened a bit this week. Retail sales in the U.S. disappointed, falling 0.8% in January from a month earlier. That contributed to a 1% decline in the dollar index. Since oil is priced in U.S. dollars, the depreciation helped push up oil prices.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Arctic Oil On Life Support

February 2, 2015

Arctic Oil On Life Support

Oil companies have eyed the Arctic for years. With an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil lying north of the Arctic Circle, the circumpolar north is arguably the last corner of the globe that is still almost entirely unexplored.

As drilling technology advances, conventional oil reserves become harder to find, and climate change contributes to melting sea ice, the Arctic has moved up on the list of priorities in oil company board rooms.

That had companies moving north – Royal Dutch Shell off the coast of Alaska, Statoil in the Norwegian Arctic, and ExxonMobil in conjunction with Russia’s Rosneft in the Russian far north.

But achieving the goals of tapping the extensive oil reserves in the Arctic has been much harder than previously thought. Shell’s mishaps have been well-documented. The Anglo-Dutch company failed to achieve permits on time, had its drill ships run aground, and saw its oil spill containment dome “crushed like a beer can” during testing. That delayed drilling for several consecutive years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exxon Mobil Shows Why U.S. Oil Output Rises as Prices Plunge – Bloomberg

December 20, 2014

Exxon Mobil Shows Why U.S. Oil Output Rises as Prices Plunge – Bloomberg.

Crude oil production from U.S. wells is poised to approach a 42-year record next year as drillers ignore the recent decline in price pointing them in the opposite direction.

U.S. energy producers plan to pump more crude in 2015 as declining equipment costs and enhanced drilling techniques more than offset the collapse in oil markets, said Troy Eckard, whose Eckard Global LLC owns stakes in more than 260 North Dakota shale wells.

Oil companies, while trimming 2015 budgets to cope with the lowest crude prices in five years, are also shifting their focus to their most-prolific, lowest-cost fields, which means extracting more oil with fewer drilling rigs, said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Global giant Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the largest U.S. energy company, will increase oil production next year by the biggest margin since 2010. So far, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ month-old bet that American drillers would be crushed by cratering prices has been a bust.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Early Signs Of A Pullback In Drilling Activity

November 11, 2014

Early Signs Of A Pullback In Drilling Activity.

With oil prices low and showing no sign of an immediate rebound, the industry is beginning to pull back on spending.

Oil prices have dropped around 30 percent since summer highs, raising fears among producers across the globe. Yet, many oil majors are relatively diversified, with large holdings downstream. For example, ExxonMobil and Chevron have been insulated in the third quarter because of their large holdings in refining. Steep declines in oil prices may hurt their production sectors, but with lower priced oil as an input, big oil’s refining assets become more profitable.

For the third quarter, ExxonMobil reported a 3 percent rise in earnings compared to quarter three in 2013. That was largely driven by the Texas-based oil giant’s refining assets, which saw its profits rise by more than 70 percent from $592 million to $1.02 billion. Chevron’s refining program succeeded in quadrupling its profits in the third quarter, more than offsetting the hit the company has taken from the slide in oil prices.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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