The Koch-funded, conservative-propaganda-laundering RealClearEnergy dot com is once again making it very easy to document various types of Big Oil disinformation in one place, with pieces this week from the oil industry's obvious trade lobby, one of the industry's front groups, and one of its PR/advertising professionals.
First there's Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, speaking formally on behalf of the industry to demand that the government cut a bunch of regulations. From allowing lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf so drillers can give Hollywood the east-coast sequel to Deepwater Horizon that no one asked for, to training workers for the industry that's laying off workers, it's a wishlist of 10 Big Government handouts and regulatory loopholes. Big Oil is using this time of record profits to demand the government undo what little environmental regulations exist. And that's the stance it's proud to make in its own name!
What's Big Carbon Pollution saying out of the other side of its mouth? For that we click over to Larry Behrens, who works for industry front group Power the Future, and is calling on a hypothetical Republican-led Congress to take five steps to address "Joe Biden's Failures on Energy."
The first is to pack the federal budget with pork-barrel spending for the fossil fuel industry, or as Behrens puts it "a revamped federal budget with incentives that focus on American energy production." The second is to "use the power of the budget" to force the Biden administration to restart the Keystone pipeline "along with all other refineries, pipelines and infrastructure" because the government should be picking winners and losers, as Republicans have said for years. That's why they also want to put a thumb/entire hand on the scale of the Securities Exchange Commission to prevent investors from being made aware of climate risks so they'll continue to pump money into fossil fuel infrastructure that will certainly doom the climate and/or be destroyed by climate impacts.
Then, in case you were wondering about the stuff the industry doesn't want to say in its own name, we move to the fun stuff: "The next Congress must call Kerry to testify and demand every email, every calendar and every text message from Kerry’s office to determine the amount of influence he’s peddling against the American energy industry."
Yes, they're going to "but her emails" John Kerry, and they're not even pretending that there's a "Benghazi" scandal to prove, they're openly saying they just want to go FOIA fishing!
Finally, the extremely good faith op-ed says that the Biden administration should "convert to green energy immediately" and "let Kerry take a wind-only sailboat to his next climate summit." Which, surprisingly, we might agree with, as a congressional budget that calls on the executive branch to produce and consume renewable energy would be an embrace of the Democratic Socialists' proposal for Public Power … which we just pointed out was a great idea.
That's what the industry's spokesperson, and attack dog have to say. What about the Public Relations professionals trying to shore up the industry's negative reputation as a two-faced spreader of disinformation and destroyer of climates?
Well not to worry, the industry isn't two faced at all! It's three-faced, at minimum!
Enter Kelsey Grant, from Adamantine Energy, "a consulting firm that works to future-proof the oil and gas industry against rising social risks," and who we noticed published at RealClear back in April. She's here to explain "what the oil and gas industry has to offer the energy transition."
Curious about how the industry responsible for the pollution destabilizing the climate could help not do the thing it does and has refused for decades to stop doing, we read on. "One side of the debate, often championed by broad swaths of the environmentalist community, argues that an all-renewable economy would free us from the puppet strings of fossil-rich autocracies, like Russia. In other words: Go fossil-free and don’t look back. Most proponents of this view see no future for the oil and gas industry."
Okay, so far so good. But unfortunately Grant continues. "This perspective, however, overlooks an essential point: The oil and gas industry must be a key ally in facilitating a structured and successful energy transition."
Wait, why? Why must the industry be a key ally? Grant does not answer this, instead just asserts it, and immediately then moves on to "considering what the energy leaders today have to offer a low-carbon world tomorrow."
And their insights? Nothing unique! The first, her best example, is "repurposing existing fossil-based infrastructure for low-carbon applications." Oh! Okay! We can use the tubes for other stuff, okay, great, thanks? What stuff? Oh, just industry hand-outs for fake solutions like CCS, supposedly renewable gas, etc. Also, some offshore oil drillers like TotalEnergy are getting into wind power! So, again, if fossil fuel companies want to do things that aren't fossil fuels, then sure they can be "a key ally."
"Lastly," according to Grant, "the oil and gas industry has an unparalleled proficiency in geopolitics and a fluency in all matters of global energy markets — at a time when it is needed the most."
Yes, the industry that's making record profits while consumers pay outrageous prices certainly knows how markets work. But when you consider the track record of oil and gas-based geopolitics, it's not hard to imagine why Big Oil didn't want to make this argument themselves.
