House Democrats Cancel Looming Embarrassment With Oil Executives

They finally realized they (not Big Oil executives) would be humiliated by reality

Paul Driessen

Mike Tyson once observed, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

March 8 was to be anti-oil Democrats’ big day. Having pilloried Big Oil executives during two previous hearings over supposed climate change prevention failures, House Oversight Committee leaders had planned to really tighten the thumbscrews.

At their October 2021 hearing, committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and chief inquisitor Ro Khanna (D-CA) insisted that Big Oil commit to reducing US oil and gas production by 3-4% annually (50-70% total by 2050). Otherwise, they claimed, global temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (calculated from the end of the Little Ice Age and beginning of the Industrial Revolution, both around 1850) – which “the science” says would be an “existential threat” to Planet Earth.

“I don’t need” an “American apple pie speech” about “meeting the needs of society,” Mr. Khanna told ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods. Will Exxon reduce production? Yes or no? the congressman demanded.

During the February 8, 2022 hearing, the two legislators demanded that oil companies “live up to” the “climate pledges” they have made. Shell and BP, they said, have promised to go net-zero on all their greenhouse gas emissions. However, ExxonMobil and Chevron pledges apply only to emissions associated with drilling and production operations.

That is completely inadequate, Maloney and Khanna argued. Not only do these two American companies not “plan to reduce their oil production by a single drop.” Their pledge ignores the “whopping 90%” of emissions that come from consumers burning the fuels they produce. The pledges and legislators also ignore emissions from China, India and other countries, which dwarf US emissions many times over.

The two companies should have diversified into “clean renewable” energy. That’s how they can lower people’s heating bills and prices at the pump, and climate-killing emissions, the legislators suggested.

Of course, Mr. Khanna added, in a sudden about-face, he supports President Biden’s “decisive actions” to help lower gas prices,” by asking OPEC, Saudi Arabia and Russia to increase oil production and “calling on all oil companies to temporarily increase production.” (Foreign oil doesn’t emit greenhouse gases?)

The legislators promised to hold a third hearing on March 8, when they would interrogate oil company executives “under oath,” “aggressively investigate” the industry’s role in fueling “the climate crisis,” and demand that oil companies “stop funding climate disinformation.” The March hearing would be Big Oil’s “last chance to cooperate” with Congress, Ms. Maloney warned ominously.

Enter Mike Tyson, in the form of skyrocketing energy and food prices – and bullets and missiles flying in Ukraine. The chairwoman abruptly canceled the inquisition mere days before it was to be held. She and her Democrat colleagues clearly didn’t want to be humiliated by unfolding events and the grilling they would likely receive from Republicans, witnesses and their constituents. Realities can be troublesome.

Even as post-Covid demand surged in an America and world that still rely on oil, gas and coal for 80% of their energy, Congressional Democrats, the White House, federal agencies and activist groups worked in consort to cancel pipelines, impose leasing and drilling moratoriums, slow-walk permits, and pressure financial institutions to stymie funding for oil and gas operations.

As they choked off production and supplies, oil, natural gas and gasoline prices nearly doubled during Mr. Biden’s first year in office. The price of food and nearly all consumer products and services soared in response. Salaries are being hammered by inflation. Consumers (aka voters) voiced their outrage.

Then Russian forces invaded Ukraine, slaughtering civilians and sending millions fleeing to neighboring countries. President Biden continued importing 670,000 barrels of Putin crude oil and refined products every day. Gasoline hit $7 per gallon in some cities the day the hearing was to be held.

Finally, right when the congressional inquisition would have been underway, Mr. Biden finally issued an executive order banning imports of Russian crude oil, refined products and natural gas. Congress signaled it might codify the ban into law. Global oil prices shot to $110 per barrel.

The President could have told his federal regulators to get agency boots off the necks of American exploration, production and pipeline companies – and start expediting permits. He could have told climate activists, banks and financial institutions to pause their war on fossil fuels.

Instead, he’s still trying to persuade Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Putin ally Venezuela to increase their oil production, to keep prices from skyrocketing further. He’s still using Russia to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran, thereby permitting the Islamist regime to sell more oil on the global market!

Amid cries of “Putin Price Hikes,” the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats continue to obsess over the “climate crisis” and promote a rapid “transition” to “renewable” energy.

It’s an exercise in distraction and magical thinking. Wind and sunshine are certainly clean and renewable. However, harnessing this widely dispersed, weather-dependent energy to meet huge and growing US and global energy needs requires millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules and thousands of miles of new transmission lines that need enormous quantities of metals and minerals, which are absolutely not clean, renewable or sustainable.

Indeed, just Mr. Biden’s initial 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy would require 110,000 tons of copper – plus massive amounts of cobalt, lithium, nickel, aluminum, steel, rare earth elements and other materials. Getting just the copper would require mining 25 million tons of ore. But federal bureaucrats and judges have already shut down three proposed U.S. copper mines. Again, that’s just the copper.

How many tons of metals, minerals, ores and overburden will be required overall for wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and transmission lines in an all-electricity Green New Deal economy? How much fossil fuel energy to do all this work? Where will the mining, processing and manufacturing take place? (Alaska, California and Colorado? Or China, Russia and Africa?)

How much environmental destruction, and child and slave labor, will be involved? What will these materials cost, as demand surges? How much land and wildlife will be impacted by the mining, factories, and industrial wind, solar and battery installations as far as the eye can see?

Green New Dealers don’t have a clue, and don’t care. They also figure they will be exempted from the “inconveniences.” We will be the ones paying. We ought to care. The amounts are truly mind-boggling. For clues about the almost unfathomable impacts and costs, look here, here, here, here and here.

Europe and the United States already have minimal leverage (and credibility) over China and Russia on diplomatic matters, territorial ambitions – or open warfare. The vaunted Green New Deal would likely make America almost totally reliant on Chinese and Russian companies for “renewable” energy materials.

Media, academia and federal agencies are already populated by anti-fossil-fuel stalwarts. But making matters worse, Putin cronies have long funded clandestine money laundering operations to finance major disinformation campaigns by US and EU environmentalist groups, to undermine drilling, fracking and pipeline programs. The US Senate “Billionaires’ Club” report, Environmental Policy Alliance’s “From Russia with Love” analysis, articles by investigative journalists Ron Arnold and Lachlan Markay (here and here), and studies by the US National Intelligence Director and US House Science Committee provide extensive, disturbing details that Democrats in Congress and the Administration have ignored.

The Ukraine invasion is prompting renewed attention to these nefarious activities benefitting the Sea Change Foundation, Sierra Club, Climate Action Network, NRDC and other groups.

The Maloney-Khanna Oversight Committee should investigate these money laundering and Green New Deal mining, cost and ecological issues – and leave the “climate crisis” and “price-gouging” fantasies to Hollywood horror and conspiracy movies. But don’t hold your breath.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.

 

Big Oil goes Big Green

Oil companies give billions to climate alarmists, but hardly a dime to climate realists

David Wojick

Climate alarmists often accuse skeptics, like myself and independent groups like the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Heartland Institute, of being in the pay of Big Oil. This is completely false – the Big Lie repeated so often that people eventually believe it. We do not receive even a dime from Big Oil. It’s part of the green fairy tale that skepticism exists only because the oil companies are funding it.

For the record, none of us skeptics – climate realists – doubt or deny climate change. We all recognize that Earth’s climate is in nearly constant turmoil and fluctuation, locally, regionally or globally.

What we question is assertions that emissions from fossil fuel use have somehow replaced the sun and other powerful natural forces that have driven beneficial, benign, harmful or even hugely destructive climate changes throughout Earth and human history:

Changes such as at least five glacial periods that buried much of North America, Europe and Asia under mile-high rivers of ice, warm periods in between that melted those massive glaciers, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, a Little Ice Age, the century-long Anasazi and Mayan droughts, the Dust Bowl, and countless other major and minor climate and weather changes.

The standard refrain is that ExxonMobil gave a cumulative few million dollars to various skeptical groups prior to 2007. But that was many years ago. They got scared off by alarmist pressure groups and haven’t given climate realists a dime since then. In fact, the situation today is completely the opposite.

Big Oil companies now give at least a billion dollars a year to climate alarmists, projects and lobbying, to drive the Manmade Climate Chaos narrative. Why would they do that? Two reasons come to mind.

First, typical commercial reasons – what some would call corporate greed, or eliminating competition through the laws of the jungle. Feeding climate alarmism helps oil companies kill off “dirty” coal and position natural gas as being more “climate friendly.” After all, Big Oil is also Big Gas.

Second, public relations and “greenwashing” – portraying themselves as being more “green,” more socially and environmentally “responsible,” for supporting environmentalist groups and providing “clean” (or at least “less dirty”) alternatives to “climate destroying” coal.

(The central vehicle for moving these green billions of dollars goes by a perfectly descriptive name: the (Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI). If the false accusers were correct, “oil and gas” would never be connected logically or ethically to “climate initiative.” But there it is, and it is very big. OGCI members include these well-known Big Oil names:

British Petroleum * Chevron * China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) * Eni * Equinor * Exxon Mobil Corporation * Occidental Petroleum * PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos) * PETROBRAS (Petroleo Brasileiro) * Repsol * Royal Dutch Shell * Saudi Aramco * Total

Collectively, they claim to produce 30% of the world’s oil and gas. Their OGCI website also features a lineup of Big Oil corporate CEOs, just to show how seriously and responsibly “green” they are. Their latest annual report has a letter from the CEOs, including this little gem:

“As our ambition grows with the scale of the challenge, we look forward to working closely with policy-makers, regulators and all stakeholders to help develop the levers that can economically and sustainably accelerate the pace of the low carbon transition.”

You have to wonder whether their list of “stakeholders” includes families, companies and communities that understand how completely dependent they and all of modern industrialized society are on fossil fuels, especially oil and gas. Just read this list and watch the little embedded video.

More to the point, consider its origins. OGCI was launched in 2014, shortly after the infamous Chesapeake Energy scandal, when its CEO got caught giving the Sierra Club millions of dollars to support the environmentalist and Obama Administration war on coal. Ironically, even Club members opposed taking the money, since they consider all fossil fuels to be their enemy – and after it had bashed coal into submission, the Club took aim at natural gas, Chesapeake’s primary revenue source.

What seems to have happened is that the ever-wily Big Oil companies created their own “green” organization. With its billion bucks in annual funding, Big Oil is now one of the biggest financiers of Big Green, not counting Big Government funding sources.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is also actively engaged with Big Oil, through its EDF+Business arm. In particular, EDF has a huge methane reduction program – the Methane Challenge – which not surprisingly involves OGCI. The program features prominently in “Sustainability Reports” of several major oil companies. EDF is even building and launching its own satellite, cleverly called MethaneSAT.

EDF is clearly getting a lot of money for this. It claims it gets no money “directly” from the companies. Instead, the cash comes from unspecified “philanthropies.” Of course, where these philanthropies get their cash may be a different story; they could easily be laundering Big Oil money. It may be telling that OGCI does not issue a financial report – or provide any transparent online information about its financials.

Space News actually asked EDF about this funding – but got stonewalled. Here’s its report:

“However, EDF has provided few details about how much MethaneSAT will cost or how it will be funded. The project received last year a grant from a new initiative called The Audacious Project, although the size of the award was not disclosed. An EDF spokesman did not respond to an inquiry about the financial status of the project.”

Having EDF on its side is certainly a big plus for Big Oil. But talk about hypocrisy – for both of them.

In any case it is clear that Big Oil is spending at least a billion dollars on green stuff, which is a lot of green. (Cold cash, in the form of American greenbacks, is clearly the new Big Green.) There is no evidence that climate skeptics are getting any of this. But if some are getting any, it is trivial in comparison. Meanwhile OGCI and Big Green get billions, and EDF maybe many millions.

Another big irony is that the supposed alternative to abundant, reliable, affordable, civilization-enabling fossil fuels is supposedly “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, responsible” wind, solar and biofuel energy. (Hardcore environmentalists do not approve of nuclear or hydroelectric power, either.)

Those alleged “alternatives” require inconceivably vast amounts of land – not just for the wind turbines, solar panels, backup batteries and biofuel farms, but to mine and process the billions of tons of iron, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, limestone and other materials needed to make the turbines, panels, batteries, transmission lines, tractors, trucks and other “sustainable” infrastructure.

All that mining, processing, manufacturing and transportation requires fossil fuels. And biofuels emit just as much (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide when they are burned as do coal, oil and natural gas.

Even more disturbing, many of those raw materials are produced with widespread slave and child labor, under health, safety and environmental rules and conditions that would make Upton Sinclair and other early Twentieth Century reformers think their oppressed workers were living in paradise.

When it comes to skepticism, the simple fact is that roughly half of Americans do not accept climate alarmism, right up to the President. Yet no one is paying for this widespread skepticism. As for Big Oil, it is pouring big bucks into Big Green and green climate initiatives. Conservative and climate realist groups have think tanks that do manage to find some funding, but it doesn’t come from Big Oil .

That Big Oil is responsible for skepticism is just another part of the alarmist fantasy world.

David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.

David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.

Big Oil Fuels the Climate Campaign

William Walter Kay BA LL B

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” E. Hoffer (1967)

Big Oil is a driver and beneficiary of the Climate Change campaign.

(“Big Oil” herein refers to eight Western-headquartered multinational oil and gas companies: ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Eni and Total.)

Big Oil is conflicted about the Climate campaign which, after all, began as a petroleum phase-out initiative. This petroleum phase-out, however, ambles along while the campaign’s coal phase-out sprints forth. The main consequence of the coal phase-out, i.e. the switch from coal-fired to gas-fired electricity generation, has already blessed Big Oil with a trillion dollar windfall; and is only half completed.

Big Oil braces for the petroleum phase-out with investments in bio-fuels, multi-fuel service stations and electric vehicle charging points. Big Oil companies and associations explicitly endorse the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis and laud the Paris Climate Agreement. They play crucial roles in promulgating CAGW; and they are the chief lobby compelling implementation of CAGW mitigation policies.

The 1978 US Power Plant and Industrial Fuel Use Act prohibited construction of gas-fired power plants. Natural gas was deemed too precious to squander on generating electricity. Provisions mandating conversion of existing gas-fueled plants to coal were repealed in 1981. The overall Act fell in 1987. Thereafter new power plants were supposed to be coal-convertible; however land set-asides for coal yards went un-imposed.

The Power Plant and Industrial Fuel Use Act escalated the coal-gas feud. (The decade also witnessed an “acid rain” campaign targeting coal-fired electricity.) Between 1978 and 1988 gas’s share of US electrical generation shrank from 14% to 9%. Coal’s share grew from 44% to 57%.

While CAGW indisputably has Franco-German pedigree an American fifth column was not long in forming. DC-based Climate Institute (CI) was the first NGO with “Climate” in its name. CI’s principals (Crispin Tickell, John Topping and Stephen Schneider) are CAGW legends.

CI’s founding 1986 conference and its 1988 North American Conference on Preparing for Climate Change were co-sponsored by the American Gas Association, American Petroleum Institute and several Big Green NGOs. These confabs laid the groundwork for America’s climate campaign.

Fast-forward 30 years: Climate Leadership Council (CLC) launches with a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal (June 20, 2017). CLC fuses Big Oil (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Total et al) with Big Green (Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and WWF). CLC partners with the World Bank’s Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition. CLC’s sole aim is a carbon tax which they propose start at $40 a short ton and increase thereafter. CLC’s blueprint won endorsements from the editors of: New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, Barron’s, Bloomberg and Washington Post.

Back in 2010 the Washington Post revealed BP had given The Nature Conservancy $10 million. This shouldn’t have surprised because:

“…the giant oil company and the world’s largest environmental organisation long ago forged a relationship.”

The article further revealed: a) Conservation International took $2 million from BP and welcomed BP’s CEO onto their board; b) Environmental Defence Fund joined BP and Shell in Partnership in Climate Action; and c) 20 enviro-NGOs and energy firms joined BP’s American Wind and Wildlife Institute.

Like all supermajors, ConocoPhillips funds enviro-partnerships. Their Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation project provides scores of scholarships and bankrolls 12 courses attended by 200 undergrads. ConocoPhillips won the St Andrews Prize for the Environment.

ExxonMobil donates $3 million a year to enviro-groups; far more than they ever gave CAGW sceptics.

After 30 years of Big Oil/Big Green climate collusion US electricity is 32% gas-fired; 30% coal-fired. As 93% of US coal burns for electricity, US coal consumption wallows at a 40-year low.

This coal phase-out sweeps the West. Between 1987 to 2017 coal’s share of OECD electricity generation fell from 43% to 28% while gas’s share rose from 9% to 28%. (Solar and wind sprang from 0 to 10%.)

According to Big Oil, gas displaces coal through fair competition and the “war on coal” is a myth – nonsense. One study compared 6 gas-fired plants with 10 nearby coal-fired plants, all owned by Xcel Energy. The highest cost coal plant produced cheaper electricity than the lowest cost gas plant. Coal is dying from regulatory strangulation.

US electricity purchases (residential, commercial and industrial) total $400 billion a year. Across Europe and the Anglo-sphere electricity fetches $1 trillion a year. This will double by 2040. For hydrocarbon-fired electricity fuel is a major cost. Through Big Oil’s gaming carbon regulations gas could capture 60% of the electricity market. The stakes are humongous!

Pitching carbon taxation globally are groups like We Mean Business – a coalition of 832 companies (including Eni, Total and Equinor) with combined assets of $17 trillion. All members:

“…are committed to the Paris Agreement and its goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 C...”

World Sustainable Development Business Council’s more exclusive membership roster includes: Total, Shell, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil and BP. The Council’s website is a CAGW mitigation collage.

Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) emerged in 2014 with Total as a founder. BP and Shell joined in 2015. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Eni and the state-owned giants joined soon after. OCGI’s several projects have one overarching goal:

“OCGI member companies are dedicated to the ambition of the Paris Agreement to progress toward to net zero emissions in the second half of this century.” OCGI aims to “accelerate low-carbon solutions” (i.e. gas-fired electricity). They have collectively invested $1 billion in methane capture (i.e. research and development on valves and sensors).

The gas lobby is ancient, enormous, consolidated, wealthy and climate savvy.

Founded in 1918, American Gas Association (AGA) promotes natural gas usage and defends the gas industry. From its DC headquarters AGA represents hundreds of firms – climate warriors all:

“Natural gas is an important tool in the suite of greenhouse gas emissions reduction options available to the US. Natural gas will continue to benefit our nation as states move further to reduce carbon dioxide emissions created in electrical power production.”

Natural Gas Supply Association (NSGA) represents 11 large firms (Equinor, Total, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell et al). NSGA was founded in 1965 to “encourage the use of natural gas.” NGSA’s climate reports recommend: a) improving access to gas fields; b) subsidising gas turbine research and development; and c) increasing carbon capture and storage funding.

NSGA off-shoot, Center for Liquid Natural Gas argues that because gas is climate-friendly, gas exports should increase.

Natural Gas Council is a partnership of 5 associations representing thousands of firms that produce and deliver US gas. Partners include American Petroleum Institute (whose 625 members employ 10 million Americans) and Independent Petroleum Association of America (whose members own 90% of America’s 500,000 gas wells). NGC prepares detailed reports on how much each proposed climate bill might impact gas sales.

Natural Gas Vehicles of America is funded by AGA and firms like Waste Management, Bluebird and UPS that seek incentives to convert their fleets to natural gas. (America’s 165,000 natural gas vehicles are supplied by 2,000 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) outlets. Europe has 3,400 CNG outlets).

These oil and gas associations and companies spend on average $140 million a year lobbying Congress. Their federal campaign contributions average $80 million a year. DC is home to 676 oil and gas lobbyists of whom 432 are former employees of federal agencies and/or congressional offices. Big Oil outspends King Coal by a factor of twelve.

Numerous articles decry gas lobbying at the state level. Gas lobbyists spend $10 million a year in Pennsylvania alone. Legislators describe the pressure as “constant” and the sight of gas lobbyists inside the Capitol building as an “everyday” occurrence.

Meanwhile in Brussels, the gas industry spent $115 million lobbying the EC in 2016. Exxon and Shell each contributed $5 million. Europe’s 1,030 gas lobbyists are spread across 79 PR companies, law firms and think tanks. As in DC, a revolving door separates EC officials from gas lobbyists.

Premium lobbying targets are: EC Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy (Miguel Canate) and EC Vice President for Energy Union (Maros Sefcovic). Between November 2014 and August 2017 gas lobbyists held 460 meetings with these two officials and/or their staff. Canate, a former oil company president, is notably collaborative.

Atop Europe’s gas lobby are the big producers: Gazprom, Shell, Equinor, BP and Total. Their customers are also politicised. These include the European Chemical Industry Council (Dow, BASF, Solvay and INEOS) who use gas as a feedstock for chemical and plastic manufacture. Utilities like EDF, Engie, and Enel also exert pressure; as do turbine manufacturers GE and Siemens. Most visible is GasNaturally – an alliance of 6 associations (Eurogas, Gas Infrastructure Europe, European Gas Research Group, Technical Association of European Natural Gas Industries, International Association of Oil and Gas Production, and Natural and Biogas Vehicle Association).

GasNaturally’s Manifesto of the European Gas Industry (2018) repeatedly references the Paris Agreement. Its core exhortation:

“Deploy natural gas to displace, wherever possible, coal in power generation and heating, while integrating variable renewable electricity.”

The Manifesto calls for research, development and investment into: bio-gas, bio-methane, methane emission reduction, carbon capture and use, and gas-to-hydrogen technology. The Manifesto beseeches policymakers to view Europe’s existing gas network as the backbone of Europe’s future energy system. The Manifesto demands retail fuel stations go multi-fuel. It maintains that switching shipping fuel to LNG lowers emissions 25%. It contends European gas deposits could meet 50% of Europe’s needs for 25 years.

Another key player, European Network for Transmissions Systems Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) eschews the label “lobbyist.” Every two years ENTSOG submits an infrastructure wish list to Brussels hoping some items will be designated Projects of Common Interests (PCI). Projects with PCI status receive legislative, logistical and financial support from various governments. EC’s Connecting Europe Facility annually ladles $1.5 billion to gas and electricity projects unable to attract private investment.

Currently, 77 gas pipelines, hubs and LNG facilities enjoy PCI designation. Ongoing PCIs include gas pipelines connecting: Azerbaijan to Italy; Algeria to Italy; Cyprus to Greece; and France to Spain. Eleven PCIs are LNG terminals. Other PCIs build hubs for an EU-wide gas market.

Gas lobbyists claim European energy security will be assured via: multiple sources of gas; multiple ports of entry; and a pipeline latticework allowing gas to stream throughout the continent.

Europe is being locked into 50 years of dependence on gas imports.

Big Oil sinks $4 billion annually into renewables.

Total’s solar division is 30 years old. In 2004 Total purchased Tenesol – a leading solar panel manufacturer and installer. In 2011 Total spent $1.4 billion buying 60% of California-based PV manufacturer SunPower; which then went on a buying binge of its own. Total owns 25% of PV manufacturer Novacis. Total owns and operates 5 solar farms. In 2016 Total bought specialty battery manufacturer, Saft ($1 billion).

Total began investing in bio-fuels in 1994. Their La Mede refinery produces 500,000 metric tonnes of bio-diesel annually. Since 2008, Total has invested $200 million a year into renewable energy start-ups.

In 2017 BP purchased 43% of Lightsource. The refurbished Lightsource BP is one of Europe’s largest developers and operators of utility scale solar farms. BP’s co-ownership of 11 US wind farms makes BP one of America’s largest wind power producers. BP’s Clean Energy subsidiary extracts bio-gas from municipal waste for use in corporate vehicle fleets. BP’s Brazilian plants distill 776 million litres of ethanol from sugar annually. BP partners with DuPont on a corn-to-butanol venture.

Chevron owns 2 solar farms and co-owns 5. They also own a wind farm and a geo-thermal project. Chevron, a bio-diesel distributor, is planning a cellulose bio-fuel venture with forestry giant Weyerhaeuser. Chevron also invests in solar-to-steam enhanced oil recovery technology.

In 2009 ExxonMobil invested $600 million in algae-derived bio-fuels. Despite setbacks ExxonMobil’s recent literature indicates a continued commitment to algae. Shell has a multi-billion dollar commitment to wind and biofuels.

Equinor owns several off-shore wind farms.

Big Oil is ahead of the curve regarding what could be the climate campaign’s greatest coup: electric vehicles (EVs). (EV refers to fully electric and hybrid vehicles.)

Annual global EV sales surpassed 1 million in 2017. Toyota will soon offer 10 EV models. By 2040 annual EV sales may hit 60 million.

BP predicts that 85% of the world’s 300 million EVs in 2040 will be hybrids. Given a projected increase in the overall number of cars, oil sales will continue to rise, although oil’s share of the fuel market will fall.

BP is equipping its 18,300 retail stations with EV chargers and is marshaling a fleet of mobile chargers.

Total recently purchased G2 Mobility – a pioneering EV charging station provider. Financed by the French government, G2 situated its 10,000 charging points mostly alongside municipal government buildings.

France installed 11,000 EV charging points last year; Germany: 4,000.

European energy firms used their renewable investments to capture solar and wind power associations; steering them to a pro-gas stance.

Pre-2012 European Wind Energy Association’s (EWEA) 19 directors mostly represented national wind associations. Post-2012 fifteen directors represented manufacturers and utilities, including several gas-involved firms (Iberdrola, EDF and Enel). EWEA’s public dreams of a 100% renewable Europe dissipated in 2013. EWEA dropped demands for binding commitments and lowered its 2030 renewable goals to 30%. In 2016 EWEA rebranded as Wind Europe.

In 2013 Total execs became President and VP of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA). By 2015 five of EPIA’s eight directors represented energy and chemical firms. EPIA rebranded as Solar Power Europe (SPE), purged staff, and dropped demands for high and binding renewable targets. SPE negotiators received orders from their President to declare gas-plus-renewables to be Europe’s saviour. SPE’s current boss (a former director of a gas-boosting PR firm) champions an SPE-Wind Europe-GasNaturally common front with one aim: kill coal.

Global Climate Coalition (GCC) formed in 1989 as a common front for firms, especially oil supermajors, nervous about the Climate agenda. Rumours of defections soon swirled. In 1994 Shell’s new chairman began preparing for CAGW endorsement and BP launched an Alternative Energy Division with solar power and gas-fired power departments. BP bailed from GCC in 1996 and months later declared CAGW a crisis. Shell embraced CAGW in 1997 and left GCC in 1998. Texaco split in 2000, announcing investments in geothermal. GCC was pronounced dead in 2002. The last major standing was ExxonMobil.

Greenpeace claims ExxonMobil, between 1998 and 2014, donated $31 million to 69 groups to spread “climate misinformation.” Greenpeace treats all ExxonMobil contributions to pro-market think tanks as climate sceptic funding. Only a small fraction of those contributions went to climate scepticism. Sceptic fortress, Heartland Institute, received $650,000 from ExxonMobil over 18 years.

Lee Raymond ran Exxon from the mid-1990s to 2005 when Rex Tillerson replaced him. Raymond, a climate sceptic, faced relentless pressure from activist shareholders (led by Catholic Orders and Rockefellers) to endorse CAGW. Tillerson caved in 2007 and reigned in sceptic funding. In 2010 ExxonMobil pulled funds from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics where sceptic Willie Soon had found a podium.

At a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heartland Institute proposed a resolution calling on the EPA to withdraw its CO2 endangerment finding. ExxonMobil led the opposition to Heartland’s proposal.

ExxonMobil’s Energy and Carbon Summary (2018): Positioning for a Low-Carbon Economy promotes carbon taxation and the Paris Agreement.

Two ancillary Big Oil climate rackets involve fugitive methane and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Methane is a greenhouse gas and a commodity. To any other merchants “fugitive emissions” would be called “spillage.” Firms should not need incentives to reduce spillage, yet this is what Big Oil’s climate activism achieves. Big Oil is “doing well by doing good.” In Chevron’s words:

“It is in Chevron’s business interest to minimise fugitive methane and to maximise the volume of natural gas that we commercialise.”

CCS consists of pumping CO2 underground. Pumping CO2 into oil reservoirs enhances oil recovery. Through climate activism Big Oil again wins subsidies and tax-breaks to engage in profit enhancing activity.

Gas propaganda stress four points:

1. Gas-fired power plants start and stop quickly hence provide optimal back-up for intermittent renewables;

2. Natural gas vehicles and power plants can burn bio-methane from municipal and agricultural waste;

3. Natural gas vehicles emit 20% less CO2 per kilometer than gasoline vehicles; and

4. Gas-fired electricity emits 50% less CO2 per kilowatt than coal-fired electricity.

Natural gas’s climate creds are bogus. According to the IPCC natural gas (CH4, methane) is 84 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. The EPA claims it is 25 times more potent. Enviro-activists claim CH4 is 100 times worse than CO2; hence gas is “as dangerous for the climate as coal, if not more.”

Methane escapes into the atmosphere at every stage of the gas supply chain: drill holes, pipelines, ships, terminals, turbines, boilers and stoves. A 3% leakage from drill to turbine overwhelms whatever “global warming potential” reductions might accrue from replacing coal with gas.

Furthermore, the gas-wind-solar lobby also drives the nuclear phase-out whereby high-emissions electricity replaces zero-emissions electricity.

Welcome to Theatre of the Absurd’s – The CAGW Saga.

Plot synopsis:

A crusade arises from manufactured hysteria over excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Crusaders vilify Big Oil as the source of atmosphere-polluting emissions and culture-polluting misinformation.

Big Oil surreptitiously usurps leadership of the crusade; transforming it into a gas-wind-solar behemoth destined to monopolize electrical generation. Streets fill with furious youth determined to slay Big Oil by demanding implementation of an agenda crafted by Big Oil.

The crusade’s triumph increases greenhouse gas emissions.

SOURCE

https://www.aga.org/research/fact-sheets/

Banarjee, Neela. How Big Oil Lost Control of its Climate Misinformation Machine; Inside Climate News, December 22, 2017.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122017/big-oil-heartland-climate-science-misinformation-campaign-koch-api-trump-infographic

Bayanya, Belen; Sabido, Pascoe. The Great Gas Lock-In; Corporate European Observatory, October, 2017.

https://www.bp.com/

Browne, John. Oil and Gas Companies Will Lead the Revolution; Bloomberg, July 10, 2018.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-07-11/oil-and-gas-giants-have-the-tools-to-lead-the-energy-revolution

Bryce, Robert. Ban Natural Gas!, No Ban Coal! National Review, June 11, 2012.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2012/06/ban-natural-gas-no-ban-coal-robert-bryce/

Center for Liquid Natural Gas

https://lngfacts.org/

https://www.chevron.com/

Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1987, Fuel Use Act Repealed

http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal87-1145085

http://www.conocophillips.com/

https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/the_great_gas_lock_in_english_.pdf

Chapman, Ben. Gas Companies Spend E104m lobbying to ensure Europe remains ‘locked in’ to fossil fuels for decades; Independent, October 31, 2017.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gas-industry-spending-millions-lobbying-to-ensure-europe-is-locked-in-to-fossil-fuels-for-decades-a8028056.html

Climate Alert Fall 1988

http://climate.org/archive/publications/Climate%20Alerts/1988%20-%20Fall.pdf

Climate Leadership Council

https://www.clcouncil.org/

Couloumbus, Angela. Natural Gas Drillers spent more than $60 ml to woo PA. Legislators; The Philadelphia Inquirer; October 1, 2017.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/natural-gas-cash-lobbying-20171001.html

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=65&t=2

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29952

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29872

EPA. Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2015 – Executive Summary, 2017.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-02/documents/2017_executive_summary.pdf

Connecting Europe Facility

https://ec.europa.eu/inea/connecting-europe-facility/cef-energyhttps://corporate.exxonmobil.com/

https://gasnaturally.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/gas-naturally-manifesto.pdf

Greener Ideal Staff. Countries with the Most Electric Charging Points; December 21, 2017

https://greenerideal.com/infographics/electric-car-charging-points/

https://www.iea.org/

Lehr, Ron. Utility Financial Transition Impacts: From Fossil to Clean; Energy Innovation, December 2018.

https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/From-Fossil-to-Clean-Brief_12.3.18.pdf

Moody-Stuart, Mark. Society Depends on More for Less; BBC, February 4, 2008.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7218002.stm

http://naturalgascouncil.org/

http://naturalgassolution.org/

Natural Gas Vehicles Association of America

https://www.ngvamerica.org/

https://www.ngsa.org/ngsa-member-companies/

Neslen, Arthur. Fossil fuel firms accused of renewable lobby takeover to push gas; the Guardian, January 22, 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/22/fossil-fuel-firms-accused-renewable-lobby-takeover-push-gas

https://oilandgasclimateinitiative.com/

Open Secrets.Org. Coal 2018; Center for Responsive Politics 2018. Note campaign contributions separate from lobbying.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/induscode.php?id=E1210

Open Secrets.Org. Oil and Gas 2018; Center for Responsive Politics, 2018.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01

Pullella, Philip. Pope Warns Energy Bosses of Global Destruction without Fuel Shift; Reuters June 9, 2018.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-vatican-conference-pope/pope-warns-energy-bosses-of-global-destruction-without-fuel-shift-idUSKCN1J50BD

Sabido, Pascoe. Gas Lobby Keeps Europe Hooked on Fossil Fuels; EURACTIV.COM Ltd, November 2, 2017.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/opinion/gas-lobby-keeps-europe-hooked-on-fossil-fuels/

https://www.shell.com/

Stephens, Joe. Nature Conservancy faces Potential Backlash for Ties with BP; Washington Post, May 5, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html?noredirect=on

Tiki-Toki - Oil and Gas Companies Activities with Relation To Climate Change Timeline

http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/486412/Oil-and-Gas-Majors-Activities-with-Relation-to-Climate-Change/

https://www.total.com/en

https://www.total.com/en/media/news/press-releases/electric-vehicle-charging-solutions-total-acquires-g2mobility-and-forms-partnership-nexans

https://www.wemeanbusinesscoalition.org/

Spreading 'Big Oil' Subsidy Disinformation

By Paul Driessen

This first appeared here.

Every American manufacturing company gets tax deductions that help it create jobs and strengthen our economy – whether it produces newspapers, furniture, cars or fuel. Eliminating those deductions would increase unemployment and further slow our nation’s desperately needed economic recovery.

Yet that is precisely what President Obama wants to do when oil companies want to use the deductions. It is one of many ways the Obama administration is undermining the oil industry and 9.2 million Americans whose jobs it supports. It is part of the administration’s strategy for replacing fossil fuels with heavily subsidized “alternatives” that taxpayers cannot afford, and consumers will not purchase on their own.
Newspapers that benefit from the same genre of tax deductions as oil companies nevertheless sometimes join attacking the oil industry, and the jobs and benefits it creates. This is rank hypocrisy.

“If Republicans are truly determined to slash the budget and end government waste,” the New York Times editorialized, “they will start [by] ending the web of tax breaks enjoyed by the rolling-in-dough oil industry and terminating the ethanol subsidy. Together these cuts would save up to $100 billion over 10 years.”

The Times is right about ending ethanol subsidies. But it and other “progressives” are wrong on every other argument they present to justify their job-killing, economy-crippling energy agenda.

1.)  Oil industry tax deductions cover costs incurred in exploration, drilling, production, transportation and refining. They aren’t subsidies or special tax breaks. They are essentially the same deductions claimed by all manufacturers, in conducting their business under our complex tax code. They ensure that businesses recover their costs and get taxed only on net income, in the process of making essential products.

Refineries and petrochemical manufacturers play an especially vital role in the oil industry – transforming crude oil and natural gas into fuels and raw materials used to make fabrics, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fertilizers, carpets, paints, roofing, siding, and myriad other products that improve and safeguard our lives. Solar panels and resins for fiberglass wind turbine blades are also petroleum-based.

The NY Times itself enjoys similar tax breaks, and hasn’t offered to give one of them up, to help end government waste. Nor have other newspapers, some of which have even sought to benefit under the “failing newspaper act,” which would let them operate as “educational nonprofits,” and pay no taxes. Others have sought exemptions from antitrust laws, so that they can set online subscription prices.

In truth, in this internet and online media age, we could live without newspapers. But as an American Express advertising executive might say, Oil: You can't leave home without it. Nor can you have modern civilization or improved health and living standards without it.

2.)  Most petroleum companies aren’t “Big Oil.” They’re small independents. And the entire industry operates under government policies and regulations that keep many of America’s best oil and gas prospects off limits and make leasing, exploration and drilling needlessly expensive and time-consuming. Between 1981 and 2008, the largest consolidated oil companies (“Big Oil”) alone paid $1.95 trillion in severance, property, excise, sales and corporate income taxes, the Tax Foundation reports.

Eliminate the tax deductions amid the current regulatory and political climate, and fewer wells will be drilled, fewer deposits will be profitable enough to develop, fields will be abandoned prematurely, royalty revenues will decline, refineries will close or move overseas, workers will lose their jobs, their income tax payments will morph into welfare checks, and we will import still more oil and refined products.

3.)  A primary reason oil and gasoline prices are so high, unemployment is stuck at 9% and our economic growth is anemic is that government has made most of our western states, Alaskan and Outer Continental Shelf energy prospects off limits. It raises unfounded concerns about hydraulic fracturing, and drags its feet on permits for lands that supposedly are “available” for leasing and drilling. In short, it chokes off supplies. Meanwhile, politicians stoke demand – with legislation like the NAT GAS Act. That bill would obligate US taxpayers to pony up some $14 billion annually in subsidies (aka, tax credits and rebates), to encourage motorists to buy natural gas-fueled cars and trucks, and service stations to install natural gas fueling stations.

Eliminate oil company tax deductions: “save” $4 billion. Subsidize car and truck purchases: spend $14 billion. It’s unsustainable. It’s insane.

4.)  Real subsidies take money taken from society’s productive sectors, and transfer it to legislators and bureaucrats, who give it to companies that “deserve” funding, because they provide politically favored products or could not remain in business without perpetual infusions of Other People’s Money. You support our reelection, our “catastrophic manmade global warming” thesis and our commitment to a renewable energy future, and you’ll continue receiving taxpayer cash – until the OPM runs out.

Evergreen Solar received $486 million in federal and state subsidies – but still closed its doors and fired 850 workers, when the subsidy well ran dry. The same thing happened to five of six solar companies in Germany. The jobs went to China and Malaysia, which have lower costs and fewer regulations.

5.)  Even with subsidies, wind and solar still can’t compete, unless they are also exempted from endangered species and other environmental laws. If you shoot an eagle, or birds die in an uncovered oil company waste pit, fines and possibly prison terms are meted out. But wind farms slaughter bald and golden eagles, falcons, hawks, curlews, bats and other threatened, endangered and just plain majestic sky dwellers with no consequences. They even get fast-tracked through the environmental review process by the same Interior Department and EPA that routinely delay or deny oil and gas applications.

6.)  Then there’s ethanol. Producing 13.2 billion gallons of it in 2010 required one-quarter of all the corn grown in the United States – monopolizing 23 million acres (Grade A cropland the size of Indiana) and consuming 1.2 trillion gallons of water, along with prodigious amounts of petroleum in the form of fertilizer and tractor, truck and distillery fuel. While corn growers get rich, higher corn prices mean pork and chicken producers pay more for feed, meat producers are driven out of business, manufacturers pay more for corn syrup, consumers pay more for food, and more jobs disappear.

America could produce far more gasoline from a mere 2,000 acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (1/20 of Washington, DC), if anti-oil zealots would end their opposition to drilling in the frozen tundra.

And still ethanol enjoys fuel pump mandates, $6 billion in annual subsidies, and tariffs against foreign competition – so that consumers can “choose” a fuel that gets a third fewer miles per gallon than gasoline.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is doing a theirs-not-to-reason-why Light Brigade charge into the jaws of biofuel R&D – and extolling the virtues of camellia-based jet fuel that costs $67 a gallon, versus $5 per gallon for aviation gas that could also come from ANWR, the OCS and other off-limits US lands.

The bottom line is simple. The worst thing we can do is what President Obama is intent on doing: use the mythical revenues he expects from eliminating oil company “subsidies and tax breaks” to increase federal wind, solar and ethanol subsidies by another 50% (to $18 billion a year) – so as to “foster the clean energy economy of the future and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.”

As should be abundantly clear by now, these energy sources are not so clean or eco-friendly. They can’t exist without perpetual subsidies. They are simply not sustainable. To provide reliable, affordable, ecological, sustainable energy … put people back to work … rejuvenate our economy … and generate trillions in new government revenue – we need to do three things.

Open America’s public lands for responsible hydrocarbon development. Take the boot off the neck of American businesses. And get rid of all the subsidies, bailouts, targeted tax breaks, selective tariffs, mandates to purchase ethanol and other products, and other corporate welfare gimmicks that make tax lawyers and lobbyists more important than researchers, trained workers and top-flight CEOs.

"Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death."