A new report recently released by InfluenceMap shows a number of oil and gas companies publicly throwing their support behind climate initiatives are simultaneously obstructing those same efforts through lobbying activities.

The report, Big Oil and the Obstruction of Climate Regulations, comes on the heels of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a list of climate measures released by the CEOs of 10 major oil and gas companies including BP, Shell, Statoil and Total.

According to InfluenceMap the initiative is an attempt by leading energy companies to “improve their image in the face of longstanding criticism of their business practices ahead of UN COP 21 climate talks in Paris.”

“The big European companies behind the OGCI…will come under ever greater scrutiny, as the distance between the companies’ professed positions and the realities of the lobbying actions of their trade bodies grows ever starker,” InfluenceMap stated in a press release.

The group’s analysis shows a major disconnect between climate rhetoric and action among three key policy strands: carbon tax, emissions trading and greenhouse has emissions regulations.

The findings show companies like Shell and Total publicly support carbon pricing while at the same time support trade organizations that systematically obstruct the legislation’s implementation.

Oil majors BP, Chevron and Exxon also support these lobby groups but spend less time publicly supporting a price on carbon.  

Dylan Tanner, executive director of InfluenceMap, said industry is becoming more cautious of public oversight and as a result, has become subtler with its efforts to subvert climate progress. 

“Companies like Shell appear to have shifted their direct opposition to climate legislation to certain key trade associations in the wake of increasing scrutiny,” Tanner said.

“Investors and engagers need to be aware that these powerful energy and chemicals-sector trade bodies are financed by, and act on the instruction of, their key members and should thus be regarded as extensions of such corporate-member activity and positions."

The report shows Shell’s official messaging is wildly inconsistent with the positions of its trade associations.

Shell, for example, states on its website, “we support an international framework that puts a price on CO2.” However, green taxation working group BusinessEurope warned against such measures, suggesting they could threaten the “international competitiveness of EU industry.”

Shell executive An Theeuwes is chair of BusinessEurope's Green Taxation Working Group.*

Excerpt from InfluenceMap report shows disconnect between Shell's corporate statements and those of trade organizations supported by Shell.

Shell is also on the board of a powerful chemicals trade body in Europe, the CEFIC, that lobbied aggressively against the European Emissions Trading Scheme.

Shell is also a member of the American Petroleum Institute and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, North America's two most powerful industry lobby groups actively involved in opposing climate legislation. API's CEO recently criticized the UN climate talks as driven by a “narrow political ideology” and CAPP has previously disregarded opposition to the Alberta oilsands as merely "ideological" while arguing against new emissions standards. 

"If oil and gas companies calling for a price on carbon want to be taken seriously it is imperative that they commit both to calling on governments to implement such a policy and at the same time ensuring that all their lobbying is 100 per cent consistent with this objective,” Anthony Hobley, CEO of Carbon Tracker, said.  

“This is a strong line to take that has to be held accountable by investors, shareholders, governments and the public."

Carbon Tracker recently released a report that finds energy companies rely too heavily on industry scenarios that project high fossil fuel consumption in the future. The analysis shows industry uses high demand assumptions “to justify new and costly capital investment to shareholders.”

Companies that are inconsistent in what they say publicly and do behind the scenes don’t deserve to be taken seriously, Hobley said.

This kind of disingenuous activity “should be seen for what it is,” he said: “a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion and create the perception amongst shareholders that the company is taking the issue of climate change seriously."

* This article was updated to reflect An Theeuwes' position as chair of BusinessEurope's Green Taxation Working Group.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) has published a timely "back to school" report concluding that "frackademia" is alive and well at U.S. universities. 

While only focusing on the people and money behind five recent studies, PAI's report sits within a much broader universe of research in its Frackademia Guide. The new report serves as an update of its February 2015 report titled, "Frackademia in Depth," a title poking fun at hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") front group Energy in Depth (which did not react kindly to its report).

As PAI points out in the new report's introduction, the results of many recent science studies (some funded by the industry) have tarnished the reputation the industry spends so much money aiming to keep shiny. These include studies on fracking's climate impacts and health impacts, environmental justice issues associated with fracking, among others.

Given that backdrop, the oil and gas industry has swept in and funded fresh studies whose outcomes were more favorable — aka "frackademia" — on topics ranging from fracking's groundwater impacts, environmental impacts and economics. 

Rick Berman, Tim Considine

Among the most compelling findings in the PAI investigation is that Rick "Dr. Evil" Berman, infamous for creating industry-funded front groups in many policy arenas via his consulting company Berman & Company, has gotten into the frackademia game.

The Berman connection becomes clear when investigating the men behind the curtain of a study published in September 2014 titled, “Economic and Environmental Impacts of Oil and Gas Development Offshore the Delmarva, Carolinas, and Georgia,” which makes the case for offshore drilling in the Atlantic. As PAI explained, it was funded by Interstate Policy Alliance, "a project of the Employment Policies Institute."

What's Employment Policies Institute? A Berman & Company front group.  

"Though Berman and Company does not disclose the identities of its clients, the firm and its network of front groups have recently begun attacking fracking opponents and climate change regulations, suggesting it has been retained by the oil and gas industry," explained PAI.

view this map on LittleSis

Just as important as Berman, in this case, was the author: Timothy Considine. Considine has been embroiled in other frackademia scandals, including a 2010 study eventually retracted and reissued by Penn State University after it was revealed that he didn't disclose its funder, the Marcellus Shale Coalition lobbying organization.

He's actually featured twice in the PAI report. The other recent Considine frackademia example came in the form of a study titled, “The Economics Impacts of the Proposed Natural Gas Severance Tax in Pennsylvania," funded by the American Petroleum Institute. 

That report predicted brutal impacts for Pennsylvania's economy if its legislature adopts a severance tax for those fracking in the state's Marcellus Shale. 

Harvard, Syracuse

Harvard Business School and Syracuse University also feature prominently in PAI's report. The Harvard Business School example, in particular, serves as almost a perfect case study of how frackademia works in action. 

“America’s Unconventional Energy Opportunity,” the title of Harvard's report published jointly with Boston Consulting Group in June 2015, was featured in an opinion article by The New York Times writer David Brooks and in an uncritical article distributed to newspaper wires worldwide by Reuters.  

Like a prominent 2013 Environmental Defense Fund-convened study on the climate change impacts of fracking, the steering committee of the Harvard study was a who's-who of people with industry ties. 

Image Credit: Public Accountability Initiative

As PAI pointed out, co-author "David Gee, a [Boston Consulting Group] managing partner, has worked for the energy industry for more than 30 years, with stints at Baker Hughes, PG&E, and AES Corporation."

Another co-author not mentioned in PAI's report is Michael Porter, a faculty member of the Harvard Business School and formerly of the Monitor Group, a prominent consulting firm that went out of business in November 2012. Monitor Group has been involved in undisclosed pay-for-play before, conducting de facto shadow public relations work for former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.  

Energy in Depth also stars in PAI's report in the form of a Syracuse University study on fracking and groundwater contamination that served as a counter of sorts to earlier Duke University fracking groundwater contamination studies. 

That study was promoted by both EID and Natural Gas Now, the latter often featuring the work of Tom Shepstone, a former EID employee and current industry consultant. As it turns out, the study was covertly funded by Chesapeake Energy, though the co-authors claimed they had “no competing financial interest” in any entities potentially impacted by the study's results. 

Lead author Donald Siegel "had failed to disclose that, in addition to providing the data upon which his conclusions were based, oil and gas driller Chesapeake Energy had also funded the study and paid Siegel directly," wrote PAI.

"Further, one of Siegel’s co-authors, Bert Smith, is a former Chesapeake employee who now works for Enviro Clean, a firm that consults for Chesapeake Energy. While Smith’s employment at Enviro Clean was noted when the study was published, the fact that his employer works for Chesapeake Energy was not."

On at least one instance, PAI pointed out, Siegel actually wrote an article on EID's website.

Tobacco, Climate Denier Playbook

As highlighted many times in the report, journalists often take press releases from universities and write stories about these studies without following the money.

"Since the tobacco industry pioneered the use of compromised scientists to sow doubt about the harmful effects of smoking, corporations have employed a complex of industry-funded academic institutes, public relations outfits, lobbying firms, and independent consultants to provide seemingly independent support for their lines of business," explained PAI.

PAI has done a great public service by naming names and doing the work journalists all too often fail to do to reveal conflicts of interest.
 

Photo Credit: Jannis Tobias Werner | Shutterstock

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On August 20, 1969, two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Conn.  Four people were killed and 43 were injured. The crash led the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to recommend that railroads implement new safety technology called positive train control — a system for monitoring and controlling train movements to increase safety.

The NTSB first recommended positive train control in 1970. In 2008, after another fatal train collision that killed 25 people, Congress finally passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which mandated positive train control be implemented by the railroad industry by the end of 2015. 

Fast-forward another six years to multiple congressional hearings in recent months, during which the railroads have informed Congress that positive train control simply won’t be implemented by the end of 2015. It’s been 44 years since the NTSB first recommended positive train control to improve rail safety in the U.S. and it is still not being used. 

Looking at the way the positive train control scenario has played out for the past 44 years offers valuable lessons on how the U.S. is now dealing with safety regulations for shipping oil by rail.

Last week, the NTSB held a two-day forum on rail safety regarding the transportation of crude oil and ethanol. One of the main topics was how to improve rail tank car safety and what to do with the DOT-111 tank cars currently being used to ship crude oil and ethanol.

Much like positive train control, the NTSB has been recommending for decades that the DOT-111 tank cars not be used for ethanol and crude oil transportation due to the high risks they pose in derailments. 

So why hasn’t anything been done? Mostly because of opposition by oil and gas industry groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API was a constant presence at last week’s rail safety forum, just as it has been at congressional hearings on rail safety this year. A recent Reuter’s article alluded to the problem:

“Industry sources say compromise has been difficult among stakeholders with different concerns such as costs and whether an overly bulky model might limit cargoes.”

Basically, API is opposed to making changes to the rail tank cars because safety cuts into profits. Even NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman pointed to the profit motive in an interview with NPR on April 25th. Hersman said, “Absolutely. Follow the money. It all comes back to the money.” 

And the reality is that API’s members don’t have to worry about paying for accidents caused by using these unsafe DOT-111 cars. The current estimate for what it will cost to clean up and rebuild from the oil train accident in Lac-Megantic, Que., is $2.7 billion, which will be paid by Canadian taxpayers, not by oil or rail companies.

During the recent rail safety forum, the NTSB’s Hersman asked Lee Johnson of the American Petroleum Institute: “Given the rates that we heard earlier for production and the needs of your members how long do you think we are going to see DOT-111 tank cars to continue to exist in the fleet and at what rate percentage?”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.