Speaker 1: On February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, one of the
Speaker 1: world's most powerful petro states, gave the gas industry a lifeline.
Speaker 2: The month long buildup of Russian troops on the border
Speaker 2: with Ukraine has turned now into an invasion Ukraine under attack.
Speaker 1: It was an echo of Russia's invasion of Crimea back
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. Back then, the world was caught off
Speaker 1: guard by Russia's aggression. Even the fossil fuel companies, which
Speaker 1: lost millions when the US imposed stiff sanctions on Russia,
Speaker 1: and US oil companies like Exxonmobile found themselves holding assets
Speaker 1: worth nothing. This time, the industry was ready with a
Speaker 1: proactive response.
Speaker 3: I think on February twenty fourth, I freaked out because
Speaker 3: within hours of Putin's invasion, just watching serious patterns like
Speaker 3: emerge where you know, API and other trade associations were
Speaker 3: echoing similar talking points immediately, anti Biden talking points, anti
Speaker 3: renewable energy talking points.
Speaker 1: Christine Arena is a public relations expert who previously worked
Speaker 1: as a VP for Edelman PR back when the firm
Speaker 1: was handling the account for the American Petroleum Institute, or API.
Speaker 1: She left that job in twenty fifteen and has a
Speaker 1: new gig.
Speaker 3: Now really been focused for the last seven years on
Speaker 3: climate accountability, and that is helping lawmakers to assess greenwash
Speaker 3: climate disinformation, how it occurs, how it spreads, and how
Speaker 3: it's working.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of questionable messaging to observe
Speaker 1: over the past few months. First, for some context, even
Speaker 1: before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the industry was lobbying the
Speaker 1: White House for weak sanctions. They wanted to avoid a
Speaker 1: repeat of the losses they suffered after Russia's invasion of Crimea.
Speaker 1: The day after the invasion, industry groups were ready lng allies,
Speaker 1: and the American Exploration and Production Council wrote a joint
Speaker 1: letter to President Biden urging support of the US natural
Speaker 1: gas industry. America's vast energy resources are a strategic asset
Speaker 1: that can help keep US prices low while supporting our
Speaker 1: allies abroad. The trade groups wrote policies such as pausing
Speaker 1: leasing on federal lands, preventing new pipeline infrastructure, and discouraging
Speaker 1: investments across the hydrocarbon value chain, hamper US production, thereby
Speaker 1: driving up prices and making the world more reliant on
Speaker 1: energy from nations such as Russia. Arena says she saw
Speaker 1: this type of messaging blaming high gas prices on the
Speaker 1: few US policies that have been unfriendly to the gas
Speaker 1: industry emerge immediately and consistently across both social media and
Speaker 1: broadcast media channels.
Speaker 3: There were a number of proxies repeating the same talking points,
Speaker 3: and then there was like a media creative produced including
Speaker 3: ads on television.
Speaker 1: Media creative, by the way, is pr industry speak for
Speaker 1: ads and branded graphics.
Speaker 3: And I just felt this very eerie sense that this
Speaker 3: was just too coordinated given the timeframe from the triggering
Speaker 3: event when Putin invaded to the release of this creative.
Speaker 3: The intervals were too tight, the messages were too word
Speaker 3: for word. This is an organized disinformation effort geared towards
Speaker 3: affecting policy in the short term.
Speaker 1: That made Arena reach out to the folks at Influence Map,
Speaker 1: a think tank that measures the impact of corporate lobbying
Speaker 1: on climate policy around the world.
Speaker 4: I'm fee Holda and I'm a program manager at influence Map.
Speaker 4: We track around three hundred and fifty companies and one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty industry associations on a weekly basis for
Speaker 4: any evidence of engagement with either climate policies or the
Speaker 4: broader debate on climate change.
Speaker 1: I spoke with both Holder and Arena in early May
Speaker 1: before Influence Map publicly released what they discovered about the
Speaker 1: industry's recent messaging. Influence Map also looped in the group's
Speaker 1: Media Matters and Triple Check to do a comprehensive media
Speaker 1: and social media listening campaign. In other words, they looked
Speaker 1: at everywhere industry spokespeople and their proxies were turning up,
Speaker 1: what they were seeing, when, and how much impact it
Speaker 1: all had.
Speaker 3: For a media campaign where you're engaging different stakeholders and
Speaker 3: you're writing the talking points, if you want your proxies,
Speaker 3: you know, other political officials, other organizations to repeat the
Speaker 3: same talking points, that takes a lease through weeks. If
Speaker 3: you're producing a creative ad that is on television, that
Speaker 3: could take two months plus in a tight timeline, it
Speaker 3: takes the time to prepare that to pitch producers to
Speaker 3: get Mike Summers on TV.
Speaker 1: Mike Summers is the President and CEO of the American
Speaker 1: Petroleum Institute or API U us on TV a bunch
Speaker 1: this spring to.
Speaker 3: Coach all of the different individuals who are again repeating
Speaker 3: API talking points word for word that takes some time
Speaker 3: a coordination. I do personally believe that the communications pieces
Speaker 3: were put into place and ready to go prior to
Speaker 3: February twenty fourth, and that the fossil fuel industry knew
Speaker 3: it stood to benefit from Russia's war, not just in
Speaker 3: terms of near term gas prices, but you know, a
Speaker 3: shorter term policy graph.
Speaker 1: In the week of the Ukraine invasion, we've seen a
Speaker 1: resurgence of the Bridgefield narrative, but we've also seen a
Speaker 1: new form of mess one that almost makes greenwashing seem point.
Speaker 1: That's our story today. This is the finale of season six,
Speaker 1: Part two. The new climate villains stay with us.
Speaker 4: One that we saw a lot of was blaming climate
Speaker 4: policies for the decrease in a supply of oil, which
Speaker 4: then led to this increase in gas prices. And these
Speaker 4: arguments were kind of going on before the war in
Speaker 4: Ukraine began, but quickly got tied together.
Speaker 1: That's influenced maps Fayholder describing one of the key industry
Speaker 1: talking points that took hold of this spring. Here's American
Speaker 1: Petroleum Institute President Mike Summers talking to CNBC as Putin
Speaker 1: began to build up troops and weaponry alone the Ukraine
Speaker 1: border in late twenty twenty one. You can hear them
Speaker 1: already here blaming climate policies for increasing gas prices.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of factors at play as to
Speaker 5: why energy prices are surging, but certainly one of the
Speaker 5: key factors is that the Biden administration has made an
Speaker 5: effort to reduce production in the United States. One of
Speaker 5: their first acts, for example, was cutting off the Keystone
Speaker 5: XL pipeline. One of their second acts was cutting off
Speaker 5: leasing and permitting on federal lands, and then they cut
Speaker 5: off access to anwar in Alaska.
Speaker 1: And here he is making the same point in an
Speaker 1: interview on CBS post Ukraine invasion in early March.
Speaker 6: The most important thing that we can do right now
Speaker 6: is really focus on increasing supply here in the United States,
Speaker 6: and that means adopting a regulatory framework that advances American
Speaker 6: energy leadership.
Speaker 1: And Mike, what exactly would that look like.
Speaker 6: But we have to remember at the beginning of the
Speaker 6: Biden administration, they did a couple of big things that
Speaker 6: really dampened the amount of oil and gas that we
Speaker 6: were producing in the United States. You know, first they
Speaker 6: cut off the Keystone XCEL pipeline. Then they put a
Speaker 6: moratorium on leasing and permitting on federal lands and on
Speaker 6: offshore waters, and then they cut off supply from the
Speaker 6: Alaska Natural National Wildlife Refuge. So really the first week
Speaker 6: of this Biben administration was very harmful to the domestic
Speaker 6: production of oil and natural gas.
Speaker 1: That is some consistent messaging and creative spin given the reality.
Speaker 1: For the record, about twenty five percent of fossil fuel
Speaker 1: drilling happens on public lands. The rest is entirely controlled
Speaker 1: by private companies. The fossil fuel industry is sitting on
Speaker 1: at least a decade's worth of unused leases, so it's
Speaker 1: unlikely that a lack of new leases has impacted current
Speaker 1: production or supply. Now let's talk about the Keystone XL pipeline.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks think this was an active pipeline
Speaker 1: that somehow got shut down.
Speaker 7: Not so.
Speaker 1: The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to transport Tarsans oil
Speaker 1: from Canada to export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Two thirds of that oil was earmarked for non US customers.
Speaker 1: Had the pipeline not been canceled, it would have come
Speaker 1: online by about twenty twenty six, so the idea that
Speaker 1: it would play a huge role in oil supply in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two is ridiculous. And now the Alaskan National
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge or ANMAR, the holy grail of US oil companies.
Speaker 1: For some reason, the refuge had been off limits to
Speaker 1: oil drilling since nineteen seventy seven. There was a brief
Speaker 1: moment in twenty seventeen when the Trump administration reversed that,
Speaker 1: but so few leases were actually sold it surprised even
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry, and none of the companies that
Speaker 1: got those leases had even started drilling yet thanks to
Speaker 1: multiple legal challenges, when the Biden administration reversed the decision
Speaker 1: to allow that drilling in twenty twenty, so again not
Speaker 1: something that had a huge impact on the supply here
Speaker 1: in the US. These are the only pieces of climate
Speaker 1: policy that Summers can point to over and over again
Speaker 1: because they're the only ones the Biden administration has managed
Speaker 1: to pass, and none of them have any impact on
Speaker 1: the current supply of domestic oil and gas in the
Speaker 1: United States or the price at the pump. But these
Speaker 1: facts don't seem to matter in the context of Russia. Ukraine.
Speaker 1: These talking points really took hold. Fayholder from Influence Map
Speaker 1: explains how this message led into another key narrative for
Speaker 1: the industry to.
Speaker 4: Fix the issue with gas prices. The answer was then
Speaker 4: to increase the supply of oil and gas, and that's
Speaker 4: where Ukraine then got brought in because increasing the supply
Speaker 4: of oil and gas, according to the oil and gas companies,
Speaker 4: would also increase energy security energy independence, and we started
Speaker 4: seeing those narratives really being brought into play, particularly through
Speaker 4: large ad campaigns and from the industry associations, in particular
Speaker 4: American Patronum Institute being the big one.
Speaker 1: According to Holder and Arena, there were three dominant messages
Speaker 1: that emerged in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. First,
Speaker 1: climate policies were responsible for high gas prices. Then increased
Speaker 1: production is the answer to both lower gas prices and
Speaker 1: increased national security. And then a third one that was
Speaker 1: new and somewhat surprising. Here's Christine Arena again to explain.
Speaker 3: The notion that it's activists and woke people they should
Speaker 3: be the ones to fight climate change. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not relevant for real Americans. This notion that president and
Speaker 3: cares more about climate activists than he does about real Americans.
Speaker 3: So there's a concerted push around these narratives.
Speaker 1: Leveraging crises to increase profits is nothing new for the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry or any other industry. It's what the
Speaker 1: author Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism, and the oil and
Speaker 1: gas guys are experts at it. Client says watching their
Speaker 1: response to Hurricane Katrina back in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: is actually what drew her into the climate conversation.
Speaker 8: In the aftermath of these shocking events like wars, economic crises,
Speaker 8: and increasingly natural disasters, there is a kind of corporate
Speaker 8: feeding frenzy. That was certainly the case in New Orleans
Speaker 8: after Katrina. So I went there because Halliburton was there,
Speaker 8: and Blackwater was there, and Bechte was there, and the
Speaker 8: charter school movement was there, and all of these private
Speaker 8: real estate developers were there, and it was just like
Speaker 8: this in saying, freeding frenzy before the water had even
Speaker 8: drained from the streets. But when I was there, I
Speaker 8: definitely had this feeling that I was looking at our
Speaker 8: collective future. If we stay on the road we're on,
Speaker 8: that we would be facing a future with more of
Speaker 8: these kinds of climate shocks intersecting with a weak and
Speaker 8: neglected public sphere, overlaid with systems of white supremacy, and
Speaker 8: then disaster capitalists swooping in with plans to make it
Speaker 8: all more unequal.
Speaker 1: Disaster capitalism has only intensified since then, and what's happened
Speaker 1: in the week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is
Speaker 1: a perfect example. Researchers not only looked at what messages
Speaker 1: took hold and when, but also at who was sharing
Speaker 1: and amplifying these messages. Seven companies and trade groups dominated
Speaker 1: the news cycle, including some usual suspects like API, The
Speaker 1: Number of Commerce, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips. But there were
Speaker 1: some new folks at the party, our old friends at
Speaker 1: the American Gas Association, for one, and Sempra, the national
Speaker 1: energy company that now owns sokel Gas.
Speaker 3: It's just so incredible. At the same time natural gas
Speaker 3: is being mass marketed as the world's greenest effort, the
Speaker 3: industry leadership is out there talking about how harmful it
Speaker 3: is an anti American it is to view any discussion
Speaker 3: through the lens of climate change.
Speaker 1: Holder says it's new to see gas industry spokespeople playing
Speaker 1: a similar role to the rest of the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 9: I think the.
Speaker 4: Gas industry has definitely got a lot louder and more
Speaker 4: active in the past few years, and you can see
Speaker 4: that precisely through companies like SEMPRA, and i'd also mention
Speaker 4: American Gas Association. I think I've been at influenced map
Speaker 4: tracking companies and industry associations for nearly four years now,
Speaker 4: and I maybe head of American Gas Association in the
Speaker 4: past two years, which not say they didn't exist before,
Speaker 4: but they've just got a lot more active.
Speaker 1: That timing, as we've noted in this season, parallels the
Speaker 1: spread of gas bands in the last couple of years.
Speaker 4: I think maybe the gas industry is starting to feel
Speaker 4: the heat a bit more around their culpability for climate change. Yeah,
Speaker 4: as is kind of evidenced by these gas bands, and
Speaker 4: so I wonder whether it's maybe they're going on the
Speaker 4: defense of a bit more in that similar vein that
Speaker 4: API has done for a long time, and US Chamber
Speaker 4: and those kind of groups that have always represented oil
Speaker 4: particularly joining that effort.
Speaker 1: These messages from trade groups and utility presidents might not
Speaker 1: seem like a big deal, but when they're amplified via
Speaker 1: advertising and proxy spokespeople, they can reach really large audiences.
Speaker 4: We've seen a heavy, heavy use of social media, both
Speaker 4: in advertising and organic content, and it's definitely a key
Speaker 4: strategy and outlet for the oil and gas sector. I
Speaker 4: think they feed off each other nicely. A lot of
Speaker 4: the things that are retweeted by API, for instance, are
Speaker 4: Mike Summers on folk News, So it's almost the way
Speaker 4: that they can come at it from both angles cover
Speaker 4: the widest audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're seeing that in the data. That's what the
Speaker 3: data shows us. The biggest impressions are on social media
Speaker 3: platforms Facebook and Twitter specifically, and then to a lesser extent,
Speaker 3: it would be you know, your right leaning media outlets
Speaker 3: like Fox Daily Wire, Bright Bart, Newsmax, Daily Caller, and
Speaker 3: to face point, there's that cross amplification, but by far
Speaker 3: the majority of media impressions are happening through social media channels,
Speaker 3: and then you amplify that by the echo chamber that
Speaker 3: is like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Alex Epstein, even Greg
Speaker 3: Abbott from Texas, Dan Crenshaw, Marsha blackburn, Ted Cruz of
Speaker 3: all of those accounts are amplifying greatly these misleading impressions.
Speaker 1: According to the Influence Map report, in the weeks leading
Speaker 1: up to and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the American
Speaker 1: Petroleum Institute alone ran at least six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: one ads on Facebook, many of which promoted the role
Speaker 1: of American gas and oil being essential for energy independence.
Speaker 1: Their ads reached around ten percent of Facebook users. To
Speaker 1: put that in context, the biggest advice on the platform
Speaker 1: tend to deliver at the absolute most about five percent
Speaker 1: of users. Media Matters ran a parallel analysis of the
Speaker 1: types of messages the industry was pushing from late twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, when Putin first started to mobilize troops to
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty two, when the Biden administration began to
Speaker 1: concede to the industry's demands. They found three key points
Speaker 1: repeated over and over those same messages that hold aer
Speaker 1: an arena. We're seeing that climate policy is responsible for
Speaker 1: high gas prices, that the answer to those prices and
Speaker 1: national security is increased American production, and that climate policy
Speaker 1: is something only liberal, woke elites care about, not real Americans.
Speaker 3: Six hundred and fifty one Facebook ads in that short
Speaker 3: time period. That's a big buy. It's unusual. But then
Speaker 3: if you look at Twitter for media matters in triple check,
Speaker 3: their data shows that misinformation peaked, you know, February twenty fourth.
Speaker 3: Literally there's a huge peak where we get to one
Speaker 3: hundred fossil fuel misinformation posts that yielded over five million likes, comments,
Speaker 3: and shares.
Speaker 1: The most important number in all of this, though, is
Speaker 1: a pretty small one twenty. That's the number of days
Speaker 1: between the launch of the Industry's Russia Ukraine campaign and
Speaker 1: the industry Tree's first policy wins. Those started with the
Speaker 1: liquefied natural gas or LNG decisions. The Department of Energy
Speaker 1: granted long term permits to increase the volume of LNG
Speaker 1: exported from two key terminals on March sixteenth.
Speaker 4: So that's two weeks maybe from the start of the crisis.
Speaker 4: During this whole situation, there was a new climate policy
Speaker 4: up for discussion at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that
Speaker 4: would have required new gas pipelines to take into account
Speaker 4: the impacts on climate change and local communities. That just
Speaker 4: got completely rolled back.
Speaker 1: That decision was followed by one to roll back climate
Speaker 1: requirements on pipelines, and then more permits for new export terminals.
Speaker 1: Then March twenty fifth, twenty twenty two, Biden announced an
Speaker 1: even bigger win for the industry, a deal with the
Speaker 1: European Union for American producer to supply an extra fifteen
Speaker 1: billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And that's not all. Beyond twenty twenty two. The two
Speaker 1: agreed to lock in demand for US gas at fifty
Speaker 1: billion cubic meters a year until twenty.
Speaker 3: Thirty, allegedly to help wean them off Russian energy, but
Speaker 3: certainly to the US natural gas industry's advantage. And so
Speaker 3: that's just a little over four weeks. That's a very
Speaker 3: short interval, and I feel that interval should alarm lawmakers,
Speaker 3: it should alarm people in the climate community. That's disaster capitalism.
Speaker 3: I think you could call it a disinformation driven heist
Speaker 3: of public policy.
Speaker 1: The US EU LNG deal will make the US the
Speaker 1: world's largest exporter of gas. It was already the world's
Speaker 1: largest producer. And that deal was announced the same week
Speaker 1: that the Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the
Speaker 1: typically conservative International Energy Agency announced that we simply cannot
Speaker 1: engage in any new fossil fuel development and keep warming
Speaker 1: to even two degrees or less. It's a deal that
Speaker 1: briet who was actually Trump's energy secretary before he ran
Speaker 1: Sumper infrastructure couldn't even get done under the most oil
Speaker 1: funded president the country has ever elected. But Biden, who
Speaker 1: ran as the climate president, he made it happen.
Speaker 9: There were new rigs even before he made that announcement,
Speaker 9: but now it's just the horizon is filled with new
Speaker 9: drilling rigs. It is booming again.
Speaker 1: You might remember Sharon Wilson, an anti fracking activist in
Speaker 1: Texas who we heard from in an earlier episode this season.
Speaker 1: She's been out this spring with her thermal imaging camera
Speaker 1: to see what the gas industry is up to in
Speaker 1: Texas's Permian Basin. She says, without even looking for new rigs,
Speaker 1: she capped CNM.
Speaker 9: We saw at least sixty, oh my god, sixty new rigs,
Speaker 9: I mean it. And every single site we looked at
Speaker 9: with the camera was major pollution. Miguel drove and I
Speaker 9: pointed the thing out the window.
Speaker 1: Miguel is Migueliscoto, Wilson's colleague at the environmental nonprofit Earthworks.
Speaker 10: The increase of production. The skyrocketing of production is immediately visible.
Speaker 10: We would drive from Odessa to Big Spring, which is
Speaker 10: about an hour long drive, and almost at every point
Speaker 10: in the horizon while you're driving through this highway you
Speaker 10: see new drilling rigs and.
Speaker 9: I'd go, oh my god, it looked like a war zone.
Speaker 9: There was black plumes of pollution coming from every site.
Speaker 9: We are going the wrong way so fast that it's
Speaker 9: mind boggling. We're seeing a whole bunch of new sites
Speaker 9: go in which we don't need. But the thing that's
Speaker 9: so horrifying is we've got all of these existing sites
Speaker 9: emitting methane and VOCs like crazy. I mean, just huge
Speaker 9: plumes that take up the whole sky. And then they're
Speaker 9: just drilling more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, does it seem to you like they're
Speaker 1: going backwards on methane emissions too.
Speaker 9: It's actually it has gotten worse. It's worse. You cannot
Speaker 9: reduce methane by continuing to produce more methane.
Speaker 1: Yet, once again the industry has convinced a lot of
Speaker 1: talking heads that gas is a critical part of any
Speaker 1: climate solution. Here's Simpra Infrastructure president Dan Briette making that
Speaker 1: point on Bloomberg TV, CNN and CNBC's squawk Box.
Speaker 7: And natural gas is a perfect complement to renewable technologies,
Speaker 7: not only here in the United States but all around
Speaker 7: the world. The transition is more than just going again
Speaker 7: from natural gas or fossil fuels to one hundred percent renewables.
Speaker 7: It's going to be adding new energy, and natural gas
Speaker 7: is a part of that.
Speaker 8: We are still hurtling towards sort of a climate reckoning,
Speaker 8: just based on a zeitgeist that we're in right now.
Speaker 7: But that's again where natural gas can have a very
Speaker 7: positive impact.
Speaker 1: And here's Feyholder again, definitely a big effort to betray
Speaker 1: gas as green.
Speaker 4: I think one of the quotes that we found from
Speaker 4: it was an executive vice president and EQT Corporation described
Speaker 4: exporting US LNG as the largest green initiative on the planet.
Speaker 1: So to recap, in just under three months, the gas
Speaker 1: industry has managed to put a stop to any regulation
Speaker 1: that might have held back its continued growth, stopped even
Speaker 1: pretending to do anything about methane emissions, expanded production in
Speaker 1: a major way, all while simultaneously convincing the public and
Speaker 1: politicians that gas is green energy. And that only woke
Speaker 1: libs care about climate change anyway. It's breathtaking how well
Speaker 1: this campaign worked. Oh and gas prices, yeah, they're still high.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode and this season. Make sure
Speaker 1: that you're subscribed so that you won't miss any bonus
Speaker 1: episodes or our next season. Drilled is an original article
Speaker 1: frequency production. Our producer is Jules Bradley. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Jude Joffy Block. Original music, sound design, mixing and mastering
Speaker 1: for this season from Peter Duff. The show is written
Speaker 1: and reported by me Amy Westervelt. Our artwork is drawn
Speaker 1: by Matt Fleming. Our factchecker is Woodan Yan. Our First
Speaker 1: Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at we are Drilled
Speaker 1: and keep up with ongoing reporting at drill podcast dot com.
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Speaker 1: Thanks again and we'll see you soon.