Congress puts “carbon kings” back in the crosshairs

A revived congressional investigation yields new evidence of oil giants’ climate deception — and more calls for accountability.

Emily Sanders is senior reporter at ExxonKnews.

Representative Jamie Raskin, left, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, right, speak in a video played during today’s hearing, Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.

A congressional investigation into Big Oil’s ongoing climate deception was revived yesterday with the release of thousands of documents and a joint report by the House and Senate members that further exposed the industry’s campaigns of “deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.” 

In a Senate Budget Committee hearing chaired by Sheldon Whitehouse, witnesses drew parallels between Big Oil and Big Tobacco, lawmakers demanded accountability for the fossil fuel industry, and a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney suggested the agency could bring legal action against Big Oil.

“Fossil fuel companies publicly claim to be partners, if not leaders, in fashioning climate solutions, but our investigation exposed that as a fraud,” said House Oversight and Accountability Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, who co-released the latest congressional findings and was the lead witness at today’s hearing. “Big Oil is not addressing the climate crisis, but profiting from it.”

The newly released documents reveal a lengthy pattern of oil companies publicly pledging their commitment to climate solutions while privately dismissing any intention to follow through.

One 2017 email from a BP executive ruminating on whether the U.S. might stay in the Paris Agreement offers a glimpse into the company’s view of participation in actions to address the climate crisis.

“All the benefits and few of the risks… no one is committed to anything, other than to stay in the game,” wrote global head of Sustainability and Climate Policy, Partnerships, and Stakeholder Relations Paul Jefferiss. 

That same attitude was present in the companies’ own tactic of handling climate pledges. In an internal discussion two years later on how to respond to a press request for comment, Jefferiss said that “it goes a bit too far to state or imply support for net zero by 2050, because that would require policy likely to put some existing assets at risk, and we haven’t discussed that internally.” Still, he noted, “we need to stand by our public support for the Paris goals and the achievement of net zero.”

The evidence was first obtained after the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after launching that investigation in 2021, adding to a growing arsenal of proof that the companies and trade associations worked to minimize the dangers they knew fossil fuels would cause. 

“Talk green, act dirty”

The latest release of documents show oil companies using partnerships in academia to launder their greenwashing of fossil fuel products as climate solutions under the guise of university credibility — despite the companies’ internal knowledge of those products’ harm. One 2018 draft presentation from BP marked “Confidential” lays out a plan by the company to “advance and protect the role of gas — and BP — in the energy transition,” and recommends that BP fund Princeton University and Imperial College white papers that would posit “the role of gas as a friend to renewables.” 

But BP knew that “Gas doesn’t support climate goals when you take methane emissions into account,” as stated by the title of another slide in that same presentation, featuring articles tying methane emissions from gas to climate change.

The committee’s probe is already having an impact. After E&E questioned Stanford about pre-publication access to research the university offered the American Petroleum Institute in 2017, as revealed in one of the committee’s unearthed documents, Stanford said it would begin an investigation into that research program.

The report also detailed the companies’ promotion of “pie in the sky technologies,” as Raskin put it this morning, like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and algae biofuels.

ExxonMobil spent upwards of $175 million dollars advertising their research into algae as a climate fix — almost half the $350 million it spent on actual research and development — even while admitting internally that the technology was “still decades away from the scale we need,” according to documents previously released through Congress’s investigation. After years of campaigns to promote algae and, in so doing, distract from the company’s growing investments in fossil fuels, the company dropped its funding of algae research projects last year. 

New documents show Exxon employees hedging over algae advertisements they knew were misleading. “Need to be mindful that we’re not suggesting it’s ready to go large scale demo,” one employee emailed in a thread on a TV ad on algae that CEO Darren Woods had already “endorsed.” 

“They were careful about the words to make sure it is indicating we hope to one day get there,” another employee responded. “The challenge is that the images have to be visually stimulating to get the audience engaged… it tested very well.”  

Other documents spotlight Exxon’s CCS and algae advertising campaigns that both feature and target young people through a “Kids series.” 

“Kids is an over-performer in terms of our content. It humanizes ExxonMobil and is in an unexpected format,” said the company’s Digital and Social Media Manager, Jayme Meyer, in a 2019 email chain with Exxon’s Public and Government Affairs group.

“De-emphasize concept that catching carbon is difficult or hard,” Meyer writes in a summary of the group’s feedback. The solution provided in the email: end cards that say “Carbon capture and storage: Making a difference for future generations.” 

As ExxonKnews and The Lever reported last week, Exxon is one of many oil and gas companies pushing to scale back new safety rules for carbon dioxide pipelines as the industry races for IRA tax credits from experimental CCS projects. Previous documents obtained by Congress show the companies internally admitting that though CCS is “complex, costly, and will require additional power,” it will “enable the use of petroleum and natural gas” for years to come.

“As a scholar of disinformation, I do not use the word ‘lie’ lightly, but no other word adequately describes the oil industry’s brazen efforts to mislead the public,” said Geoffrey Supran, a scholar of climate disinformation and director of Climate Accountability Lab at University of Miami, told Senators this morning during testimony.

The investigation further revealed how oil companies internally viewed the crisis their products were causing while they touted their ambitions to fight climate change. “The Challenge of Climate Change,” according to one 2016 presentation created by a Princeton researcher funded through BP’s Climate Mitigation Initiative, is the risk it posed to BP’s “core business” through a transition to cleaner sources of energy. That’s because “effective climate policies can emerge that discourage fossil fuel consumption… and that subsidize or otherwise promote efficiency and low carbon energy.”

BP, along with the other major oil companies, would use trade associations to lobby “against pro-climate legislation and regulations that they publicly claimed to support,” according to the House and Senate committees’ report. During a prior Congressional hearing in 2021, CEOs from all six entities refused to stop spending money to oppose climate action. 

It’s “greenwashing 101,” said Supran: “talk green, act dirty.”

As payoff for its efforts to keep Americans hooked on a fossil fuel economy, the industry now reaps $750 billion in subsidies each year, Senator Whitehouse said in his opening remarks. 

“What is protecting the massive fossil fuel subsidies? And what is preventing policies to reduce danger? It’s the same thing: the fossil fuel industry itself,” Whitehouse said.

All six entities obstructed the investigation, redacting thousands of documents unnecessarily and completely withholding many more, Whitehouse said.

The case for DOJ to step in

Sharon Eubanks, the former lead counsel for the Department of Justice who won the agency’s historic lawsuit against Big Tobacco, said during her testimony today that she observed “striking similarit[ies]” between the actions of the tobacco industry and those of the oil industry today — including the funneling of money into promoting “fake science,” and lying to the public and regulators “about what they knew about the harms of their products and when they knew it.”

Following the new revelations, Eubanks said there was “solid evidentiary basis to support more information being gathered on these companies, just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering case.”

“Complaints against the industry have similarities in the fraudulent acts and the government was successful in the tobacco case, so there is certainly an adequate legal foundation for litigation against this industry,” she said.

Last year, nearly two dozen House and Senate members wrote letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging the Department of Justice to either sue or investigate Big Oil for potential violations of federal law. In January, Representative Ted Lieu told ExxonKnews that new evidence of Shell’s early knowledge of climate change “provide additional evidence and make our calls for an investigation even more urgent.”

The mounting evidence released by Congress could provides even more fuel behind those requests.

As Raskin pointed out, holding the tobacco industry accountable in court had major implications for public health and safety. “The companies were ordered to cease and desist their propaganda and to start telling the truth,” he said. “Just insisting upon the truth has saved millions of lives.” 

New lawsuits have been filed against Big Oil since Congress began its investigation — and some of those complaints cite documents obtained through congressional subpoenas, including by the City of Chicago, Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, Puerto Rico municipalities, and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe. 

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law School, said the latest evidence could play a role in the lawsuits and eventually be considered at trial. “The case for recovery of damages is getting stronger all the time,” he said.

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