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War profiteering, bike helmets, and another court loss for Exxon

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War profiteering, bike helmets, and another court loss for Exxon

Plus, updates on developments in Congress and in the courts to hold Big Oil accountable.

ExxonKnews
Mar 23, 2022
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War profiteering, bike helmets, and another court loss for Exxon

www.exxonknews.org

Emily Sanders is the Center for Climate Integrity’s editorial lead. Catch up with her on Twitter here.

Graphic design by Tess Abbot

Good afternoon. We’d like to start with a shoutout to our second favorite lawyer for Big Oil, Phil Goldberg. Goldberg leads the Manufacturers Accountability Project (MAP), a front group that works to shield oil giants from legal accountability for knowingly destroying the climate. In a recent profile in the Guardian, Goldberg, who is also a former coal lobbyist, claimed to be a “committed environmentalist,” and he demonstrated so by agreeing to be photographed only if he could pose with his bike and helmet.

Twitter avatar for @ChristineArena
Christine Arena @ChristineArena
Refusing to remove his bicycle helmet for the photo shoot, Mr. Goldberg fails to address the most pertinent question driving climate litigation: Why should taxpayers pay for climate damages, rather than the corporations that caused them?
theguardian.comThe man who could help big oil derail America’s climate fightPhil Goldberg, a self-described ‘committed environmentalist’, has a powerful strategy to shield the largest oil companies in America
4:16 PM ∙ Mar 21, 2022
9Likes5Retweets
Twitter avatar for @KateAronoff
Kate Aronoff @KateAronoff
This man looks like he got a flat tire in the uncanny valley 15 years ago and has been waiting motionless ever since
Image
2:30 AM ∙ Mar 22, 2022
34Likes2Retweets

Perhaps Goldberg is bracing for a reckoning (h/t @paula_read)? That would be smart: the industry he represents is fighting an uphill battle to keep its lies and deception in the dark.

Oil executives have been lying their heads off about their role in the rising price of gas — and last week, they got caught.

On March 16, CNN released audio from multiple calls where oil executives assured their investors that they were prioritizing shareholder profits above all else.

Twitter avatar for @CNN
CNN @CNN
"We think it's important to return cash back to the shareholders." Audio from several fossil fuel companies' calls with investors show that despite public calls from industry lobbyists to ramp up production, executives are prioritizing shareholders. @Rene_MarshCNN reports.
9:12 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022
571Likes319Retweets

Big Oil and its allies have blamed egregiously high gas prices across the country on Biden administration policies, but this tape says otherwise. A new video from More Perfect Union explains how Big Oil has been doubling down on that frame to cover up the reality that the industry is exploiting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to price gouge:

Twitter avatar for @MorePerfectUS
More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS
NEW: What’s really behind rising gas prices? U.S. oil executives, who have been some of Putin’s closest partners for years, are cashing in on Russia’s war. Since Russia began preparing to invade Ukraine, 5 major oil CEOs have made $99 million from selling their shares.
5:49 PM ∙ Mar 21, 2022
715Likes467Retweets

 

The executives’ admissions made it even more clear that the industry is keeping gas prices high in order to line their shareholders’ pockets while working people suffer at the pump.

Twitter avatar for @RepRaulGrijalva
Raul M. Grijalva @RepRaulGrijalva
Confirmation of what we knew all along - the fossil fuel industry is lying. They turned violence and bloodshed in Ukraine into an oil and gas propaganda and profiteering scheme. It's proof that Big Oil is price gouging working families to pad the pocketbooks of its shareholders.
Twitter avatar for @VedantPatel46
Vedant Patel @VedantPatel46
🚨👇🏾What we've been hearing from oil and gas companies: - "We think it's important to return cash back to the shareholders." - "No one wants to see that shareholder return program put at risk." - "We have no need and no intent to invest in production growth this year." https://t.co/DfDcROO93b
9:50 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022
127Likes55Retweets

Last Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the oil industry’s role in rising gas prices “is deeply damaging to working Americans,” and promised that “the Senate is going to get answers, and that’s why we will be calling on the CEOs of major oil companies to come testify before Congress.” 

Twitter avatar for @SenSchumer
Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
Last year, the top 25 oil and gas companies reported a combined $205 billion in profits. And instead of giving Americans a break at the gas pump, they've used their profits to reward shareholders with stock buybacks. The Senate will call Big Oil CEOs to testify before Congress.
5:47 PM ∙ Mar 17, 2022
1,061Likes406Retweets

The chairs of two House committees — Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone Jr. and Natural Resources Chair Raúl M. Grijalva — have asked executives from major oil and gas companies to testify at separate hearings in April to answer for how “the industry appears to be taking advantage of the crisis for its own benefit” and is “blaming high gas prices on Biden administration policies, while simultaneously sitting on unused permits and raking in record profits,” respectively.

House and Senate members are also pushing a “windfall profits tax” on Big Oil companies to help ease the burden on working people and ensure that the industry stops its war profiteering.

Twitter avatar for @SenWarren
Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren
.@SenWhitehouse and I introduced a Windfall Profits Tax that says: if you're a Big Oil company engaged in price gouging, you're gonna have to give up a big chunk of your ill-gotten gains. Big Oil shouldn't be making billions in profits while Americans get crushed at the pump.
7:42 PM ∙ Mar 19, 2022
3,922Likes931Retweets

Under the proposed legislation, oil majors making record profits would be required to pay a per-barrel tax amounting to half the difference between the current price of a barrel and the average price between the years 2015 and 2019. In other words, it would tax excess profits compared to previous years, during which profits were still very high. That money would be returned to members of the public who make less than $75,000 per year.

Twitter avatar for @PramilaJayapal
Pramila Jayapal @PramilaJayapal
Profits last year: Exxon: $23 billion Shell: $19.3 billion Chevron: $15.6 billion BP: $12.8 billion Rising gas prices are THEIR choice. We have to reign in corporate greed.
5:21 PM ∙ Mar 14, 2022
24,901Likes7,597Retweets

Taxing Big Oil’s profits also happens to be massively popular with voters — 80 percent support such a tax, according to a recent poll from Hart Research Associates. And while President Biden hasn’t endorsed the tax just yet, he has publicly chastised the companies’ behavior: 

Twitter avatar for @POTUS
President Biden @POTUS
Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too. Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31. Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.
Image
12:35 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022
147,432Likes33,981Retweets

While Congress decides how to rein in industry greed, Exxon keeps losing attempts to escape accountability in court.

We’ve previously covered Exxon and other oil giants’ attempts to use “corporate free speech” as an argument for courts to throw out lawsuits calling out the industry’s decades-long climate deception. Those arguments were among several that a Suffolk Superior Court Judge on Monday denied Exxon from using in its attacks on Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s consumer fraud lawsuit against the company.

Twitter avatar for @davabel
David Abel @davabel
Exxon won't be allowed to use a host of defenses in a case brought by @MassAGO that alleges the energy giant "systematically and intentionally ... misled Massachusetts investors and consumers about climate change," a Suffolk Superior Court Judge has ruled.
Image
6:37 PM ∙ Mar 22, 2022
53Likes17Retweets

Meanwhile in the UK, environmental law organization ClientEarth filed suit against directors of European oil major Shell — a groundbreaking case that seeks to force the company’s board to align its emissions goals with the Paris Agreement. In its argument, ClientEarth says that by failing to address the risks climate change poses to the company itself, Shell has violated the law.

“It’s the first time that anyone has sought to hold the board accountable for failing to properly prepare for the net zero transition,” Paul Benson, a ClientEarth lawyer, told the Guardian. “It is highly novel, we’re in uncharted territory here but we see real merit with this claim.”

Big Oil’s lawyers will need more than bike helmets to get out of that one. 


ICYMI News Roundup

  • Jon Stewart’s Struggle to Name the Real Problem

  • How Europe Got Hooked on Russian Gas Despite Reagan’s Warnings

  • Oil Giants Wage ‘Endless’ Disputes Before Climate Case Trials

  • Universities must reject fossil fuel cash for climate research, say academics

  • Biden visits the CEOs who helped kill ‘Build Back Better’

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War profiteering, bike helmets, and another court loss for Exxon

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