"Big oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation finds", 30 April 2024

"Big oil has privately acknowledged its efforts to downplay the dangers of burning fossil fuels, US Democrats have found.

Major fossil-fuel firms have also pledged support for international climate efforts, but internally admit these efforts are incompatible with their own climate plans. And they have lobbied against climate laws and regulations they have publicly claimed to support, documents newly revealed by the committee show...

“The evidence uncovered by oversight committee Democrats shows that big oil has run campaigns to confuse and mislead the public,” said Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the committee. “Today’s joint report demonstrates that big oil continues to conceal the facts about their business model and obscure the actual dangers of fossil fuels.”

The documents, summarized in a committee report, come from big oil firms Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron, as well the lobbying organizations the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the US Chamber of Commerce. They date back to 30 November 2015 – just weeks before the signing of the Paris climate accord...

The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.

At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” And when questioned by the House oversight committee in 2021, Exxon chief executive Darren Woods said he did “not agree that there was an inconsistency” between what Exxon told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately.

But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report”.

Discussing a draft opinion piece the following year, Exxon again confirmed the reporters’ findings...

in February 2020, BP announced plans to become a net zero emissions company by 2050 or sooner and to “help the world get to net zero”. Private emails sent months before, however, indicate that company top brass may have doubted that goal was achievable.

“Personally, I think 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,” BP’s global sustainability and climate policy lead said in a June 2019 email discussing how to respond to a Guardian request for comment...

Shell, meanwhile, pledged in 2016 to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But in 2018, a the company’s external relations manager expressed doubt that the goal was achievable, suggesting it might take until 2060 or 2070, the report says. And in a 2020 internal presentation about approved messaging on net zero emissions, Shell instructed lobbyists and employees not to “suggest” that net zero is a “Shell target”.

To preserve their business models, fossil-fuel companies have also sought to portray gas as a climate-friendly fuel. But they have internally acknowledged that its use is not compatible with international climate goals.

A March 2018 draft presentation from BP that is marked “Confidential”, for instance, focuses on the “challenge” facing the company as journalists increasingly report that natural gas is a planet-heating fossil fuel, the report says. The presentation describes a forthcoming BP communications campaign to “advance and protect the role of gas – and BP – in the energy transition”

A key aspect of the company’s campaign strategy, the presentation says, is to “harness excitement” about renewable energy by saying gas provides a good backup for wind and solar power, despite the climate risks associated with the fuel...

When the Trump administration said in 2019 it would roll back an Obama-era regulation on methane emissions, for instance, BP and other oil companies publicly opposed the move, yet API, the biggest US oil lobbying group, backed the proposal. And in a 2019 email regarding the EPA’s legal plan to enact the rollback, a BP executive said the proposal was “aligned with our thinking”...

The newly revealed documents also show that the companies refused to comply with the congressional investigation. “Several thousand documents that the companies produced were substantially redacted to obscure clearly relevant and potentially critical information, or they were just withheld outright,” Raskin said in a video detailing the findings.

The new documents come as big oil faces an increasing number of lawsuits for allegedly lying about the dangers of using fossil fuels. Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which has supported the litigation, said the revelations could “provide new material evidence for the cases” and “push them along”..."