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NC-based John Locke Foundation defends oil and gas industry

WASHINGTON – Public relations firms aligned with oil and gas companies have tested the limits of their industry ethics and caused major slowdowns to federal climate change policy, Democrats on a U.S. House panel said at a Wednesday hearing.

The firms’ conduct went beyond the bounds of ethical public relations work, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee and industry experts said. Oil and gas groups have spent exorbitant sums to promote their agenda and drown out opposing views, resulting in energy policy that has deterred action on climate, they said.

“The fossil fuel industry is strategically misleading members of all of our constituencies to line their own pockets, stymie climate action and disrupt the democratic process,” New York Democrat Paul Tonko said.

Climate activists have also faced harassment as they worked on campaigns opposed by fossil fuel companies, Anne Lee Foster, a former spokeswoman for environmental group Colorado Rising, told the committee.

No representatives from public relations firms testified at the hearing. But several Republican members, and a representative of the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based nonpartisan conservative think tank, defended the oil and gas industry’s right to broadcast their views.

Harassment described

Foster described being followed and harassed by protesters while working on a campaign in favor of a 2018 Colorado ballot measure to establish buffer zones between homes and other sensitive areas and oil and gas operations.

On one occasion, a man she did not know persisted in following her around the state Capitol, she said. Others started appearing at cafes she and her group frequented. One volunteer was followed home, she said.

“I was harassed during the first week of signature-gathering when men carrying signs targeted me, yelling at potential signers and standing between the individual and myself,” she testified to the committee. “There are many accounts of particularly women being followed around by multiple protesters for extended periods. Many folks reported being intimidated and scared.”

The oil and gas industry was linked to the harassment, she said.

A leaked document from Anadarko Petroleum showed the company was soliciting text messages to report the location of activists collecting signatures, Foster said Wednesday. A Colorado Public Radio reporter tested the number and found that protesters against the initiative appeared within 15 minutes of learning canvassers’ reports.

‘Greenwashing’

Public relations firms were not linked to the harassment campaign described by Foster. 

But the firms otherwise overstepped accepted practices to give a false impression that oil and gas operations were less destructive for the climate, Christine Arena, the founder of strategy and design firm Generous Ventures and researcher on greenwashing, told the panel. That practice is sometimes known as greenwashing. Read more