Drew Angerer / Getty Images
ExxonMobil has been the prime goal of activists and politicians angered by the oil {industry}’s efforts to dam motion on local weather change. Now, newly disclosed paperwork affirm that the oil firm’s reputational woes have prolonged into the {industry} itself and threatened to derail Exxon’s largest local weather proposal thus far.
Last 12 months, Exxon struggled to realize help from its friends when it proposed a cross-industry effort to construct a carbon seize and storage hub in Houston, in keeping with paperwork launched by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has been investigating the oil {industry}. Top executives at Shell, specifically, frightened that becoming a member of with Exxon would current an “unacceptable risk” to the European oil main’s popularity.
“I am not interested in participating with any advocacy effort led by” Exxon, wrote Krista Johnson, Shell’s head of US authorities relations, in a July 2021 electronic mail to Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell USA. Johnson stated their competitor was persevering with to attract damaging headlines and that “zero companies” had been ready to hitch an Exxon-led consortium at the moment.
A month later, Watkins stated she opposed any public participation with Exxon. “Their reputation is severely damaged here,” she wrote to colleagues within the Netherlands, the place Shell was headquartered on the time, “and we will only do harm to the strength of Shell’s US reputation.” (Shell later moved its headquarters to London.)
In April 2021, Exxon proposed a $100 billion public-private partnership to construct what would grow to be the world’s largest carbon seize and storage “hub” in Houston. The plan was to put in gear to take away carbon dioxide from smokestacks on the area’s largest energy vegetation, refineries, and different industrial operations earlier than it reached the environment. The fuel would then be compressed and despatched via pipelines to wells drilled beneath the Gulf of Mexico, the place it will be injected underground for everlasting storage. The firm stated the hassle might finally forestall as much as 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions yearly by 2040, however would wish the area’s largest company polluters to take part.
The proposal has drawn substantial skepticism and criticism from environmental advocates, who say carbon seize is unlikely to ever attain the size proposed by Exxon. They have warned that authorities subsidies for the expertise can be a waste of local weather funding, and have argued that Exxon was utilizing carbon seize to burnish its picture, reasonably than drive actual emissions reductions.
The paperwork recommend that some throughout the oil {industry} shared these issues, even when they supported carbon seize and storage as a local weather answer.
Watkins, in her August 2021 electronic mail, stated “I fully support our engagement” with potential carbon seize investments within the United States, however suggested steering away from Exxon’s public announcement. She feared that Exxon was trying to enhance its picture by showing alongside Shell, she wrote, forward of a doable Congressional listening to the place oil executives may testify.
Another electronic mail, from Marnie Funk, a senior adviser for presidency relations at Shell, stated that Chevron was “internally divided” on whether or not to hitch Exxon’s effort, with “Some minor unease in some Chevron quarters about Exxon reputational concerns.”
Funk additionally stated Chevron considered Exxon’s claims about how a lot carbon dioxide the undertaking might seize, and what number of jobs it might create, as “inflated—but harmless inflation.”
Chevron and Shell declined to remark for this text.
The emails say Exxon executives had been calling all of the Houston space’s prime oil and chemical corporations to get them to publicly pledge their help for the carbon seize proposal. The effort gained the help of 11 corporations, together with Chevron, that launched a joint assertion in September 2021. Shell initially declined to hitch the hassle, however by January, it had apparently been satisfied, too, and publicly introduced its help.
According to Funk’s electronic mail, the September announcement was meant because the “first step” of an {industry} marketing campaign to safe an expanded federal tax credit score for carbon seize and new laws that will enable corporations to inject carbon dioxide beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
The Houston hub was “entirely dependent” on securing these modifications, Funk wrote, and the {industry}’s lobbying marketing campaign was in the end profitable on each fronts. The carbon seize tax credit score was expanded this 12 months by the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Interior Department is within the technique of drafting guidelines for carbon dioxide storage beneath federal waters.
The solely Houston oil main that didn’t be part of the hassle was BP, which declined to remark for this text.
The paperwork had been launched earlier this month as a part of an investigation by the House committee into the oil {industry}’s alleged marketing campaign to unfold disinformation about local weather change. They had been accompanied by a memo which stated, “These documents demonstrate how the fossil fuel industry ‘greenwashed’ its public image with promises and actions that oil and gas executives knew would not meaningfully reduce emissions, even as the industry moved aggressively to lock in continued fossil fuel production for decades to come.” The memo was presumably the ultimate act of the investigation earlier than Republicans take management of the House subsequent 12 months, when they’re anticipated to curtail the committee’s work.
Todd Spitler, an Exxon spokesman, declined to touch upon Shell’s inside discussions, however stated in an electronic mail that “The House Oversight Committee report has sought to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s position on climate science, and its support for effective policy solutions, by recasting well intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign.” He added, “Our CEO has testified under oath on this subject during two all-day Congressional hearings before two separate committees, we’ve been in regular communication with the committee for over a year, and have provided staff with more than one million pages of documents, including board materials and internal communications.”
Beyond the drama between corporations, the paperwork launched by the committee additionally make clear the oil {industry}’s sustained efforts to advertise carbon seize and storage. For years, the paperwork present, corporations noticed the expertise as a method of enabling continued fossil gasoline consumption, even because the world’s transition to cleaner vitality grew extra pressing. But the one approach carbon seize might succeed, the businesses stated, was by successful substantial authorities funding and public help.
In 2016, for instance, a Princeton University program that’s sponsored by BP despatched the corporate recommendation on tips on how to deal with local weather change. One of the suggestions was to “Understand the potential for CCS,” or carbon seize and storage, “to enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond.”
A 2017 Shell doc titled “US Gulf Coast CCS Opportunity Framing” stated “the window for CCS to remain relevant with governments and society is closing quickly,” and that motion was wanted inside a decade. “The value of CCS to Shell is the ability to decarbonize our products, retain a larger market share for our products in the energy transition, in addition to reputational value,” it stated.
Two years later, a be aware to Shell’s govt committee stated carbon seize within the United States confronted “economic challenges,” however that the corporate would proceed to pursue a Gulf Coast undertaking due to the opportunity of future incentives and the “potential need for CCS on critical Shell projects.”
The paperwork additionally embody a 2018 replace on a National Petroleum Council report about carbon seize and storage, written by John Mingé, a former chief of BP America who led the petroleum council examine. In addition to reducing emissions, the doc stated, vast deployment of carbon seize expertise might assist enhance US oil manufacturing, safe the export of fossil fuels to nations with stringent local weather insurance policies and permit for continued use of “existing infrastructure over the long term.”
Mingé’s replace really useful “simplifying the narrative” about carbon seize, as a part of an effort to win help for the expertise throughout academia, environmental teams, governments and the monetary sector.
The petroleum council report, printed in December 2019, went on to grow to be a foundational doc for the {industry}’s lobbying during the last two years. Over that interval, Congress and the Biden administration have allotted more cash to carbon seize than every other authorities in historical past.
Nicholas Kusnetz is a reporter for Inside Climate News. Before becoming a member of ICN, he labored on the Center for Public Integrity and ProfessionalPublica. His work has gained quite a few awards, together with from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and has appeared in additional than a dozen publications, together with The Washington Post, Businessweek, The Nation, Fast Company and The New York Times. You can attain Nicholas at nicholas.kusnetz@insideclimatenews.org.
This story initially appeared on Inside Climate News.