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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 greatest local weather proposal thus far.
Last yr, Exxon struggled to realize help from its friends when it proposed a cross-industry effort to construct a carbon capture 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, in specific, fearful that becoming a member of with Exxon would current an “unacceptable danger” to the European oil main’s reputation.
“I’m not in taking part with any advocacy effort led by” Exxon, wrote Krista Johnson, Shell’s head of US authorities relations, in a July 2021 email to Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell USA. Johnson stated their competitor was persevering with to attract unfavourable headlines and that “zero firms” have been ready to affix an Exxon-led consortium at the moment.
A month later, Watkins stated she opposed any public participation with Exxon. “Their reputation is severely broken right here,” she wrote to colleagues in the Netherlands, the place Shell was headquartered at the time, “and we are going to solely do hurt to the energy 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 capture and storage “hub” in Houston. The plan was to put in gear to take away carbon dioxide from smokestacks at the area’s largest energy vegetation, refineries, and different industrial operations earlier than it reached the ambiance. The gasoline would then be compressed and despatched via pipelines to wells drilled beneath the Gulf of Mexico, the place it could be injected underground for everlasting storage. The firm stated the effort may 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 capture is unlikely to ever attain the scale proposed by Exxon. They have warned that authorities subsidies for the know-how can be a waste of local weather funding, and have argued that Exxon was utilizing carbon capture to burnish its picture, somewhat than drive actual emissions reductions.
The paperwork counsel that some inside the oil {industry} shared these issues, even when they supported carbon capture and storage as a local weather answer.
Watkins, in her August 2021 e-mail, stated “I totally help our engagement” with potential carbon capture investments in the United States, however suggested steering clear of 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 would possibly testify.
Another e-mail, from Marnie Funk, a senior adviser for presidency relations at Shell, said that Chevron was “internally divided” on whether or not to affix Exxon’s effort, with “Some minor unease in some Chevron quarters about Exxon reputational issues.”
Funk additionally stated Chevron considered Exxon’s claims about how a lot carbon dioxide the undertaking may capture, and what number of jobs it may create, as “inflated—however innocent inflation.”
Chevron and Shell declined to remark for this text.
The emails say Exxon executives have been calling all the Houston space’s prime oil and chemical firms to get them to publicly pledge their help for the carbon capture proposal. The effort gained the help of 11 firms, together with Chevron, that launched a joint statement in September 2021. Shell initially declined to affix the effort, however by January, it had apparently been satisfied, too, and publicly announced its support.
According to Funk’s e-mail, the September announcement was meant as the “first step” of an {industry} marketing campaign to safe an expanded federal tax credit score for carbon capture and new rules that may permit firms to inject carbon dioxide beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
The Houston hub was “completely dependent” on securing these adjustments, Funk wrote, and the {industry}’s lobbying marketing campaign was finally profitable on each fronts. The carbon capture tax credit score was expanded this yr by the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Interior Department is in the course of of drafting guidelines for carbon dioxide storage beneath federal waters.
The solely Houston oil main that didn’t be a part of the effort was BP, which declined to remark for this text.
The paperwork have been launched earlier this month as half of an investigation by the House committee into the oil {industry}’s alleged marketing campaign to unfold disinformation about local weather change. They were accompanied by a memo which stated, “These paperwork display how the fossil gas {industry} ‘greenwashed’ its public picture with guarantees and actions that oil and gasoline executives knew wouldn’t meaningfully cut back emissions, whilst the {industry} moved aggressively to lock in continued fossil gas manufacturing for many years to come back.” The memo was presumably the remaining act of the investigation earlier than Republicans take management of the House subsequent yr, when they’re anticipated to curtail the committee’s work.
Todd Spitler, an Exxon spokesman, declined to touch upon Shell’s inner discussions, however stated in an e-mail that “The House Oversight Committee report has sought to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s place on local weather science, and its help for efficient coverage options, by recasting properly meant, inner coverage debates as an tried firm disinformation marketing campaign.” He added, “Our CEO has testified below oath on this topic throughout two all-day Congressional hearings earlier than two separate committees, we’ve been in common communication with the committee for over a yr, and have supplied employees with multiple million pages of paperwork, together with board supplies and inner communications.”
Beyond the drama between firms, the paperwork launched by the committee additionally make clear the oil {industry}’s sustained efforts to advertise carbon capture and storage. For years, the paperwork present, firms noticed the know-how as a way of enabling continued fossil gas consumption, whilst the world’s transition to cleaner power grew extra pressing. But the solely way carbon capture may succeed, the firms stated, was by profitable substantial authorities funding and public help.
In 2016, for instance, a Princeton University program that’s sponsored by BP despatched the firm recommendation on the way to handle local weather change. One of the recommendations was to “Understand the potential for CCS,” or carbon capture and storage, “to allow the full use of fossil fuels throughout the power transition and past.”
A 2017 Shell doc titled “US Gulf Coast CCS Opportunity Framing” stated “the window for CCS to stay related with governments and society is closing shortly,” and that motion was wanted inside a decade. “The worth of CCS to Shell is the potential to decarbonize our merchandise, retain a bigger market share for our merchandise in the power transition, in addition to reputational worth,” it stated.
Two years later, a be aware to Shell’s government committee said carbon capture in the United States faced “financial challenges,” however that the firm would proceed to pursue a Gulf Coast undertaking as a result of of the chance of future incentives and the “potential want for CCS on important Shell initiatives.”
The paperwork additionally embody a 2018 replace on a National Petroleum Council report about carbon capture and storage, written by John Mingé, a former chief of BP America who led the petroleum council research. In addition to reducing emissions, the doc stated, vast deployment of carbon capture know-how could help increase US oil production, safe the export of fossil fuels to nations with stringent local weather insurance policies and permit for continued use of “present infrastructure over the long run.”
Mingé’s replace really useful “simplifying the narrative” about carbon capture, as half of an effort to win support for the know-how throughout academia, environmental teams, governments and the monetary sector.
The petroleum council report, revealed in December 2019, went on to grow to be a foundational doc for the {industry}’s lobbying over the final two years. Over that interval, Congress and the Biden administration have allotted extra money to carbon capture than another authorities in historical past.
Nicholas Kusnetz is a reporter for Inside Climate News. Before becoming a member of ICN, he labored at 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 greater than a dozen publications, together with The Washington Post, Businessweek, The Nation, Fast Company and The New York Times. You can attain Nicholas at [email protected]
This story initially appeared on Inside Climate News.
