Message From the Editor

This week DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center released a trove of historical documents from Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil, that sheds new light on the two oil giants’ climate science and policy history.

This new collection of over 300 company documents, primarily from the 1980s and 1990s, shows that Imperial took a very different path from Exxon in the U.S. 30 years ago, but eventually fell into line on science denial, revealing the vulnerabilities and strategies of being an oil company in the age of climate crisis.

Based on these documents, Sharon Kelly reveals how Imperial approached the ultimately failed battle to keep lead in gasoline, and the lessons Big Oil may have learned from that fight as public attention turned to another looming crisis caused by fossil fuel pollution — climate change.

And Justin Mikulka reveals that years before the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill, Imperial seemed to view the need for oil spill cleanup research first and foremost as a public image issue.

But there are plenty more untold stories of what the oil industry knew and when found within these documents. Take a look yourself.

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

The Imperial Oil Files: New Collection Adds to Climate and Energy Research Archives On Science and Denial

— By Brendan DeMelle (4 min. read) —

Today, DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center are co-launching a large collection of documents from Exxon's Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil, that DeSmog collected from a company archive in Calgary over the past several years.

These documents add new context to the groundbreaking investigative reporting by Inside Climate News, and the Columbia School of Journalism in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, that revealed the #ExxonKnew conspiracy. Those journalistic efforts exposed the facts that Exxon’s own climate science research had confirmed the role of fossil fuels in driving global warming, and that the company pivoted away from that advanced knowledge, choosing instead to spend tens of millions of dollars funding climate science denial campaigns.

New Documents Reveal Exxon-owned Canadian Oil Giant's Shifting Climate Change PR

— By Sharon Kelly (9 min. read) —

It was 1971, less than a year after the world’s first Earth Day, and in Canada an oil giant was worried.

“Public concern regarding environmental problems is being translated into legislation rapidly,” Imperial Oil warned in an annual research planning document dated January of that year. “The present trend in legislation will require substantial expenditures to reduce emissions and waste discharge for all facilities and reduce the impact on the environment of the products we sell.”

Years Before Exxon Valdez, Documents Show Exxon’s Imperial Oil Prioritized Public Image Over Spill Impacts

— By Justin Mikulka (8 min. read) —

On February 4, 1970, the oil tanker SS Arrow was carrying a cargo of heavy bunker oil for Imperial Oil Limited when it encountered rough weather off the east coast of Canada. The ship’s captain had not sailed this route before and reportedly had no navigational charts. The ship itself had known problems with its navigation system. When the radar warned the crew of trouble ahead, the warning was ignored. The ship promptly ran aground on a well-known hazard, Cerberus Rock, ultimately spilling approximately 2.5 million gallons of oil, which coated 190 miles of shoreline.

BP Challenged On Adverts That 'Mislead Consumers' Over Polluting Portfolio

— By Isabella Kaminski (4 min. read) —

Environmental lawyers have made a formal complaint against oil giant BP, claiming its latest advertising campaign is misleading consumers about its commitment to tackling climate change.

The challenge, filed today by legal campaign group ClientEarth, is the first time a complaint has been made about a fossil fuel company’s alleged greenwashing under international corporate rules.

Texas Petroleum Chemical Plant Explosion, And Our Petrochemical 'Collective Suicide'

— By Julie Dermansky (5 min. read) —

A plume from the Texas Petroleum Chemical (TPC) plant hung over Port Neches, Texas on Thanksgiving as emergency workers continued to fight the fire following explosions at the plant on November 27. A mandatory evacuation that called for 60,000 people within a four-mile radius from the plant to leave their homes the day before the holiday was lifted yesterday.

However, officials warned that returning residents be aware of the plume’s location because elevated levels of particulate matter associated with the plume near the plant could be “harmful to sensitive groups,” and direct exposure could result in respiratory irritation.

Pennsylvania Communities Grow Wary of Worsening Air Pollution as Petrochemical Industry Arrives

— By Julie Dermansky (9 min. read) —

While the Ohio River Valley, long home to the coal and steel industries, is no stranger to air pollution, the region’s natural gas boom and burgeoning petrochemical industry threaten to erase the gains of recent decades. Concerns about air quality, which has already begun declining nationally since 2016, are growing rapidly for those living in the shadow of Shell’s $6 billion plastics plant under construction along the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County.

Residents and activists from the greater Pittsburgh area fear that worsening air quality will lower the value of homes, deter new clean business development, and sicken people.

Oil and Gas Industry Rebukes Fracking Ban Talk as UN Shows Just How Much Fossil Fuel Plans Are Screwing Climate Limits

— By Dana Drugmand (8 min. read) —

The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas trade association, is promoting a new video touting domestic natural gas production as essential to energy security. The video, titled “America’s Energy Security: A Generation of Progress At Risk?” comes at a time when calls for halting new fossil fuel production and infrastructure are getting louder and coincided with the release of a United Nations report highlighting the misalignment between global climate goals and countries’ plans to develop fossil fuels.

Transportation Climate Initiative Draws Opposition from Oil and Gasoline Business Groups

— By Dana Drugmand (6 min. read) —

As California continues to battle the Trump administration over the state’s authority to set stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles, a coalition of East Coast states is facing a potential battle of its own, with opposition emerging to the states’ plan to tackle transportation emissions.

That plan, called the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), seeks to curb transportation-sector greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-invest program. The 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states plus the District of Columbia are modeling it after the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a similar cap-and-trade scheme for the power sector.

With Coal’s Decline, Pennsylvania Communities Watch the Rise of Natural Gas-fueled Plastics

— By Julie Dermansky (9 min. read) —

For Beaver County, just northwest of Pittsburgh, the construction of Royal Dutch Shell’s towering new plastics factory overshadows the closure of the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, the state’s largest coal power station, located along the same stretch of Ohio River in western Pennsylvania.

The juxtaposition of these two projects, in which one powerful fossil fuel supply rises as the other falls, reflects the broader pattern of changing energy sources in America. A growing chorus agrees the expansion of the natural gas industry, which feeds plastics and petrochemical plants like Shell’s, is moving the U.S. in the wrong direction to prevent catastrophic impacts from climate change.

Fight or Switch? How the Low-carbon Transition Is Disrupting Fossil Fuel Politics

— By Cara Daggett, Virginia Tech (6 min. read) —

As the Trump administration works to weaken regulations on fossil fuel production and use, a larger struggle is playing out across multiple industries. Until recently, oil companies and their defenders generally reacted to calls for regulating carbon emissions by spreading doubt and promoting climate denialism. However, I believe this approach is becoming less effective as climate change effects worsen and public demands for action intensify worldwide.

Utilities Don’t Want Peabody Energy’s 'Clean Coal' Awards Anymore

— By Joe Smyth, Energy and Policy Institute (4 min. read) —

In the latest sign of the U.S. coal industry’s declining ability to compete in the power sector, Peabody Energy is now struggling to find electric utility companies who are willing to accept a “clean coal” award that it presents annually.

In an email obtained through a public records request, a Peabody executive explained that it’s “hard these days for utilities to take the praise publicly.”

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Robert L. Bradley Jr.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and CEO of Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit that has received funding from Koch family foundations and the oil and gas industry. Bradley spent nearly 20 years in the business world, including 16 years at Enron where he served as corporate director of public policy analysis, and as a speech writer for Kenneth L. Lay. In February, Bradley published commentary on the IER website attacking the Green New Deal and warning that it would lead the U.S. to becoming a “police state” and ultimately a failed state.
Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database or our new Koch Network Database.