Top officials at four major oil companies are testifying
before the House Oversight Committee, along with leaders of the industry’s top
lobbying group and the US Chamber of Commerce. Company officials were expected
to renew their commitment to fighting climate change.
The much-anticipated hearing comes after months of public
efforts by Democrats to obtain documents and other information on the oil
industry’s role in stopping climate action over multiple decades. The
appearance of the four oil executives — from ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America
and Shell — has drawn comparisons to a high-profile hearing in the 1990s with
tobacco executives who famously testified that they didn’t believe nicotine was
addictive.
“The fossil fuel
industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change since
at least 1977. Yet for decades, the industry spread denial and doubt about the
harm of its products — undermining the science and preventing meaningful action
on climate change even as the global climate crisis became increasingly dire, ″
said Carolyn Maloney and Ro Khanna.
Maloney chairs the Oversight panel, while Khanna leads a
subcommittee on the environment.
More recently, Exxon, Chevron and other companies have taken
public stances in support of climate actions while privately working to block
reforms, Maloney and Khanna charged. Oil companies frequently boast about their
efforts to produce clean energy in advertisements and social media posts
accompanied by sleek videos or pictures of wind turbines.
The industry “spends billions to promote climate
disinformation through branding and lobbying″ that is increasingly outsourced
to trade groups, “obscuring their own roles in disinformation efforts,” the
lawmakers said.
Democrats have focused particular ire on Exxon, after a
senior lobbyist for the company was caught in a secret video bragging that
Exxon had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and had targeted
influential senators in an effort to weaken President Joe Biden’s climate
agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate and
social policy bill currently moving through Congress.
Keith McCoy, a former Washington-based lobbyist for Exxon,
dismissed the company’s public expressions of support for a proposed carbon tax
on fossil fuel emissions as a “talking point.”
McCoy’s comments were made public in June by the
environmental group Greenpeace UK, which secretly recorded him and another
lobbyist in Zoom interviews. McCoy no longer works for the company, an Exxon
spokesperson said last month.
Darren Woods, Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, has
condemned McCoy’s statements and said the company stands by its commitment to
work on finding solutions to climate change.
Woods is among the chief executives set to testify Thursday,
along with BP America CEO David Lawler, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth and Shell President
Gretchen Watkins.
Casey Norton, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, said the company
has cooperated with the Oversight panel, adding: “ExxonMobil has long acknowledged
that climate change is real and poses serious risks.″
In addition to substantial investments in “next-generation
technologies,” the company also advocates for responsible climate-related
policies, Norton said.
“Our public statements about climate change are, and have
been, truthful, fact-based, transparent and consistent with the views of the
broader, mainstream scientific community at the time, ″ he said.
Maloney and Khanna compared tactics used by the oil industry
to those long deployed by the tobacco industry to resist regulation “while
selling products that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.″
The oil industry’s “strategies of obfuscation and
distraction span decades and still continue today,″ Khanna and Maloney said in
calling the hearing last month. The five largest publicly traded oil and gas
companies reportedly spent at least US$ one billion from 2015 to 2018 “to
promote climate disinformation through ‘branding’ and lobbying,” the lawmakers
said.
Bethany Aronhalt, a spokeswoman for API, said the group’s
president, Mike Sommers, welcomes the opportunity to testify and “advance our
priorities of pricing carbon, regulating methane and reliably producing
American energy.”
