The Diaster Capitalism Response to Russia-Ukraine

On February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, one of the world's most powerful petro states, gave the gas industry a lifeline.

The month long buildup of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine has turned now into an invasion Ukraine under attack.

It was an echo of Russia's invasion of Crimea back in twenty fourteen. Back then, the world was caught off guard by Russia's aggression. Even the fossil fuel companies, which lost millions when the US imposed stiff sanctions on Russia, and US oil companies like Exxonmobile found themselves holding assets worth nothing. This time, the industry was ready with a proactive response.

I think on February twenty fourth, I freaked out because within hours of Putin's invasion, just watching serious patterns like emerge where you know, API and other trade associations were echoing similar talking points immediately, anti Biden talking points, anti renewable energy talking points.

Christine Arena is a public relations expert who previously worked as a VP for Edelman PR back when the firm was handling the account for the American Petroleum Institute, or API. She left that job in twenty fifteen and has a new gig.

Now really been focused for the last seven years on climate accountability, and that is helping lawmakers to assess greenwash climate disinformation, how it occurs, how it spreads, and how it's working.

And there was a lot of questionable messaging to observe over the past few months. First, for some context, even before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the industry was lobbying the White House for weak sanctions. They wanted to avoid a repeat of the losses they suffered after Russia's invasion of Crimea. The day after the invasion, industry groups were ready lng allies, and the American Exploration and Production Council wrote a joint letter to President Biden urging support of the US natural

There were a number of proxies repeating the same talking points, and then there was like a media creative produced including ads on television.

Media creative, by the way, is pr industry speak for ads and branded graphics.

And I just felt this very eerie sense that this was just too coordinated given the timeframe from the triggering event when Putin invaded to the release of this creative. The intervals were too tight, the messages were too word for word. This is an organized disinformation effort geared towards affecting policy in the short term.

That made Arena reach out to the folks at Influence Map, a think tank that measures the impact of corporate lobbying on climate policy around the world.

I'm fee Holda and I'm a program manager at influence Map. We track around three hundred and fifty companies and one hundred and fifty industry associations on a weekly basis for any evidence of engagement with either climate policies or the broader debate on climate change.

I spoke with both Holder and Arena in early May before Influence Map publicly released what they discovered about the industry's recent messaging. Influence Map also looped in the group's Media Matters and Triple Check to do a comprehensive media and social media listening campaign. In other words, they looked at everywhere industry spokespeople and their proxies were turning up, what they were seeing, when, and how much impact it all had.

For a media campaign where you're engaging different stakeholders and you're writing the talking points, if you want your proxies, you know, other political officials, other organizations to repeat the same talking points, that takes a lease through weeks. If you're producing a creative ad that is on television, that could take two months plus in a tight timeline, it takes the time to prepare that to pitch producers to get Mike Summers on TV.

Mike Summers is the President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute or API U us on TV a bunch this spring to.

Coach all of the different individuals who are again repeating API talking points word for word that takes some time a coordination. I do personally believe that the communications pieces were put into place and ready to go prior to February twenty fourth, and that the fossil fuel industry knew it stood to benefit from Russia's war, not just in terms of near term gas prices, but you know, a shorter term policy graph.

In the week of the Ukraine invasion, we've seen a resurgence of the Bridgefield narrative, but we've also seen a new form of mess one that almost makes greenwashing seem point. That's our story today. This is the finale of season six, Part two. The new climate villains stay with us.

One that we saw a lot of was blaming climate policies for the decrease in a supply of oil, which then led to this increase in gas prices. And these arguments were kind of going on before the war in Ukraine began, but quickly got tied together.

That's influenced maps Fayholder describing one of the key industry talking points that took hold of this spring. Here's American Petroleum Institute President Mike Summers talking to CNBC as Putin began to build up troops and weaponry alone the Ukraine border in late twenty twenty one. You can hear them already here blaming climate policies for increasing gas prices.

There are a lot of factors at play as to why energy prices are surging, but certainly one of the key factors is that the Biden administration has made an effort to reduce production in the United States. One of their first acts, for example, was cutting off the Keystone XL pipeline. One of their second acts was cutting off leasing and permitting on federal lands, and then they cut off access to anwar in Alaska.

And here he is making the same point in an interview on CBS post Ukraine invasion in early March.

The most important thing that we can do right now is really focus on increasing supply here in the United States, and that means adopting a regulatory framework that advances American energy leadership.

And Mike, what exactly would that look like.

But we have to remember at the beginning of the Biden administration, they did a couple of big things that really dampened the amount of oil and gas that we were producing in the United States. You know, first they cut off the Keystone XCEL pipeline. Then they put a moratorium on leasing and permitting on federal lands and on offshore waters, and then they cut off supply from the

That is some consistent messaging and creative spin given the reality. For the record, about twenty five percent of fossil fuel drilling happens on public lands. The rest is entirely controlled by private companies. The fossil fuel industry is sitting on at least a decade's worth of unused leases, so it's unlikely that a lack of new leases has impacted current production or supply. Now let's talk about the Keystone XL pipeline.

Not so.

The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to transport Tarsans oil from Canada to export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. Two thirds of that oil was earmarked for non US customers. Had the pipeline not been canceled, it would have come online by about twenty twenty six, so the idea that it would play a huge role in oil supply in twenty twenty two is ridiculous. And now the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge or ANMAR, the holy grail of US oil companies.

Fix the issue with gas prices. The answer was then to increase the supply of oil and gas, and that's where Ukraine then got brought in because increasing the supply of oil and gas, according to the oil and gas companies, would also increase energy security energy independence, and we started seeing those narratives really being brought into play, particularly through large ad campaigns and from the industry associations, in particular American Patronum Institute being the big one.

According to Holder and Arena, there were three dominant messages that emerged in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. First, climate policies were responsible for high gas prices. Then increased production is the answer to both lower gas prices and increased national security. And then a third one that was new and somewhat surprising. Here's Christine Arena again to explain.

The notion that it's activists and woke people they should be the ones to fight climate change. You know, it's not relevant for real Americans. This notion that president and cares more about climate activists than he does about real Americans. So there's a concerted push around these narratives.

Leveraging crises to increase profits is nothing new for the fossil fuel industry or any other industry. It's what the author Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism, and the oil and gas guys are experts at it. Client says watching their response to Hurricane Katrina back in two thousand and five is actually what drew her into the climate conversation.

In the aftermath of these shocking events like wars, economic crises, and increasingly natural disasters, there is a kind of corporate feeding frenzy. That was certainly the case in New Orleans after Katrina. So I went there because Halliburton was there, and Blackwater was there, and Bechte was there, and the charter school movement was there, and all of these private real estate developers were there, and it was just like this in saying, freeding frenzy before the water had even

Disaster capitalism has only intensified since then, and what's happened in the week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a perfect example. Researchers not only looked at what messages took hold and when, but also at who was sharing and amplifying these messages. Seven companies and trade groups dominated the news cycle, including some usual suspects like API, The

It's just so incredible. At the same time natural gas is being mass marketed as the world's greenest effort, the industry leadership is out there talking about how harmful it is an anti American it is to view any discussion through the lens of climate change.

Holder says it's new to see gas industry spokespeople playing a similar role to the rest of the fossil fuel industry.

I think the.

Gas industry has definitely got a lot louder and more active in the past few years, and you can see that precisely through companies like SEMPRA, and i'd also mention American Gas Association. I think I've been at influenced map tracking companies and industry associations for nearly four years now, and I maybe head of American Gas Association in the past two years, which not say they didn't exist before, but they've just got a lot more active.

That timing, as we've noted in this season, parallels the spread of gas bands in the last couple of years.

I think maybe the gas industry is starting to feel the heat a bit more around their culpability for climate change. Yeah, as is kind of evidenced by these gas bands, and so I wonder whether it's maybe they're going on the defense of a bit more in that similar vein that API has done for a long time, and US Chamber and those kind of groups that have always represented oil particularly joining that effort.

These messages from trade groups and utility presidents might not seem like a big deal, but when they're amplified via advertising and proxy spokespeople, they can reach really large audiences.

We've seen a heavy, heavy use of social media, both in advertising and organic content, and it's definitely a key strategy and outlet for the oil and gas sector. I think they feed off each other nicely. A lot of the things that are retweeted by API, for instance, are Mike Summers on folk News, So it's almost the way that they can come at it from both angles cover the widest audience.

Yeah, we're seeing that in the data. That's what the

According to the Influence Map report, in the weeks leading up to and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the American Petroleum Institute alone ran at least six hundred and fifty one ads on Facebook, many of which promoted the role of American gas and oil being essential for energy independence. Their ads reached around ten percent of Facebook users. To put that in context, the biggest advice on the platform tend to deliver at the absolute most about five percent

Six hundred and fifty one Facebook ads in that short time period. That's a big buy. It's unusual. But then if you look at Twitter for media matters in triple check, their data shows that misinformation peaked, you know, February twenty fourth. Literally there's a huge peak where we get to one hundred fossil fuel misinformation posts that yielded over five million likes, comments, and shares.

The most important number in all of this, though, is a pretty small one twenty. That's the number of days between the launch of the Industry's Russia Ukraine campaign and the industry Tree's first policy wins. Those started with the liquefied natural gas or LNG decisions. The Department of Energy granted long term permits to increase the volume of LNG exported from two key terminals on March sixteenth.

So that's two weeks maybe from the start of the crisis. During this whole situation, there was a new climate policy up for discussion at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that would have required new gas pipelines to take into account the impacts on climate change and local communities. That just got completely rolled back.

That decision was followed by one to roll back climate requirements on pipelines, and then more permits for new export terminals. Then March twenty fifth, twenty twenty two, Biden announced an even bigger win for the industry, a deal with the European Union for American producer to supply an extra fifteen billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe in twenty twenty two.

Thirty, allegedly to help wean them off Russian energy, but certainly to the US natural gas industry's advantage. And so that's just a little over four weeks. That's a very short interval, and I feel that interval should alarm lawmakers, it should alarm people in the climate community. That's disaster capitalism. I think you could call it a disinformation driven heist of public policy.

The US EU LNG deal will make the US the world's largest exporter of gas. It was already the world's largest producer. And that deal was announced the same week that the Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the typically conservative International Energy Agency announced that we simply cannot engage in any new fossil fuel development and keep warming

There were new rigs even before he made that announcement, but now it's just the horizon is filled with new drilling rigs. It is booming again.

You might remember Sharon Wilson, an anti fracking activist in Texas who we heard from in an earlier episode this season. She's been out this spring with her thermal imaging camera to see what the gas industry is up to in Texas's Permian Basin. She says, without even looking for new rigs, she capped CNM.

We saw at least sixty, oh my god, sixty new rigs, I mean it. And every single site we looked at with the camera was major pollution. Miguel drove and I pointed the thing out the window.

Miguel is Migueliscoto, Wilson's colleague at the environmental nonprofit Earthworks.

The increase of production. The skyrocketing of production is immediately visible. We would drive from Odessa to Big Spring, which is about an hour long drive, and almost at every point in the horizon while you're driving through this highway you see new drilling rigs and.

I'd go, oh my god, it looked like a war zone. There was black plumes of pollution coming from every site. We are going the wrong way so fast that it's mind boggling. We're seeing a whole bunch of new sites go in which we don't need. But the thing that's so horrifying is we've got all of these existing sites emitting methane and VOCs like crazy. I mean, just huge plumes that take up the whole sky. And then they're just drilling more.

Yeah, I mean, does it seem to you like they're going backwards on methane emissions too.

It's actually it has gotten worse. It's worse. You cannot reduce methane by continuing to produce more methane.

Yet, once again the industry has convinced a lot of talking heads that gas is a critical part of any climate solution. Here's Simpra Infrastructure president Dan Briette making that point on Bloomberg TV, CNN and CNBC's squawk Box.

And natural gas is a perfect complement to renewable technologies, not only here in the United States but all around the world. The transition is more than just going again from natural gas or fossil fuels to one hundred percent renewables. It's going to be adding new energy, and natural gas is a part of that.

We are still hurtling towards sort of a climate reckoning, just based on a zeitgeist that we're in right now.

But that's again where natural gas can have a very positive impact.

And here's Feyholder again, definitely a big effort to betray gas as green.

I think one of the quotes that we found from it was an executive vice president and EQT Corporation described exporting US LNG as the largest green initiative on the planet.

So to recap, in just under three months, the gas industry has managed to put a stop to any regulation that might have held back its continued growth, stopped even pretending to do anything about methane emissions, expanded production in a major way, all while simultaneously convincing the public and politicians that gas is green energy. And that only woke libs care about climate change anyway. It's breathtaking how well this campaign worked. Oh and gas prices, yeah, they're still high.