Tag: oil and gas
Big Oil's Dark Money Outfit Targets Democrats

Big Oil's Dark Money Outfit Targets Democrats Over Gas Prices

The dark money group American Action Network has launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign against vulnerable House Democrats, dishonestly blaming them for gasoline prices. The ads make no mention of the group's history of accepting oil and gas industry money.

According to a press release on Wednesday, the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group is spending $2 million on ads against five Democratic incumbents seeking reelection in toss-up districts this November.

The ads against Reps. Marcy Kaptur (OH), Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas (NH), and Frank Mrvan (IN) claim that each is to blame for gasoline prices because they stand with President Joe Biden in opposing unlimited oil and gas drilling.

"This summer the signs are all around us. It was their plan all along," claims the ad against the two New Hampshire representatives, before a clip is shown of President Joe Biden in mid-sentence saying, "... no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period."

The spot urges people to call Kuster and Pappas to tell them to "unleash American energy" and "lower prices."

This out-of-context partial quote comes from a March 2020 Democratic debate, at which Biden said that he would oppose offshore drilling and new drilling leases on public lands.

"Number one, no more subsidies for fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one," he said. CNN has previously debunked claims that that statement indicated a desire to shut down all drilling.

Another new spot by the group attacks Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) with the same misleading partial Biden quote. It claims, "Now gas costs $5 a gallon ... but Dina Titus wanted it to cost more," before playing clip of her saying, "Well, you've got to raise the gas tax."

Titus made the comment in a Feb. 21, 2020, podcast interview as part of a discussion about how to address infrastructure challenges facing the Highway Trust Fund, a federal gas tax-funded source of money for highway construction and mass transit. At the time, gasoline cost less than $2.50 a gallon on average.

She has since signed on a co-sponsor of a bill to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax entirely given the current national price spike.

Though the group blames current prices on the lack of domestic drilling under Biden, experts agree that this is not a major factor.

The cost of gasoline began to rise under former President Donald Trump in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic reduced supply and the reopening of the economy boosted demand. It then went up much more this year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Congress' nearly unanimous decision to suspend Russian oil and gas imports in response.

Democratic lawmakers and consumer groups have also blamed some of the increase on price gouging and greed on the part of oil and gas companies.

The American Action Network was founded in 2010 and is chaired by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who has been a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in recent year. It has spent millions of dollars in dark money on attacking Democrats, supporting Republicans, and opposing fossil fuel regulations.

While it does not disclose its donors, in the ads or elsewhere, public records show that American Action Network and its affiliated American Action Forum think tank have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for the oil and gas industry, and tens of thousands more from the American Natural Gas Alliance.

A spokesperson for the American Action Network did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Obama Protects Federal Land In Utah, Nevada

Obama Protects Federal Land In Utah, Nevada

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Wednesday designated over 1.6 million acres of land in Utah and Nevada as national monuments, protecting two areas rich in Native American artifacts from mining, oil and gas drilling in one of his final moves to protect the environment.

“Today’s actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes,” Obama said in a statement.

Obama used the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect 1.35 million acres of federal land at Bears Ears in Utah and 300,000 acres at Gold Butte outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The move will be difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to reverse.

Utah’s governor and congressional delegation opposed the designation as a national monument, saying it went against the wishes of Utah citizens.

“I am deeply disturbed by what has resulted from a troubling process,” Utah Governor Gary Herbert said in a statement. “The president has misused his authority.” He said the state will “aggressively” challenge the action through administrative, legal and legislative means.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval said he would have preferred a more collaborative approach involving the state’s Congressional delegation, ranchers, environmentalists and community members. However, he recognized the “inevitability” of the designation and worked with federal officials on the proposed boundary and to ensure state water laws were followed.

“My priority was to mitigate any disruption a potential designation may cause the surrounding private land owners, communities and recreationists,” he said in a statement.

Obama has used the Antiquities Act and other measures to protect more land and water than any administration in history, the White House said in a statement.

Various tribes and lawmakers have been trying for years to protect the Bears Ears region, home to a wealth of Native American sacred sites, rock art, ancient cliff dwellings and other areas of cultural significance.

Bears Ears has been home to Hopi, Navajo, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni, whose leaders welcomed the announcement. The designation will allow them continued access to tribal ceremonies, firewood and herb collection, hunting, grazing and outdoor recreation.

“As a coalition of five sovereign Native American tribes in the region, we are confident that today’s announcement of collaborative management will protect a cultural landscape that we have known since time immemorial,” said Alfred Lomahquahu, vice chairman of Hopi Tribe.

Lomahquahu will serve as a co-chair of the new Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which will administer the use of the land with federal and state government partners.

Gold Butte in Nevada is home to both Indian artifacts and American pioneer sites.

“The splendor of Gold Butte will now be protected for all of us. It will be enjoyed for generations to come,” said Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid.

U.S. Representatives Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz, both Republicans, had proposed a land-use bill called the Public Lands Initiative that would have created two national conservation areas for some of Bears Ears but enabled development on other areas.

The House of Representatives did not vote on the bill before recess.

Chaffetz on Wednesday called the designation a “midnight monument,” accusing Obama of a last-minute designation that “cherry picked” parts of his bill “and disregarded the economic development and multi-use provisions necessary for a balanced compromise.”

“We will work to repeal this top-down decision and replace it with one that garners local support and creates a balanced, win-win solution,” he said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici, additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit and Jim Christie in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)

IMAGE: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on the third night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 27, 2016.  REUTERS/Jim Young

NRA Abandons Hunters In Favor Of Oil And Gas Corporations

NRA Abandons Hunters In Favor Of Oil And Gas Corporations

While the National Rifle Association is not best known for its environmental conscientiousness, its self-proclaimed status as “the number-one hunter’s organization in America” does give it a vested interest in preserving wildlife and its habitats. Since 2008, however, this interest has been slowly undermined by the oil and gas industry’s increasingly aggressive contributions to the NRA and other conservative sportsmen’s organizations. According to Matt Lee-Ashley’s recent report for the Center for American Progress, the NRA is joining oil and gas corporations in “reshaping American energy, land, and wildlife policy.”

Last week, Clayton Williams Energy Inc., a large oil company in Texas, made a $1 million contribution to the NRA. This large sum raised the suspicions of New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, who expressed concerns about “both the magnitude and the corporate purpose” of the donation. Stringer’s interest in the matter stems from his role as investment advisor and trustee to the $150 billion New York City Pension Funds, which have more than $3 million invested in the energy company. Given how little a group like the NRA has to do with CWE’s business, it certainly seems that there could be ulterior motives behind the money.

Last Monday, Stringer noted, “The reported contributions are extremely large for such a small company and seem intended to further the political views of its chairman and CEO rather than the interests of the company itself.” And it would appear that the political views of oil and gas companies across the nation are being furthered by their donations to sportsmen’s groups like Safari Club International (SCI) and the NRA.

In 2012 alone, six oil and gas companies — including CWE — contributed between $1.3 and $5.6 million to the NRA. In fact, CWE is the top contributor to the NRA outside of the firearms industry, and ranks as one of the top seven biggest donors overall. CWE’s generosity to the NRA continued despite their significant losses this year (the company is down $24.8 million, or $2.04 per share, according to its annual report).

As the oil and gas industry generously support sportsmen’s groups, they appear to be turning away from their constituencies in favor of the energy industry’s causes — specifically, mining, drilling, and logging in areas previously preserved for wildlife.

In 2011, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) introduced the Wilderness & Roadless Area Release Act, which proposed removing “approximately 43 million acres of Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) and Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs)” from federal protection. These lands would potentially be used for “timber harvests, oil and gas development, [and] motorized recreation.” Hundreds of wildlife managers and scientists, as well as sportsmen’s groups, protested the bill, calling it “an affront to a long-standing public process and our outdoor heritage.”

But despite the NRA and SCI’s supposed dedication to the interests of these individuals, both groups lobbied for the bill.

The bill failed in 2011 and 2012, but in January Rep. Dan Benishek (R-MI) passed a similar bill out of committee (it will soon face a floor vote). Though the National Wildlife Federation called the new bill “nothing more than the sportsmen community being used as a cover to hide an attack on Wilderness, National Monuments, and National Wildlife Refuges,” Susan Recce — director of conservation, wildlife, and natural resources at the NRA — offered her support when she testified on behalf of the bill in front of Congress.

According to the website for the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), the NRA-ILA is expressly involved in issues related to “hunting and access to hunting lands,” as well as “wilderness and wildlife conservation.” One would think that their involvement would be on behalf of their constituents who are interested in keeping their access to hunting lands and in conserving wilderness and wildlife, but their latest moves and lobbying efforts seem to suggest otherwise.

Hunters and anglers have demonstrated their commitment to maintaining federal lands and protecting wild animals and their habitats. A 2012 Colorado College State of the Rockies Conservation in the West poll found that an overwhelming “92 percent of sportsmen – the majority of whom identify as politically conservative or moderate — believe that national parks, forests, monuments and wildlife areas are an ‘essential part’ of the economies of these states.” Moreover, around 60 percent of respondents “also opposed allowing private companies to develop public lands.”

In a separate poll conducted by the Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance, 73 percent of hunters and anglers opposed the sale of “some public lands…as a way to help reduce the budget deficit.”

In spite of their members’ continued opposition to the selling of federal lands, the NRA and CSI have failed to accurately represent their members’ needs. An April report from the Corporate Accountability International and Gun Truth Project entitled, “Bang For Their Buck: How Seven-Figure Donations From Clayton Williams Energy Are Driving the NRA to Turn its Back on Sportsmen” makes it abundantly clear that the NRA and similar organizations have departed from their purported purposes, and are no longer supporting the causes they are meant to uphold.

With the continued influx of money from oil and gas companies, it may only be a matter of time before sportsmen and women across America will no longer have lands on which to practice their sport.

Karen Bleier via AFP

Louisiana Democrat Highlights Independence From Obama In New Ad

Louisiana Democrat Highlights Independence From Obama In New Ad

By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

When Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) of Louisiana assumed the chairmanship of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee this year, it was a major boon to her difficult re-election campaign — placing her in a prominent position to aid her state’s oil and gas industry and strengthening her argument to voters that her seniority is an asset.

A new television ad released by Landrieu on Tuesday hammers that point, reintroducing the three-term Democrat as holding “the most powerful position in the Senate for Louisiana” and demonstrating her independence from the Obama administration — a recurrent theme in her red-state campaign where President Barack Obama has cast a long shadow.

Simultaneously distancing Landrieu from Washington while touting the benefits of her tenure in the Senate, the ad’s narrator argues that she “forced Washington to respect Louisiana.”

“The administration’s policies are simply wrong when it comes to oil and gas production in this nation,” Landrieu says in the opening news clip, shown on a television screen in a kitchen as a young couple washes dishes.

From there, the ad features a string of defiant statements by Landrieu on energy policy that have often set her apart from her Democratic colleagues, such as her criticism of the Interior Department moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill in 2010: “Nothing about this moratorium makes sense,” she says in the clip. “Nothing.”

Republican groups seized Tuesday on the Landrieu campaign’s decision to re-create her statements at a Senate hearing last year where she pressed for her state to get a greater share of federal energy royalties. “They have to sit here and listen to the federal government say we will not share a penny with you. I will not rest until this injustice is fixed,” she says in the ad’s re-enactment.

The statement tracks closely with a statement Landrieu made about two hours and 30 minutes into the original hearing last July, as first noted by the Weekly Standard. But campaign officials said they had to re-enact the moment because of a prohibition on using video shot by Senate cameras in a campaign ad or for other political purposes.

“We did it because Senate ethics rules say you have to,” Landrieu’s campaign manager, Adam Sullivan, said Tuesday. Brad Dayspring, the communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, argued that the ad should have labeled the video as “a dramatization or re-enactment.”

The aggressive tone of Landrieu’s new ad mirrors that of her first ad last fall, which highlighted her legislative proposal to fix Obama’s health care law. Her campaign aired the ad after thousands of Louisiana residents received warnings that their health insurance policies would be canceled because they did not meet the new guidelines under the law.

As a key target in the Republican quest to win back the Senate, Landrieu faces two Republican opponents in the November election and must win more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. The free-market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity has spent more than $3 million so far criticizing Landrieu’s support of the health care law. The Senate Majority PAC, in turn, has spent about $1.56 million on ads against her leading GOP opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy.

The Landrieu campaign has reserved more than $2 million in air time — a move that can lock in a lower rate at this early stage. The campaign is spending about $250,000 on the statewide ad buy this week as Louisianans head toward the Easter holiday. Landrieu had about $7.5 million in cash on hand at the end of the first quarter to Cassidy’s $5 million. (Figures were not available for the Republican challenger running next highest in polls.)

Energy interests have been among the most generous supporters of Landrieu’s campaigns. Between 2009 and 2014, the oil and gas industry was the second highest-ranking industry in contributions to Landrieu’s campaign committee and leadership PAC combined, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. (Landrieu often notes that the oil and gas industry directly or indirectly supports the jobs of about 300,000 people in her state — a fact prominently noted in her ad.)

The utility of her new post on the energy committee was evident last month when Russian President Vladimir Putin put her name on a short list of U.S. lawmakers and officials barred from entering Russia in the midst of the crisis over Ukraine. “I consider this a badge of honor,” Landrieu wrote on her Facebook page, adding that Putin’s action had encouraged her to “redouble my efforts to increase domestic energy production here in the United States and make the U.S. a global leader in energy exports.”

Highlighting another area of difference with the administration last week, she organized a group of Democratic senators — a number of them in tight re-election races — to send a letter to Obama urging him to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline and to announce a decision by May 31. Key Democratic activists have opposed the pipeline, which would carry crude from Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries, while Republicans have been among its strongest supporters.

“This process has been exhaustive in its time, breadth, and scope. It has already taken much longer than anyone can reasonably justify,” Landrieu and her fellow senators wrote about federal reviews of the pipeline project.

 Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT