Oil and Gas Group Launches Campaign Touting Its Efforts as Good for Climate
In a seven-figure ad buy, API will call for “common ground” on the energy debate in 2020 and beyond, according to a spokesperson. The campaign touts oil and gas energy as a way to reduce climate change by lowering carbon levels.
“The
innovators in America’s natural gas and oil companies have teamed up with the
country’s brightest minds and reduced carbon emissions levels to the lowest in
a generation,” one ad says.
During
an event in Washington on Tuesday, API President and CEO Mike Sommers similarly
stressed the industry’s commitment to fighting climate change while expressing
opposition to a fracking ban endorsed by some Democratic presidential
candidates.
“The
size and scope of the climate challenge requires a tremendous response and it
requires innovation from everyone, including our members,” he said.
Mitch
Jones, the policy director at the environmental group Food & Water Watch,
slammed the API campaign as “laughable.”
“This
is just more of the oil and gas industry’s attempt to greenwash their dirty,
climate-change-forcing industry,” Jones told The Hill.
“The
science says very clearly we have to stop extracting fossil fuels and we have
to stop burning fossil fuels and that includes not only coal, but also oil and
fracked natural gas,” he added.
He
also stressed the need to shift to an economy based on green jobs, saying,
“What we’re talking about is transitioning from a dirty energy sector to a
clean energy sector."
Sommers,
meanwhile, touted his support for carbon capture legislation and API's
environmental partnerships aimed at reducing methane emissions.
He argued, however, that a ban on fracking would threaten millions of jobs and potentially invite a recession for the U.S. economy.