By some ways of thinking, affiliation with the oil and gas industry discredits whatever a person might say on the subject of energy. When an industry representative comments on an energy issue, too many politicians and reporters too frequently reject the message as tainted by vested interest or worse. A measure of skepticism is of course appropriate when economic interests are at play. But interests of that type often accompany valuable expertise, especially with oil and gas, about which outsiders tend to be strikingly uninformed.
Anything beyond rudimentary understating of oil and gas, in fact, nearly always comes from someone with a financial interest in the subject, even if it's just a wage. Antagonists easily exploit the insularity: Don't listen to the oil and gas industry, they say; connection with the industry makes information unworthy of attention. This tactic, to the regrettable extent it succeeds in muffling the industry's political voice and expertise, exposes the US to costly mistakes on energy.
Industry protests
Last month Greenpeace tried to discredit by association an oil industry protest of the "cap-and-trade" bill passed by the House to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The activist group flaunted a leaked e-mail from American Petroleum Institute Pres. Jack N. Gerard to members of the trade association describing plans for rallies in 20 states. Among other things, Gerard asked member companies to encourage their employees to participate in the campaign, known as Energy Citizens.
Greenpeace tried to portray the initiative as sinister fraud. Mistakenly suggesting that API instigated the rallies alone, the group complained of an "astroturf campaign" to imply a departure from the "grassroots" real thing. With typical charm, it dismissed warnings about costs of the House bill as "lies."
To be sure, Greenpeace would want no one to believe a new study prepared for API by EnSys Energy of Lexington, Mass., on the cap-and-trade bill's effects on US refining. The study points out that the bill gives refiners the compliance obligation for 43% of covered emissions by making them responsible for not only their own emissions but also those associated with use of their products. Yet the bill allocates to refiners only 2.25% of the emission allowances to be available at no cost to industrial emitters of greenhouse gases at the start of the program. Emanating from so tilted a structure, expressed worries about cost, even from an industry with a vested interest, cannot be ignored as mere "lies."
According to EnSys, the bill would cut total US refinery throughput by as much as 4.4 million b/d by 2030 while increasing throughput outside the US by 3.3 million b/d. It would slash US refining investments by up to $89.7 billion/year—a decline of as much as 88%. And it would cut refinery utilization rates from 83.3% to as low as 63.4%. The broader economic effects, which the study didn't address, are easy to predict: lost US jobs and incomes and lower tax receipts by governments in refining centers, especially on the Gulf Coast and in California; rising imports of oil products; and higher prices for consumers.
Apparently more important to Greenpeace than warnings like these was that its friends see the August industry rallies as corporate manipulation of workforce pawns. In a press release, the group decried "the US oil industry's secret plans to have oil workers attend anti-US climate action rallies masquerading as concerned ‘energy citizens.'"
Reason for concern
But who was masquerading? Oil and gas industry workers have good reason to call themselves energy citizens. They know more about energy than most fellow citizens writing legislation or news articles on the subject these days. And they have reason to be concerned. Ill-conceived energy legislation, if passed, would put their jobs in jeopardy.
No matter what Greenpeace says, oil workers have the right to protest an assault on their livelihoods and to expect their views to receive more than smirking attention. Indeed, policy-making would improve if politicians and newspeople began listening to what oil and gas professionals have to say about energy, whatever their vested interests.
