Does “rotten to the core” apply ...?

From an Article by Corbin Hiar, E & E News, June 18, 2020

‘White environmental extremists’ is an off-base epitaph

Derrick Hollie is the president of Reaching America, a nonprofit group whose tax-exempt status was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service in 2017 because it repeatedly failed to file required annual reports.

Since then, Hollie has testified twice in the House Natural Resources Committee against efforts to transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. At a February 2019 hearing, he denied receiving any funding from fossil fuel companies or corporations.

“With black communities ablaze, the same nearly uniformly white environmental extremists assure us of their solidarity while at the same time trying to kill high-paying oil and gas jobs that have been the cornerstones of progress in lifting up working-class minority communities,” Hollie was quoted as saying in the CRC email to journalists. “Any program such as their Green New Deal that makes energy more expensive or jeopardizes jobs is counter-productive, reckless, and wrong.”

Reaching America is based in Bennsville, Md., but its sparse website is registered to Domains By Proxy LLC, an Arizona firm that shields the identities of web address owners.

CRC also has a limited online presence.

The group is led by Leonard Leo, President Trump’s informal adviser on judicial nominees, and Greg Mueller, a conservative communications executive. The firm recently hired two Trump White House communications staffers and a Fox News veteran. CRC’s website lists no staff, clients or contact information.

Although Hollie and his group have a long history with CRC, he denied having a formal role with the firm. “Hell no! I wish I did,” he said with a laugh. “This guy named Jay Hopkins is who I deal with. “I knew CRC had an energy client,” he added. “I didn’t know it was Chevron.”

Hopkins, a senior account manager at CRC, has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Prior to working at CRC, Hopkins did communications for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a think tank established in 1984 by the oil barons Charles and David Koch. The group eventually split and formed the tea party groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

In 2002, Hopkins joined CRC, which was previously known as Creative Response Concepts and CRC Public Relations.

During his time at CRC, he “identified and recruited third-party organizations to serve as surrogates for clients,” “wrote and placed client op-eds in top-line publications,” and “cultivated strong relationships with journalists nationwide, particularly focusing on reporters in energy,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state, has written numerous op-eds over the years in support of the U.S. oil and gas industry as well as Chevron and other CRC clients.

In a 2012 Reuters blog post, Blackwell described Brazilian authorities’ attempt to penalize Chevron for a 3,600-barrel oil leak off the coast of Rio de Janeiro as “one of the most shameless shakedowns of an American company by another country in recent memory.”

Hollie, meanwhile, said that Reaching America works with organizations across the political spectrum. “I don’t appreciate being used as a racial pawn during this time and would appreciate if you leave me out of your vendetta against Chevron and CRC,” he said in a follow-up email.

‘Not being candid’ characterizes Chevron responses

Experts on corporate influence campaigns suggest that CRC is engaged in a shadowy campaign to shape federal policy on climate change. The firm may be “attempting to influence public policy surreptitiously using industry money,” said Marcus Owens, a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP. “I’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years now, so I think I have a fairly well-developed sense of who’s not being candid.”

The involvement of the former Ohio secretary of state, in particular, was an indicator for Owens, the former head of the nonprofit division at the IRS. “You don’t hire Ken Blackwell if what you want to do is run a soup kitchen or truly educate people about anything,” he said. “You hire him if you want to run a political organization and you want to court industry or people who donate to right-of-center causes.”

The oil major’s ongoing involvement with CRC is troubling to some of the company’s shareholders. “If Chevron is hiring public relations companies that are putting out a message that is contrary to what the company is publicly espousing, that is a concern,” said Danielle Fugere, the president of As You Sow. “Just hiring these individuals or these groups for public communications purposes raises red flags.”

Her shareholder advocacy group backed a climate lobbying proposal put forth by the French investment group BNP Paribas Asset Management at Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting last month.

It called for the oil company’s board of directors to issue a report describing “if, and how, Chevron’s lobbying activities (direct and through trade associations) align” with the goal of the Paris Agreement, which calls for limiting average global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Chevron’s board urged shareholders to vote against the resolution because the company “shares the concerns of governments and the public about climate change risks” and “adheres to the highest ethical standards when engaging in lobbying and political activities.”

A majority of its investors, however, backed the proposal.

Comey, the Chevron spokesman, indicated that the company doesn’t plan to detail its work with CRC in the climate lobbying report shareholders requested. “They help us with communications,” he wrote, referring to CRC. “They are not involved in lobbying.”

David Pellow, the African-American director of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s global environmental justice project, argued that Chevron’s involvement with CRC shows the oil company is more focused on countering support for the Green New Deal than helping communities of color.

With the U.S. in recession and tens of millions of Americans out of work, “the Green New Deal is now looking much more reasonable as a proposal,” he said. “And that’s got to have big polluters worried.”

Chevron has been criticized for its slow response to the widespread protests over police violence against people of color. The company released a statement on racial injustice on June 5 — two days after CRC pitched a story attacking a resolution that seeks to address that issue and combat climate change.

Comey said that “it’s important that we face and address the systemic racism and discrimination that denies African Americans equal access to opportunities for advancement.” Chevron, he added, is leading by example: “For more than 25 years, diversity and inclusion have been a part of our corporate culture.”

But Pellow, who is also the chairman of UC-Santa Barbara’s environmental studies department, said the company’s actions speak louder than its words. “If you’re perpetrating climate disruption, as Chevron is, then you’re also perpetrating racial injustice,” he said. People of color “the world over are being harmed disproportionately by climate change.”

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See also: Chevron’s Slick Statement on Racial Injustice Makes No Sense, Drew Costley, OneZero, June 11, 2020

The company’s recent ‘Black Lives Matter’ message doesn’t jive with its actions

Why does Dominion Energy have SO MUCH MONEY?

From an Article by Sarah Rankin, Associated Press, March 8, 2018

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Civic leaders in town after town along the 600-mile (966-kilometer) route of a proposed natural gas project have posed for similar photographs, smiling and accepting poster-sized checks from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Dominion Energy says it’s being a good neighbor by handing out $2 million in grants of around $5,000 to $10,000 in communities affected by its joint venture with fellow energy giants Duke Energy and Southern Co.

But critics say Dominion is buying support on the cheap to outflank opponents of the project, which would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia, North Carolina, and potentially further south at a cost that’s swelling to as much as $6.5 billion.

“It continues to astonish me how tiny these grants are and how ready people are to sell their souls,” said Hope Taylor, executive director of Clean Water for North Carolina, a nonprofit fighting the pipeline.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press as well as interviews with company officials, supporters and opponents, show the considerable lengths Dominion has gone to as it builds support for its largest capital project. The company says its grant program is charity, and not part of what it calls its largest outreach program in Dominion history.

“We wanted to make sure our side is adequately told,” said Bruce McKay, who as senior energy policy director for Richmond-based Dominion oversees the project’s public affairs. He calls the outreach necessary in part because of the pipeline’s complex, multijurisdictional nature and growing opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure.

Dominion is the leading percentage owner of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, responsible for its construction and operation. So far, only some trees have been cleared, but the project aims to go online as early as late 2019, according a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Supporters say the pipeline will meet a critical need for natural gas — primarily for power generation — in a region with constrained supplies. They say it will create jobs, boost economic development and support a shift from coal.

Opponents say it will harm the environment, and contend developers are overstating the need to build a project for which regulators will allow them to recoup a handsome return on their investments.

Even federal regulators (FERC) were divided on whether it’s in the public interest, voting 2-1 for approval in a rare split decision.

Publicly announced in September 2014, the pipeline quickly gained bipartisan backing. By 2015, one executive with a pipeline partner told South Carolina’s regulators at a commission hearing that the public support was “about as good as you can get.”

But Dominion was just getting started: It says its largest-ever outreach program has included 225,000 direct-mail pieces; community meetings; TV, radio and print ads; and social media use to reach more than 35,000 followers, according to an October presentation posted on Dominion Energy Transmission Inc.’s website.

McKay, who wouldn’t reveal the program’s overall cost, delivered some “lessons learned” in the presentation, including this advice: “Must create and maintain a political environment which allows permitting agencies to do their work,” and, “If you want fair media coverage you need to pay for it.”

McKay also denies any quid pro quo for campaign donations, saying Dominion simply gives to candidates who support sound energy policy.

The five Virginia lawmakers who signed a letter last year urging regulators to approve the pipeline have together taken more than $1 million from Dominion for themselves or their PACs during their careers, according an AP accounting of records maintained by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

Dominion also has worked closely with local officials and generated plenty of local media coverage through its Community Investment Program. In an interview, McKay insisted the grants to health foundations, land trusts, charities and other local groups shouldn’t be considered lobbying.

But at least some communications have acknowledged the optics.

Gary Brown, economic development director of Northampton County, North Carolina, emailed a pipeline public-relations manager working on the grant program to suggest that a poster-size check should show three grants’ combined total.

“As it is a show piece, how about a prop check written to ‘Northampton County’ for the total of all grants — larger total — bigger image — greater perceived impact,” Brown wrote in an email obtained by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League through a public-records request and provided to AP.

Brown, who testified in favor of the pipeline at public hearings, is board president of an automotive research center that received a $1,680 grant, the progressive news outlet NC Policy Watch reported.

In at least three other instances, grants have gone to organizations run by or affiliated with pipeline boosters.

For example, after the Boys & Girls Club of Lumberton received a $10,000 grant that helped repair hurricane damage, Executive Director Ron Ross testified in support of the pipeline at a North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality meeting. He said his support had nothing to do with money. “We didn’t ask them if they wanted to give us money — they asked us,” Ross said.

In one North Carolina county, Dominion representatives planned a helicopter tour of a northern Virginia compressor station for two commissioners, documents obtained by AP show. In another, the county manager and other “supporters” were invited to dinner at a swanky former plantation, emails show.

Other emails obtained through a public-records request show an administrator in Buckingham County, Virginia, frequently alerted a Dominion employee to news or complaints. In one, the administrator predicted an outspoken pipeline critic would “be a problem.”

Another email says Dominion wrote a letter for a county supervisor to sign supporting the conversion of conservation easements — which are supposed to forever protect land from development — for use for the pipeline. The emails suggested printing it on Buckingham County letterhead for a Dominion worker to hand-deliver to the decision-making agency.

McKay says opposition from organized, well-funded environmental groups made all this outreach necessary.

David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said that’s a false comparison. He said: “What ties all of these stories together is, Dominion is trying to con people, trying to con their own customers and policymakers and legislators, because the arguments don’t stand up on the merits.”

Chesapeake Energy

Commentary by S. Tom Bond of Lewis County, WV.

The United States seems to be moving back toward the Middle Ages when truth came from Authority – meaning the Medieval Church and the King, who was essentially anyone who, with his buddies, could field more thugs than anyone else.

“True” statements then involved no necessity to demonstrate connection to the physical world, only to the pronouncements of “Authority.” If your statement did not conjoin with the dominant theme, you were simply pounded into place. Frequently a place underground.

Today’s “news” has given up analysis for the valueless “he said, she said” format, or to simply massaging the advertisers. After all, the outward purpose of “news” is to entertain and the inward purpose is to make money. This results in consolidation of the media – money-making winner take all. Do I need to mention Rupert Murdoch?

We are used to pharmaceutical company advertising, which was forced to mention side effects, some of them pretty horrifying, only after jumping to advertising directly to potential customers. Or chemical companies, which advertise plastics without mentioning bisphenol A or other endocrine disrupters given off by many other products.

And of course, there is political advertising, which is a quintessence of self-interest masquerading as economic principle or ethical balance. One of the mysteries of psychology is how people can so easily be convinced to support platforms diametrically opposed to their own interests. Obviously it’s done by advertising to people who have their minds turned off. But how is it accomplished so easily?

Shale advertising appears everywhere. I recently turned to a Moscow newspaper hoping to get the Russian view on an event written in English. The entire paper was in Russian, except… get this, and ad to invest in shale drilling!  Here in the U. S. there are two or three booster ads on the local news broadcast each night, telling how great it is. There are some in the newspapers, others on billboards along the highway and on many of the sites you open on the internet.

The universal characteristic of advertising is that it presents the product as the advertiser wants it. Tobacco ads and drug ads are under federal constraint, but otherwise the advertiser calls the tune. If there is a different view it can be countered in this medium only by some entity paying for the counter-advertising.

The dirty aspects of shale drilling, such as aquifer and stream damage, devaluation of property, interference with other industries, long term and health effects, just disappear under the blitzkrieg of ads and lesser news-entertainment.

The authority appealed to, of course, is “business.” The vast sums ($126 billion a year average over the last six years, according to Ernst and Young) gotten from investors who only want a quick and large return, allow vast sums for shaping public opinion by advertising. As they say, “It’s great to be the King!”

The $13 billion in subsidies awarded to hydrocarbon fuels by the United States, helps, too. Why should mature, profitable industries be getting subsidies? The world-wide figure is $58.7 billion, so the US is not the only country pumping money from it’s citizens to aid the pollution from burning carbon.

What can we do? We need to keep working to raise the consciousness of those around us. The sun did not go around the earth in the Middle Ages, and aquifers are not safe today. No matter who says the opposite. It will come out eventually. But sooner is better, because more of the Earth is being harmed all the time.

We need publicity, we need political action, and we need to work together with the several hundred groups trying to regulate shale drilling in the US and the dozens of others all over the world. The truth is on the ground everywhere shale drilling is tried, and the authority is concentrated in a few companies and a few banks. Truth will come out, but until it is recognized, damages will continue.

If you missed the Oil and Natural Gas Expo in Morgantown yesterday and you want to imagine what it was like, combine a career fair, a PR campaign, a press conference, and a trade fair.  Throw in a little carnival food, some heavy industrial equipment, and the image in your mind should come close to the experience.

A map of booths both indoors and outdoors, including lists of participants, is available on the expo’s website.  The 200+ indoor displays included companies directly related to gas drilling and production operations, and a myriad of related services such as security companies, insurance companies, accounting firms, and companies that manufacture work uniforms.

A jar of waste water from a frack job. Please contact us if you find an oil and gas PR campaign displaying this kind of vivid honesty.

Outside booths featured ground moving equipment, cranes, a water storage container, a brine tanker truck, and most notably, a drill rig set up in the parking lot.  Visitors could get up close and personal with the equipment, generating a better sense of the huge scale of shale gas well pad operations, and even hold a jar of fracking waste water while asking questions of the company that cleans and recycles it.

Three forums were held throughout the day, and at least two of them “Expansion an Development in West Virginia,” and “Responding to Regulation,” resounded a theme that the gas industry has some catching up to do with damage it has caused both physically, and as a trustworthy participant in the community.  Speaking during “Expansion and Development in West Virginia,” Scott Rotruck, Chesapeake Energy’s vice president for corporate development admitted that the company tore roads to pieces in Wetzel County and is just now investing in improving and repaving them.  (Read more about the forum here…) At the “Responding to Regulation,” forum, James Walls of Spillman, Thomas, & Battle, PLLC, who represented Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) in the civil suit against the Morgantown city ordinance, spoke of the pressing need for increased transparency in the industry, and the consequences they are facing now from failing to have done a better job of it.  Nothing notable was actually expressed regarding industry stances on regulation; although, in responding to a question, Walls said confidently that there will be a public comment period included in the permitting process– the needed length of which, he said, was debatable.

Give the public more transparency, and fewer catchy phrases

Overall, what can a concerned citizen come away with from a visit to the expo? Industry should save their money wasted on insulting our intelligence through PR campaigns like “Just Beneath the Surface,” and instead provide more opportunities such as this one, where we can learn about the industry first-hand from the people on the ground and behind the scenes.  The expo was an excellent and rare opportunity to speak with equipment operators and industry professionals in person, ask questions, and get specific answers instead practiced televised responses.

As reported today in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the gas industry companies are  reaching out to communities via fairs and other projects.  These global giants are looking to improve local ties.   Projects in West Virginia may well have influenced the Wellsburg city council to remove the ban on drilling and fracking within the city limits.  New Martinsville has now removed a ban.  And, the Morgantown ban has been overturned in the local Circuit Court.

At a conference in Morgantown in June, the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia touted their new “Just Beneath the Surface” campaign and website.  President Mike McCown said it’s designed to provide factual information to anti-drilling groups he referred to as “wing nut organizations … friends of the whatever” – groups that he argues should be supporting one of the state’s most promising economic engines.

In the Northern Panhandle, local residents have seen natural gas explosions, fires, spills, traffic accidents, allegedly unauthorized earthmoving and alleged drinking water contamination as a result of the drilling.  Yet McCown insisted that “Our industry is safe.”  He said,  “I take accidents very seriously. We must keep our people and our environment safe.”  Then, “We understand there is a disturbance to the area, but the benefit is of a much greater value,” he added of the drilling.

The Marcellus “drilling news” out of Binghamton, NY has been reporting on landowner groups and issues. Barbara Jarmoska lives in a “Marcellus sacrafice zone” in north-central Pennsylvania.  She lives on 20 acres of rural PA land and will not lease because of the risks and potential damages to this land.  She asks, what are the true costs of Marcellus fracking? A family in western PA has recently reported that drilling has contaminated their water supply, saying that their water has started turning black.

Tina Spencer Wooddell in Taylor County, WV, recently received copies of five (5) permits in the mail for her property, from the same company who has had two spills onto this property from the neighbors land, in the last eight months. These permits show her water well placed between two pits. She and her husband own the surface land only. She said, “They want to take up the entire back part of our farm, some of the pretties views we have and right above a watershed.”

The WV Surface Owners Rights Organization has already described “the industrialization of rural West Virginia” due to the development of shale gas in the State.  A royalty owners meeting is set for the Greenbrier Hotel on September 7 thru 9  at which advice on solving royalty underpayments will be presented.  NOTE:  See also The Human Story in the Impacts section of this web-site: /impacts/the-human-story/

As the rhetoric heats up over natural gas drilling in West Virginia’s portion of the Marcellus shale field and opposition to the unconventional deep wells grows, the industry is cranking up the public relations machine. At a conference in Morgantown on June 21st, the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia touted its 4-week-old “Just Beneath the Surface” campaign and website.

Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, said that industry can no longer afford to ignore people who fear its operations. Instead, it must understand their concerns, educate them and provide transparency about drilling operations.

Tapping the Marcellus reserves requires unconventional technology, horizontal drilling, as well as hydraulic fracturing. Drillers pump high volumes of water mixed with chemicals and sand into wells to crack the rock, creating fissures that release the gas. Industry insists the practice is safe, but opponents fear the possibility of water contamination as well as air pollution, road destruction and other problems.

For generations, DeMarco said, the gas industry shunned publicity. “Now, we have an instance where the public is aware of what we’re doing,” he said. Opposition is driven by “the fear of the unknown,” he said, “and we weren’t doing a very daggone good job of letting them know what we were doing.”

Road damage, heavy truck traffic and other facets of the drilling industry have disrupted the quality of life for many rural residents, DeMarco acknowledged, “and now everybody’s looking at us.” “If you live on a rural West Virginia road and you’ve now got potholes as deep as this tabletop, life is not so good for you,” he said. “This industry has a bright future … but we’ve got to get the thing done right.”