Drilled Media

“We’re living in a world with a ton of climate storytelling mostly being done by oil and gas industries… a narrative that has been created by very very smart, very creative, very savvy people that has built our understanding of: what’s going on, who’s to blame, what we should do about it.” - Dorothy Fortenberry during the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Rewrite the Future program at our 2024 Conference Check out these partner organizations working to combat climate disinformation through investigative reporting, education, and advocacy: 🔵 Drilled Media 🔵 Creatives for Climate Collective 🔵 Climate Town + Rollie Williams 🔵 Clean Creatives + Fossil Free Media 🔵 Hip Hop Caucus 🔵 The Climate Reality Project 🔵 Beyond Petrochemicals 🔵 Earthjustice

I have been covering the fossil fuel industry for more than 20 years so I'm pretty jaded when it comes to clever accounting and marketing schemes. What I learned about carbon capture over the past several months managed to completely shock me. Some key points: - industry regularly misstates over overstates with the IPCC actually said about carbon capture. What they said was it *might* be necessary for certain hard to abate sectors, and that best-case scenario it could only ever contribute about 2% of emissions reductions needed by 2050. Translated by oil company marketers that's become "the IPCC says carbon capture is critical for reaching net zero." - CCS has been around for a long time under another name, "enhanced oil recovery" or EOR. Oil companies figured out in the 70s that injecting CO2 underground was a good way to clear any remaining oil out of a dwindling reserve. But it was expensive. Solution? rebrand it as a "climate solution" and lobby for a tax credit to fund it. Helps that Joe Manchin rammed it through for them. - 45Q is the largest blind giveaway of government money we've ever seen. There is no cap on it, it's put on tax returns so there's no transparency, no one is verifying how much CO2 is actually sequestered (esp tricky because EOR requires some amount of sequestration for a period of time, too, you're storing it til you need it; the credit pays $85/metric ton for permanently stored CO2 and $60/metric ton for CO2 used in EOR...if no one is checking and everything is self reported, what's to stop anyone claiming the credit from claiming the largest credit? - there's no connection between the tax credit and any climate benefit. if anything it incentivizes oil companies to create more carbon. - it's not structured to actually make it viable for those few hard-to-abate industries like cement, steel or ammonia to use it; it's still expensive to deploy in those contexts. But it's downright cheap for ethanol producers -- only costs them around $30/metric ton so this is as much a lifeline to them as to oil producers. - CO2 pipelines are *dangerous* -- they have "kill zones" around them - as Mark Jacobson discovered in his research, even CCS powered by wind is worse for climate (and air pollution) than just replacing fossil fuel with wind and cutting out the middle man. There's so much more. Story out now from Drilled Media and Vox: https://lnkd.in/g_PP93uE

That woman watching James Inhofe hold a snowball on the floor of Congress to “disprove” global warming? That’s the lead author of the #Project2025 section on destroying the EPA. More details on the plan to end the EPA and stop the U.S. from ever acting on climate change here: https://lnkd.in/dZY7fkA8

A thing that happened last year that I keep meaning to celebrate: Drilled Media was given a 10/10 trust rating by NewsGuard! That rating takes into account an apolitical set of journalistic criteria, from fact-checking processes to transparency about funding. We were named an "unsung hero," in fact. We put a LOT of work into making sure that our stories are well reported and that we're honest with readers and listeners. Most of that work happens entirely behind the scenes, so it's nice to shout about it occasionally, and to have it recognized :)

Important investigative research by Drilled Media examining how fossil fuel companies are shaping climate policy. We must urgently cut fossil fuel interests out of politics (https://lnkd.in/epURNSTi )

“Big oil companies, rather than focus on what we know we can do, focus on things we know can’t be done.” — Raskin sums up the #oilandgas #energy transition #strategy clearly. It’s (evil) genius: a three-ring circus to distract us with false (but shiny!) solutions, while the #industry continues to work hard to grow its market. But the #goodnews is that more and more of us are seeing past the distraction circus (#CCS! #algae! #hydrogen made from #methane!). We know there are so many real, ready-right-now ways to fight #climatechange. We are recognizing the urgent need (and moral imperative!) for real #climate action. We are using our #vote and #voice to demand substantive, sustained policy action from our elected officials. Thanks to the journalists at Drilled Media for the reporting.

If you missed the US Senate hearing yesterday in DC (https://lnkd.in/dZnTUYr8), here's some coverage we recommend: Dharna Noor's piece in The Guardian showing that some senators' climate "denial is still alive and well" (X). https://lnkd.in/ejhNxjea Rebecca Leber's piece for Drilled Media, which outlines some highlights from the two sessions. https://lnkd.in/entSWqWG Bill McKibben's newsletter, where he zeroes in on what's new in the Senate investigation report from Jamie Raskin's presentation: “[T]he far more serious deception around natural gas that’s at the heart of Big Oil’s current efforts to prolong the energy transition.” https://lnkd.in/e57PiN6b Amy Westervelt's tweet, which points out that Big Oil is not using Big Tobacco's playbook. Both used and are using the playbook that Big PR crafted a century ago. https://lnkd.in/eFjQ97RX And Olivia Rosane's story over at Common Dreams about the hearing's focus on “the various ways the industry might be held accountable.” https://lnkd.in/emMk3sEG

The Drilled Media team have come through with powerhouse reporting on this week's critical reports, hearings, and press releases. And this review from Rebecca Leber of today's Senate hearing is the best summary of the key developments that I've read so far. "In the first part of the day, the star witness House Oversight Chair Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said that documents obtained during a joint investigation between House Oversight Committee Democrats and the Senate Budget Committee show Big Oil “acted in a reckless way to protect their profits.” I've just started reading the text of the expert witnesses (https://lnkd.in/eeyZ-di5), and the two I've read so far depressed the hell out of me. But now I'm looking forward to reading Raskin's testimony. "In the second panel, a former federal litigator who led tobacco prosecution said there is more than enough evidence compiled by the Committees for the Department of Justice to get involved." Again, I wasn't looking forward to this testimony as I feel the whole Big Tobacco-Big Oil association has taken the fight against fossil fuels in the wrong direction. But now I'm curious to know details of the case that's coming together in the hope that the Department of Justice will join the fight against Big Oil. Beyond the great reporting in this trio of articles from Drilled Media, they're just fantastically written. These need to be read aloud, like audio books. I don't know why long investigative articles like these aren't made available through subscriptions like podcasts. No matter how much you know, you learn more through great reporting. And this is great reporting and we need to support it. — "Research or Lobbying? New Documents Reveal What Fossil Fuel Companies Are Really Paying for at Top Universities" (https://lnkd.in/et6psXZM) — Molly Taft, April 30, 2024). — "Information Pollution: A Primer" (https://lnkd.in/eifNX8xJ) — Amy Westervelt, May 2, 2024.

A must-read dispatch on today's fossil fuel disinformation hearing from the great Rebecca Leber. "One of the examples Raskin cited was Exxon’s now-defunct scheme to make algae-based biofuels. This was a tiny program in Exxon’s budget, and the company spent roughly half as much on advertising the program as it did on research and development. But the point was the attention, not the impact on emissions. One of the advertising campaigns marketed algae on social media to children. “Kids is an over-performer in terms of our content,” a digital and social media manager wrote in an email circulated among Exxon’s Public and Government Affairs team. “It humanizes ExxonMobil and is in an unexpected format.” Oil companies have also treated carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) as a “shiny flashy object,” according to Raskin. Internally though, company employees messaged that CCUS, a process of capturing carbon dioxide and injecting it underground, isn’t viable. A 2016 presentation for BP noted the technology “has stalled and commercial deployment is very limited.” There’s a pattern here, Raskin said, where the oil industry touted empty solutions as a way of delaying a transition to solar and wind. “Big oil companies, rather than focus on what we know we can do, focus on things we know can’t be done,” he said. https://lnkd.in/gPFSTMw9

Most outlets that cover climate will have some sort of coverage of this week's Senate hearing on fossil fuel disinformation, and the raft of subpoenaed documents that have come along with it. We're one of the only ones (maybe the only one?) that will skim the summary report and read through the thousands of pages instead to make sure you don't miss anything important. First up, a deep dive from Molly Taft on what these documents tell us about fossil fuel funding of university research, and why it's a pretty big deal that the government is questioning Big Oil's relationship with universities for the first time ever. Also coming this week: Coverage of the hearing itself from Rebecca Leber and stories from Molly and Amy Westervelt on what this new evidence tells us about the industry's approach to LNG, carbon capture, media, methane and more. Plus, a roundup of all the great goss in these docs (and yes, there's a surprising amount of tea!) https://lnkd.in/g5EzKQge