The American Petroleum Institute is launching an advertising campaign to sell the oil and gas industry as being interested in reducing emissions and combating climate change.
API is running a series of ads this year beginning Tuesday on television, on digital media, in airports, and on outdoor billboards across the country. API, the largest U.S. oil and gas trade group, is spending seven figures on the ad campaign, titled “Energy for Progress.”
The first ad, “Solving Big Challenges Requires Energy,” aims to highlight the willingness of the oil and gas industry to “work together” on solutions to climate change through developing cleaner technologies.
“On the issues that matter, like climate change, we are more alike than we think,” the 30-second ad says. “We want cleaner solutions, and that means working with each other.”
API’s new campaign comes ahead of its annual State of American Energy event in Washington on Tuesday, where 800 attendees representing government, labor, and industry will convene to hear the group’s president and CEO, Mike Sommers, reveal its agenda for 2020.
API has shifted its rhetoric on climate change over recent years in an attempt to illustrate the role that natural gas has played in reducing emissions in the power sector by replacing coal over the last decade.
The group has not budged, however, in its opposition to a major new federal climate policy, such as a carbon tax, despite the fact that some of its largest members support the concept.
API also went against the views of some oil and gas majors, including Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil, by supporting the Trump administration’s rollback of regulations limiting leaks of methane from oil and gas operations. Environmental groups say leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas, threaten the industry’s positioning as a bridge fuel to a cleaner energy future.
