Just like tobacco industry was investigated by Congress because of the coverup and obfuscation of heallth effects on smokers and non-smokers over 40 years ago. Then Department of Justice found the tobbaco industry to be guilty.
Now oil and gas industry is being investigated by Congress because of the coverup and obfuscation of climate change facts (fossil fuel burning causes global warming) and environmental/health effects on public for over 40 years ago. Now the Justice Department needs to find the oil and gas industry to be guilty.
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The leaders of a years-long congressional probe into Big Oil’s decades-long climate disinformation campaigns just formally referred their investigation to the Department of Justice, calling on the nation’s biggest law office to “pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.”
In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland today, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse and House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote that they believe that “there is adequate evidence that fossil fuel industry companies and trade associations may have violated one or more federal statutes and that, accordingly, further investigation is warranted.”
The referral comes after the committees released a joint report at the end of April that unveiled thousands of “new documents exposing the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate change.” The documents, revealing oil giants’ internal strategies to greenwash their climate records and downplay the harms of “natural” gas while further investing in fossil fuel production, came out of a House Oversight Committee investigation into ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that began in 2021.
At a hearing on May 1, former DOJ attorney Sharon Eubanks, who led the Justice Department’s case against Big Tobacco, testified that “Just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering complaint against the industry, given the similarities of the fraudulent acts, and the government’s successful case against tobacco, there is adequate foundation for building a case… We should not waste any more time wringing our hands about what can be done.”
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Previous Investigations:
Congressional investigators released a new set of documents that underscored the oil and gas industry’s ongoing attempts to block climate policies and confuse the public about their long-term investments in fossil fuels. The latest tranche of documents caps off a nearly two-year investigation that appears set to come to an end with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January.
On December 9, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee published its latest set of documents as part of its ongoing investigation into the oil industry’s history of climate denial and obfuscation. The documents offer more evidence showing that the industry’s “greenwashing” continues up to the present day.
“They’re basically saying, ‘we’re going to increase production, we’re going to increase emissions, but we’re also going to be able to claim being this clean tech company, this green company, because we can take some symbolic actions that make it look like we’re in the climate fight,’” Rep. Ro Khanna, (D-CA), a member of the committee, told NBC News.
“The cynicism was breathtaking, and unfortunately, it was quite successful,” he said, “It’s been a successful PR strategy.”
The framing over the role of methane gas offers one glaring example. For years, the industry and its supporters have claimed that methane gas serves as a “bridge fuel” due to its perceived climate benefit over burning coal. That claim has not been backed up by the science, which increasingly shows that methane leaks can erase the upside of gas compared to coal.
But even if true, internal communications show that despite their external claims, oil executives view gas not as a temporary “bridge,” but as something more permanent.
“For sure the bridge is very long in any event, but it is conceivable that gas could serve as a destination fuel to back up intermittent renewables (possibly with CCS) in the much longer term,” Bob Stout, a former BP vice president said in a 2017 email. “We would not want to spell all this out, but also not implicitly concede the point by referring to it mainly as a ‘bridge.’”
Another revelation points to the oil industry’s efforts to cultivate influence through its financial support for Ivy League universities. In another 2019 email from Stout, in which he discusses BP’s efforts at “nurturing” its relationship with Princeton University, he admits that ties with major American universities is part of a strategy of burnishing the industry’s image and also enhancing its influence.