BP and Shell Warned to Halt Campaign Against US Climate Change Bill

BP and Shell are
being told to tear up their membership of the American Petroleum
Institute (API) in protest at the organisation's attempts to incite a
public backlash against Barack Obama's energy and climate change bill.

The two oil
companies are also being asked to bring a halt to their own political
lobbying in Washington in letters sent to their chief executives from Greenpeace and the Platform environmental group.

"BP
maintains its membership of the API through paying substantial fees
based on the large size of BP's business. It is our concern that these
fees are used by the API to undermine US government action on climate
change and that BP's membership of the API contradicts its position on
the issue," writes John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, in
a letter to Tony Hayward, the BP boss.

The letter also questions
the $8m (PS4.8m) worth of spending on lobbying in Washington since the
start of 2009, saying this runs against the commitment made by BP's
former boss, Lord Browne, in 2002 that BP would from now on "make no
political contributions from corporate funds anywhere else in the
world". A similar letter has been sent to Peter Voser, the new boss at
Shell.

The demands from Greenpeace follow revelations in the
Guardian last Friday that the API was pumping money into a series of
"citizen rallies" to put pressure on the Obama administration over its
support for a climate change bill sponsored by Congressmen Henry Waxman
and Edward Markey which comes before the Senate next month.

The
proposed legislation, which has already successfully passed through the
House of Representatives, marks a clear move by the US to adopt a
greener political and economic agenda and ditch the kind of sceptical
views on global warming that were the hallmark of the previous
government run by George W Bush, himself a former oilman.

An
email sent by Jack Gerard, president of the API, says the lobby group
will provide "upfront resources" to pay for a highly experienced events
company to organise the public protest meetings, but it says oil
companies themselves should encourage their staff to go to some of the
20 rallies being considered.

"In the 11 states with an [oil]
industry core, our member company local leadership - including your
facility manager's commitment to provide significant attendance - is
essential," the note says.

Greenpeace and Platform believe these
actions are "astroturfing" - a determined attempt to create a false
appearance of popular opposition to the Obama plans to control carbon emissions
from oil while boosting wind and other cleaner technologies. The
environmentalists remind Hayward and Voser that their companies were
once members of the API-backed Global Climate Coalition in the US which
successfully campaigned against it signing the Kyoto protocol on the grounds that there was not enough proof that global warming was being made worse by man-made carbon dioxide pollution.

After
protests, BP and later Shell withdrew from the GCC and started to make
tentative investments in renewable energy, notably wind farms in
America, which continue today. The two companies are now actively
involved in the United States Climate Action Partnership, which is seen
by environmentalist campaigners to be playing a very positive role on
driving forward the green agenda in a country only recently overtaken
by China as the world's biggest carbon producer.

BP
said it was "highly unlikely" it would pull out of the API, which was
just one of hundreds of trade bodies to which it was affiliated. But it
stressed that it was not involved directly in any of the planned public
rallies. "Our views on climate change legislation are fairly well
known," said a BP spokesman at its London headquarters. "We support
action to counter emissions although we favour market mechanisms, like
trading schemes."

Shell said tonight that it had told the API
that it would not participate in the rallies but indicated it would not
be leaving the organisation. "Our focus is on seeking common ground
with stakeholders that can aid Congress in enacting a fair and
effective cap and trade program. We will continue to express our
position within API and other business and trade associations of which
we are members," added a spokesman at its headquarters in The Hague.

Meanwhile
ExxonMobil, a stalwart of previous opposition to Kyoto but a company
that insists it is not a climate change denier, seems to support the
API wholeheartedly. The part of the company's website devoted to the
"ExxonMobil Citizen Action Team" gives pride of place to an official
letter from the API opposing the Waxman-Markey legislation.

A
note above from Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of the
world's biggest publicly quoted oil company, says: "Our elected
officials make decisions that affect all of us. It is critical that we
as a company, and more importantly as individuals, are part of the
political process. By linking ExxonMobil employees and retirees to
their elected officials, we can let our representatives know that the
ExxonMobil family is an important force in civic life."