BP and Shell warned to halt campaign against US climate change bill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/19/oil-firms-warned-over-us-lobbying


Oil firms urged to leave American Petroleum Institute and halt political lobbying by Greenpeace


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 (£4.8m) 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.
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right on

"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.""




knr