Relentless Spin

American Big Oil & Gas has been engaged in a public relations blitz for the past few years.  The frequency of the self-congratulatory ads seems to have picked up lately.  Evidently, the industry believes the damage of big pollution can be obscured with big advertising buys.

Koch cowboys ride into the heartland's sunset

Koch Industries is running their "We Are Koch" campaign.  They want us to know they were "born in the heartland,"  "proudly built on American values," and "dedicated to improving people's lives."  Empty words and phrases.  Ten years ago, nobody ever heard of the Koch brothers.  Now they try to cover their filthy, oily tracks with TV ads.  

Blah-blah-blah from BP

BP is still sucking up to the American public, five years after their disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  They continue to run ad after ad telling us about the "continuing commitment to the Gulf Coast," and how much they've learned, and how much money they've spent.  Behind the scenes, BP is engaged in a legal fight to reduce it's fines from $13.7 billion to 2.3 billion.  Poor BP.

It's un-American to be #2

The ubiquitous woman-in-black spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute is constantly reminding us that the U.S. is now "the world's #1 producer of natural gas" and "could soon be #1 in oil, too."    (They ought to give her a big foam finger to wave.)  She's says it means "millions of new jobs" thanks to "safe, proven hydraulic fracturing technology."  Her jobs number is grossly overstated, the jobs are temporary, and fracking is neither safe nor proven.

"We leased our land to the frackers for a big chunk of
change.  The trees are still green and our dog is still
alive.  Fracking must be safe, right?"

Worst of all may be the treacly, gag-inducing spots from EnergyFromShale.org.  Their TV spots feature "real" people who are enjoying the fracking boom.  These citizens say things like, "We all know fracking will help the community, but there has to be a balance."  (A balance?  Between environmental protection and quick-buck profiteering?)  "I learned that we've been fracking safely for 65 years."  (That's a stretch -- Halliburton's first frack wells in 1949 were small, shallow, and few.  Today's operations are far different.)  "That really got the conversation flowing."  (There's no conversation.  There's a debate, a disagreement, an argument, a fight.)




While the oil and gas industry feeds happy horseshit to the unthinking masses, states like Oklahoma, Ohio and others have concluded that fracking definitely causes earthquakes.  New York has enacted an outright ban on fracking.  Ohio Gov. Kasich is trying to convince his own R-dominated legislature to increase the state's "severance tax" on drillers from one of the very lowest in the nation to something a bit more appropriate.  But his lawmakers are so well-greased by the industry they probably won't do it.  Nationally, the U.S. Dept. of Interior issued rules for fracking on federal land (mind-boggling it's allowed to begin with):  Frackers must have uniform construction standards, reveal the many chemicals they use, and guarantee safe disposal (what's that?) of their contaminated waste "water."  The oil & gas industry reacted to these rules with a lawsuit.  It figures.

They hide the truth and sue to preserve the illusion.  When will we ever learn?