API: Green Hero or The Devil?

By HAYLEY MIREK
Published: December 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — The American Petroleum Institute’s headquarters are a nondescript office building on L Street in Washington, DC.  I was expecting something with more glass and less concrete.  An overly ambitious intern greeted me at the door, squashing any thoughts I had that I was in the wrong place.  Leading me up to the top floor, I could instantly tell he had been well rehearsed for this moment, a feeling I got throughout my day at API.  The intern, Mike, a student at the near by George Washington University, gushed to me about API’s dedication to new energies and how wonderful his unpaid internship was.  I asked him if he got free lunch.  His face dropped, “No.”

Mike dropped me off in a conference room that was not filled with, as I had hoped, images of sunsets over oil fields.  For, American Petroleum Institute, or simply API, is the oil industries trade group.  Made up of around 400 companies that are involved with the oil and natural gas industries. It deals with education, advocacy, certification, and perhaps, most importantly, lobbying.  In the run up to the Copenhagen conference, API has been increasingly active in improving the oil industries global image.

Lucas Fülling, CEO of API and the companies vice president, Victoria Harris walked into the conference room shortly after I arrived.  Mr. Fülling is boyishly handsome and looks like he belongs more in movies than in the boardroom.  Ms. Harris was plucked from the finest schools across the pond in her native England.  Her accent and quintessential English beauty seem to lend the organization a certain refined, intellectual quality, that a brazen American couldn’t contribute.  And they, like their intern are well versed in public image.

API has been extremely active in America in the lead up to Copenhagen, loudly criticizing the Obama administrations climate initiatives and protested the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  The EPA by arguing the emissions effect public health, will be able to regulate them sans the backing of Congress (this effort was finalized just days after our interview took place).  Yet, Mr. Fülling insists that API is leading the way in climate change initiatives, despite these facts.

Citing examples, he stated, “We spent 58 billion dollars in the last six years on renewable energy research and it made up half of the US budget for renewable energy initiatives.  And ExxonMobil currently has a commission with the European Union on Carbon Capturing.  BP is doing a lot with wind energy, Shell is doing a lot with renewable energy, so all our members are combining their research in order to lead the way for the future.”  Ms. Harris quickly added to this, “As well as simultaneously reducing their emissions as they go.”

These initiatives are impressive, considering just ten years ago the API venomously denied climate change.  And yet, the organization’s hopes for Copenhagen will enrage most climate change activists and progressive governments.  When asked what kind of resolution his organization would support in Copenhagen, Mr. Fülling strongly stated, We’re not supporting any fixed resolution that has static outcomes and is not efficient.”

For, API believes that a fixed resolution would require too quick of a transition because in Mr. Fülling’s words, “We cannot do it right now.  The technology is not ready for it.  The costs are too high for it.  You need to remember it takes time.  It’s just not possible.”

These beliefs will not be easily accepted by most at Copenhagen and indeed the organization recognizes the oil industry’s public image problem.  Since 2007 API has been on a public outreach campaign, courting bloggers and the public to recognize the good in the oil industry.   Ms. Harris answers my question about the oil industry’s negative image and its demonization by some environmental groups by stating, “I think it’s entirely easy to demonize our industry because we are quite united in our move forward and in what we believe.  The environmental lobby may claim that we spend an awful amount of money but it’s only because we do so as a whole.  While they are fractured and can’t agree among themselves.  Which isn’t helping our own efforts towards green technologies.”

API, with its views on environmentalists and binding resolutions is certainly not going to be loved by all in Copenhagen.  And yet their presence cannot be denied.  Especially since they have two charismatic executives and their powerful lobbying force, backed by millions of dollars, ready to battle any initiative they see as threatening to their members.