home > take greenwash to the cleaners > greenwasher of the month > october 2005

CHEVRON: Exploiting Peak Oil

Profile
Chevron Corporation is the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States. Based in San Ramon, CA, Chevron operates in 180 countries. Chevron’s net earnings in 2004 were $13.3 billion.

Rhetoric
On July 5, Chevron launched a global advertising campaign designed “to raise awareness and encourage discussion about important issues facing the energy industry, including supply and demand, the role of alternative and renewable energy sources and the promise of technology.” Ads have appeared in publications including The Economist, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, on television stations such as CNN and BBC, and on airport billboards in Beijing, Moscow and other international capitals. All spots invite their audience to willyoujoinus.com, a Chevron website that will “periodically explore a new energy issue,” allowing visitors to post their own perspective on a message board.

At the heart of the campaign is Chevron’s admission that Hubbert’s Peak, or peak oil, is an impending reality. “The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered,” states the company. “So is this something you should be worried about?”

At willyoujoinus.com, Chevron pursues the matter of dwindling supplies, concluding that “it is in the interest of all stakeholders—energy producers, distributors, governments and consumers—to make the energy sources we have go as far as they can go.” The company reiterates that sustainability “requires us to use all resources at our disposal.” And again, “The challenge for the energy sector is to optimize the development and use of all sources of energy.”

CEO Dave O’Reilly explained that Chevron decided to be candid and welcoming with its new campaign “because we think everyone should be involved in the dialogue about the future of energy." Added Patricia Yarrington, Vice President of Policy, Government and Public Affairs, “Chevron is not attempting to solve the world’s energy problems alone, but rather use human energy to bring people together to discuss real issues and to think about developing real world solutions.”

For its own part, though Chevron is doing more than hosting a forum for ideas. It is taking action by “committing over $100 million every year on renewable energies, alternative fuels and improving efficiency,” according to an ad.

Chevron ad

Reality
Chevron’s is a clever campaign. Like Shell’s Tell Shell website and BP’s BP on the Street ads, it engages the public in a go-nowhere dialogue moderated carefully by the companies. With apologies to participants, Chevron already knows its issues and how it wants to handle them—that’s why the company last year spent more than $5 million lobbying government officials to stave off greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions caps, loosen oil refinery restrictions, and implement other items of a fossil-fueled agenda. But the new ads advance that agenda a more insidious manner than the standard PR practice of falsely empowering “stakeholders.” In so many words, several times over, it says that as long as we’re running out of oil let’s be sure to siphon every last profitable drop. Shale, tar sands, ultra-deepwater wells… exploit it all, says Chevron, because we’re going to need it.

Peak oil deals the energy industry a strong card in the game of GHG emissions management, meant to trump regulation. Chevron is the first company to play it publicly. The card suggests that implies oil will solve its own environmental problems simply by disappearing. In the meantime, we need cheap, unconstrained carbon to supply the demand of development worldwide. It’s a reasonable proposition, provided that an adequate amount of the carbon used today goes into creating clean energy sources that the economy can depend upon tomorrow. Yet Chevron, a self-proclaimed “energy company,” is neglecting renewable sources. The company’s pledge to spend in the neighborhood of $100 million per year on alternative energy and energy efficiency must be evaluated in light of its annual capital and exploratory budget of $10 billion. For every green dollar it commits, Chevron pays out nearly 100 on conventional oil-and-gas exploitation.

Chevron’s new ad campaign itself cost an estimated $50 million, or roughly $45,622 for every comment posted to date (9/21/2005) at willyoujoinus.com. That’s expensive advice, but cheaper, the company has decided, than actually changing its ways.

Recommendation
Bolstered by government grants, Chevron has made modest efforts to develop hydrogen technology. However, the company is behind even fellow greenwashers Shell and BP in building a meaningful renewables portfolio; its hydrogen program, for example, uses natural gas as an energy source. Before it asks “us,” the consuming public, to join it, Chevron should show its sincerity by meeting industry competitors at their level of wind and solar output. Until it does, consumers are encouraged to stay away from Chevron.

home > take greenwash to the cleaners > greenwasher of the month > october 2005