American Petroleum Institute Kept Tabs on Enviros

[hue]

http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1924/american_petroleum_institute_kept_tabs_on_enviros/?page=1

In 2010 the American Petroleum Institute (API) paid the global intelligence firm Stratfor more than $13,000 a month for weekly intelligence bulletins profiling activist organizations and their campaigns on everything from energy and climate change to tax policy and human rights, according to documents published by WikiLeaks in 2012.

API's tracking of environmental organizations comes as the oil and gas industry faces a kind of existential crisis — or public relations dilemma, depending on your point of view — in how to address climate change and related issues. Even as some of API's own members are inching toward compromise on relatively modest proposals like cap and trade legislation the lobbying group seems to be fighting a rearguard battle.

"The best climate science coming from the IPCC, IEA, and the World Bank agrees that at least two thirds of the world's existing proven reserves of fossil fuels need to be left in the ground," says Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. "You can't believe that and then think that investing billions each year to find more fossil fuels is a good idea."

The Stratfor contract stipulates that the Austin-based intelligence company will "conduct open source public policy monitoring services on domestic and activist issues of concern to the petroleum industry." The weekly "sitreps" — or activist reports — provided details on a wide range of environmental organizations including NRDC, Greenpeace, and the Center for Biological Diversity. Stratfor also furnished API — the country's largest oil and gas lobbying group — with more detailed profiles of organizations including Oil Change International, 350.org, the Center for American Progress, Clean Energy Works, the Sierra Club, Forest Ethics, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the investigative news website ProPublica.

"It's telling that the fossil fuel industry has resorted to trying to dig up, or even fabricate dirt on environmental groups and activists," says Matt Leonard, director of special projects at 350.org...

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API doing a poor job of spying on environmental groups