Behind the Push to Re-brand LNG as “Green”

For LNG, the Moment of Truth Is Now

 Okay. My name is Andy Rowell. I'm a journalist and writer, and I'm a contributing editor at Oil Change International. So, yeah, and I've been working on the fossil fuel industry and oil and climate since the early 90s. So for quite a long time now,

 awesome. Okay. What made you first start tuning into PAGE? What Google alert did you have set up that tipped you off to PAGE initially?

 it's suddenly, I mean, you know, we're looking, we've been looking at, or oil change have been looking at a sort of gas certification and the sort of greenwashing of the U. S. LNG and gas industry. And then suddenly, um, I mean, and of course, like, you know, Toby Rice and EQT, they're the, you know, the largest producer of natural gas in the, in, in the U.

I think if you, if you made EQT a country, there'd be the 12th largest gas producing nation. So they're a big player. And, and suddenly, you know, we are sort of looking a bit at Toby Rice and what he's up to because he's, he's, he's very vocal on, on this issue. And then sort of looked something, hang on a minute.

There's There's a new, there's a new sort of organization that's popped up out of nowhere. Um, and called page the partnership to address global emissions. And so, so started sort of trying to track what they were saying, what they were doing and, and sort of, you know, the more, the more we looked, the, you know, the more concerned you got.

And it's, I mean, it's pretty obvious. And page Is I mean, for anyone who's sort of looked at sort of, you know, the oil industry, as you well know, like, and it's front groups and it's messaging and it's greenwashing page immediately was like there was red flag after red flag after red flag.

 Yeah. They kind of have all the, all of the markers starting with the like name that sounds vaguely climate friendly, you know, um,

 It seems to me like they are, like page is predominantly there to, um, to focus on LNG exports from the U S like that's their, their key focus versus Some of the other front groups that EQT is involved with.

It's, you know, solely focused on permitting reform or things like that. This really seems to be export and particularly also lobbying the countries that, uh, us producers would be exporting to. So not just the us politicians. Is that, do you think that's like an accurate assessment?

 I think that's totally accurate. I mean, it's obvious that they've been targeting Europe, um, and, you know, they've, they've been, you know, Rice has been over here, and so has Christina, um, who works with him, um, and also, you know, Recently, we've, we've been aware that, you know, they've, they've also been targeting Asia.

So, I mean, it is obvious if you're, if you're targeting, if you're working on LNG, then Europe and Asia are the two, the two key markets you're going to target. So it very much looks like Page is basically a front group or whatever you want to call it for the for EQT and the LNG industry to to try and lobby to get exports to greenwash gas to tie Europe and potentially Asia into long term contracts, you know, for decades to come, even though the science and is saying that, you know, we, we shouldn't.

We can't be, you know, carrying on extracting more fossil fuels, you know, if we want a livable climate.

 I, um, I find Toby Rice very interesting because we did some reporting, um, like a year or two ago on Pennsylvania and talked to a bunch of people in one of the areas that EQT has really dominated there. And they had all of these wild stories about him, like showing up at town halls. And he kind of has styled himself as this like every man, you know, like, uh, like He's just a roughneck who's made it, kind of, you know?

 and the, like, the image of him meeting with, like, high level European officials is, is, like, somewhat amusing to me because this persona that he has, like, doesn't, doesn't really seem, um, at ease in, like, that kind of setting. Um, but it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what you think about him

 Well, I mean, I agree. I mean, it's like, if you look at it, you know, he looks or he comes or he's, he's trying to portray an image here that he's the kind of guy you could go and have a couple of beers with and watch baseball with. And, um, and he

 he just happens to make tens of millions of

 Yeah, he just happens to be one of the, well, the largest, you know, producer of natural gas in the US and, and yeah, so, um, I mean, it's interesting you're saying Pennsylvania and sort of looking into what EQT were up to there.

I mean, there was a recent investigation by public source. I don't know if you saw it

 Yeah, I saw that. It was really good. Yeah.

 Yeah. And again, you know, this whole, you know, it just blows away sort of the greenwash or another layer of the greenwashing of, of, of page saying that, you know, this, this stuff is, um, you know, the, the greenest, whatever he's calling it, the greenest natural gas or zero carbon where he can export zero carbon, you know, green gas.

To, to, to Europe and actually the reality for folks on the grounds, you know, these could be the guys having a beer with him is that like, they can't even open their taps without methane coming out or, you know, you know, their water is polluted with arsenic or barium, you know, so the serious problems, you know, with fracking on the ground as well as, you know, which we often sort of forget about if we're talking about sort of the climatic impact of this industry.

 we're going to, um, we're going to get into that a little bit in this podcast episode and share some of that tape because we, um, we never ended up making that season. Um, but I have a mountain of, of tape from people in Pennsylvania and a number of people. He was the only person that I heard. Um, multiple different people kind of mention and one of the things that we heard repeated over and over again really was that, you know, he would sort of show up and, and, um, Cause he, he seems to really want the local people to like him, you know, like he wants to be accepted by, by the local community.

And so he would show up and he would be like, if you have any problems, you know, cause people were complaining, not only of the water being contaminated, but the realities of, you know, a shale drilling operation happening, you know, right next to your house are pretty bleak. Um, it's like, it's like an ongoing earthquake.

There's really bright lights all the time. And so people were like, I can't sleep. You know, my pets are being disturbed, all this stuff. Um, and he would offer to put people up in hotels. And then they would show up at the hotel and there would be no reservation and they couldn't get ahold of him. Um, this was like, it was sort of like a, uh, just a recurrent theme in, uh, in the people that we talked to, which I just, I don't know, I find it.

I find it interesting when, when, um, people are doing sort of small things like that, that feel very attached to the larger things that they're trying to do. Mm

 Yeah. I mean, it's interesting in the sense, because, you know, if you, if you look at, I mean, quite often when you look at some of the, like the big players, or let's say the traditional companies that we, that we think of when, when we're investigating oil and gas, like the Exxons, the Shells, the BPs, the Chevrons, you know, you wouldn't expect like the CEO of, of like Mike Worth from Exxon to sort of rock out of a town hall meeting to, to sort of try and justify his operations.

So in that way. Like, Rice is, is different and, you know, as his, his persona, he's trying to, as we've just talked about, he's trying to be like this kind of man of the people, yeah, accessible and all that, but actually the trouble is the reality just doesn't stack up, you know, for what he's saying or what, you know, and yeah,

 Yeah, he might have good intentions, but, um, but yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't end up panning out. Uh, you mentioned Exxon and Chevron and I wanted to ask you about them because I find it, I also find it really interesting how you're seeing, and you kind of have always seen this in the gas industry in the U.

at least, this divide between the sort of like rough and ready shale guys and the oil majors. Um, and it's interesting that you see it in these. lobbying groups as well. Like there's, you know, you almost never see like an Exxon and a Chevron in the same lobbying group as EQT or whatever. And, um, in, we, you know, we, we got some kind of late breaking documents from the folks at friends of the earth who had, um, sued the state department to get, um, Hold of Amos Hoxtein's calendar, who was an energy advisor to Biden and a long time gas guy.

Um, and he had all these meetings with, with Toby Rice at EQT, the focus of which was, you know, to push the idea of like, you know, certified low carbon gas or differentiated gas, this whole thing. Boondoggle that you've been looking into. And he says in like the lobbyist who's setting up the appointment for him says in a few different emails, like, you know, basically like we're, uh, like differentiating ourselves in the industry and, you know, I'm sure it's not going to go over well, but we need to do it and all of this stuff, you know, um, like they're going to.

outpace Exxon and Chevron by doing more environmentally friendly gas and they're going to spur everybody else in the industry on and all that kind of stuff. But, um, I'm curious what you think about just how the oil majors and these guys operate kind of separate from each other in parallel streams.

 I think that's a really interesting sort of point. I mean, traditionally, sort of, if you go back, um. To, I mean, some of the sort of, uh, sort of front groups at the oil industry was involved in like the, the GCC or the, I think they were, they called the climate council as well in the, in the nineties. You know, those were the oil majors.

You wouldn't have had, you know, any of these kind of like fracking players in, in, in any of those organizations. I mean, they'll, they'll all sit under the umbrella of, say, the American Petroleum Institute, which is, you know, a broad church of the, you know, the biggest lobbying group often in the U. S.

pushing sort of, um, the oil industry's interests. But in this specific instance, yeah, often you see the sort of the small, well, I mean, EQT, EQT

 It's hard to think of him as like the little guy, but yeah, yeah,

 know, like the, they're like the shark in the big, in the small pond, aren't they? You know, like, you know, they're increasingly, you know, they are the largest, you know, gas, um, sort of producer in the US So, I mean, they are big, they're a big player now, but they're still probably not in the same room often as, as an Exxon, as a shell, or as a bp.

 right, right, yeah, it's interesting too, because, um, there was this moment around the pandemic where the, you can kind of see how groups like API, for example, At a certain point might be lobbying, like in the interest of a Chevron and Exxon and against the interests of like an NQT or a pioneer, um, they, they did this, like there was, there was a moment where within the API Chevron and Exxon were.

Lobbying like against getting more, um, federal bailout money for the, the shale drillers. And it was, it was pretty clear that it was like, their goal was to just snap up some of those guys, which they did, you know? Um, so it's sort of like,

 is the, which is the playbook, is, you know, you know. And if you've got as much cash sitting in the bank as you, as Exxon, then, you know, when a minnow gets too big and it's strategic, you do, you just swallow it up.

 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you're seeing that, I mean, um, with the, the pioneer acquisition, Chevron's attempt to get Hess, um, there's like, and you see too that in a lot of the, um, I don't know, a lot of like the chatter around the, the oil majors is, is kind of focused on like, Oh, we need to sort of buy up more, more resources to continue.

Um, posting growth numbers and all that kind of thing. It's like at a certain point they're running out of new reserves to tap and they have to just buy up the ones that exist already. Um, yeah, I don't know. Anyway.

 And doubling down, and doubling down on oil and gas.

 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, I want to have you talk a little bit about the, the certified gas stuff and just how, um, how little there, there, there is, you know, um, what is, what are people actually measuring when they're claiming to, to have sort of environmentally preferable gas?

 Can I just take one step back? I think what, what you're seeing in with certified gas is in late 2020, the French government, which is, you know, they've got a, I think it's a, 33 percent interest in NG, um, and NG was just about to do a 20 year, 7 billion LNG project for, with Rio Grande by next decade. And the French government basically pulled the plug and they said, actually, we think we, we don't want you to, to, to import US gas because it's too dirty.

It's got too much of a methane problem. And. And this sends shockwaves, huge shockwaves through the U. S. gas industry. And so since then, there's been this systematic campaign to greenwash U. S. gas as green. And the certification is part of that. So what they're saying is like, you can have, you know, This is what they're claiming is like you can basically have green gas, you can have net zero gas or, um, carbon neutral gas.

And the way they're going to do it is they're going to, um, certified, like put monitors on across, you know, the upstream and midstream industry and check for leaks in real time. And then, you know, stop, stop the leakage of, of methane. That's And if you can start, you know, their argument is if you can stop the leakage of methane and methane is, of course, a much more potent, you know, greenhouse gases, it's whatever it's like 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

And if you can plug the meat, you know, the, the methane leaks, and then you can offset. the carbon emissions at the end, then you could supposedly have, you know, zero carbon. And you had a, um, sort of a number of companies of which say Project Canary is one that basically, uh, sort of sprung up seeing a market opportunity and said, Hey, we're independent and we will verify this gas as responsibly sourced or differentiated.

There's a number of different words that are used. And. So oil change and earthworks, you know, began looking again at what was going on. Earthworks went out in the field and they stuck their cameras in front of quite a few sites and basically showed the, you know, the complete discrepancy between the rhetoric of What, what a company like Project Canary was saying and EQT and all these others are saying that, Hey, this is great.

We've got certified gas and the reality, you know, um, and the report one came out last year and another one's just come out this, this month, last year's report showed over seven months, basically they failed to capture. every significant pollution event. And, um, so, um, and most, most of the time there were problems with the monitors.

Um, often the monitors are placed outside, you know, buffer walls, or, you know, in places where the, you know, upstream where the wind is going downstream. So they, you know, they know that the pollution will never be, be caught. Um,

 and then this year's, um, Report basically, again, it's basically showing regularly of missing pollution events, um, Project Canaries monitors, um, which supposedly continuously monitor for pollution events and methane leakage were offline for 25 percent of the time, so a quarter of the time they're offline, and even if there's a problem, companies are really taking action.

 there's, there's serious, serious questions to answer about the sort of the claims that the industry and, you know, companies like Project Canary are making as to certified gas and how robust it is and how, you know, it is actually really reducing methane emissions.

 Um, didn't project canary do like a, a lot of pilot studies with EQT to, to like develop their

 They, they were doing pilot studies with EQT and others. Yes. Um, and the sort of what we were hearing on the street is a lot of their sort of pilot projects never sort of moved into sort of full blown fruition with, with a number of customers.

 That's interesting because, um, I know in those, um, emails where they were requesting meetings with us officials, one of the things that they were using was, um, This claim that EQTs gas is like, has one 10th the methane of other us producers,

 like, Ooh, where's that stat coming from? Interesting.

 yeah, exactly. And, you know, if your monitors not picking up your pollution and, um, it's, there's not enough monitors and they're all in the wrong place. And, you know, they're not, they're offline, all these kinds of things, you know, it just shows that there's a stack of problems. And I, you know, I think there were, There were other sorts of significant issues.

I mean, for example, like Chris Romer, who was, you know, then the sort of CEO of Project Canary, he was talking about like certifying gas as a way of fixing the gas industry's Brand problem. So actually say, you know, this was not in, you know, they would be claiming to be independent, but actually say, Hey, guys, through certifying gas, we will fix your image and allow you to sell, you know, so called, you know, responsibly sourced gas to the Europeans, to the Asians, and those who are worried about climate change.

Um, And that's where it gets really sort of dangerous, say from a European perspective, because you've got the Europeans now saying, actually, you know, we, we need, or, you know, talking to people like Toby Rice about importing LNG, and if there is a veneer of green over that gas through certification, it allows them to sort of, to go to, or, you know, European consumers, um, and say, actually, this is it's okay, European, you know, we can have European climate goals via, you know, American LNG because American LNG is green.

But again, that is completely and utterly disingenuous because there are fundamental flaws with LNG and also the certification process.

 Yeah. That's really interesting because, um, one of, I know that, that one of the, um, one of the things that all of the gas producers have been trying to do is, is increase the length of time that these contracts with Europe, um, will last. And the European union did put in place contract limits, but they did, But they also added this little, you know, amazing caveat for the industry, which, um, around, you know, the word unabated, which they, they put in, you know, contracts for unabated, uh, gas.

Cannot last beyond 2049. So I wonder if, um, If that has also driven some, you know, increased interest in certification and, you know, just generally trying to make it seem like producers are quote unquote, abating those emissions in some way.

 I mean, I think about Well, the industry claims about 40 percent of US gas is now certified. So, you know, that's been a significant change over the last two years, a massive increase. And You know, there is no doubt about it that the industry sees certification as a sort of key tenant of getting long term LNG contracts with European buyers. And if you go back to what happened in late 2020, and the fact that, um, you know, the French government got NG to pull out because of concerns about how dirty LNG was, you know, It shows that this is, you know, the industry strategy to get around or to overcome those concerns and convince the Europeans that that actually you can have, you know, climate change. They can, they can have their cake and eat it, which is they supposedly have got quite, you know, bold climate goals, but then they can still have massive imports of LNG for the next whatever, 20 years. But again, that is completely flawed from a sort of scientific perspective. And where, you know, we know that the methane is still leaking in the US.

We know that, um, you know, When you're burning, uh, gas, you're still emitting carbon and, and also

 it's, you know, the, the UN and all the climate scientists are saying we, you know, we, if we want a livable future, you know, future, if you want to try and keep anywhere near 1. 5 or even two degree warming, then we just can't carry on, you know, looking and exploring for more oil and gas.

And, you know, The other, the other thing that's sort of really interesting from a sort of public relations perspective from the sort of, you know, the Toby Rice's and others is that, you know, gas used to be seen as a transition fuel. You know, they were saying, Okay, well, we need gas to be a transition fuel, you know, to renewables and, and that will gives us time to develop renewables.

But now the sort of messaging from Rice and others is actually gas is integral to the transition because, you know, if you clean up your methane emissions, and then you offset the carbon emissions, you can have zero carbon kind of gas, which is a misnomer.

 Yeah. There was even in, um, in the most recent, uh, kind of dump of documents from the U S government's investigation into climate disinformation, there was this, um, Strategy document that was done for bp, I think it was from Brunswick, where they talked about the need to, to shift from the idea of gas as a bridge to gra to gas as the destination , you know, which of course we all knew, but like they explicitly stated it.

 Yeah, exactly. So there you go. It's on the nail, you know, it's in black and white. And of course, it would be a PR company, you know, who's coming up with a strategy, you know, and I'm sure both of us could talk long and hard about, you know, the role of the PR companies and in in the climate crisis. But there has been a significant shift in the public relations strategy of the oil and gas industry to sort of move the dial from gas.

You know, as a bridge fuel is to to actually say no gas can be here to stay is integral to the transition. You know, as long as we've got certification and we've got offset. But.

 So a transition away from fossil fuels has now, in their minds, become a transition, you

 energy transition where fossil fuels are integral to it, you know, it's mad.

 yeah, yeah, it's interesting too, because I will often hear people kind of being like, oh, like, it's too much of a leap to go from, you know, coal and oil to renewables or whatever, like, you, you need to have some kind of a transition in the middle and this, that, the other, right?

Um, but like, They never talk about the transition from coal to gas as being too much of a leap, right? It's like, but we're doing an energy transition. It's just not, not the right one. Um, One of the things, speaking of coal, that EQT says a lot and PAGE as well, and is kind of seems to be integral to their math on emissions is this idea that LNG that, you know, U.

LNG is always replacing coal. Um, I'm curious if you've seen that from other producers as well, like this, this, um, this idea that like, well, if it's replacing coal, then it's definitely going to be better and it's always replacing coal. So that's great. We're good.

 I think, I mean, I think two things. One is, I mean, let's not forget that, you know, some studies have shown that, you know, LNG is actually worse for the climate than coal. So, so when Toby Rice says we're replacing coal, as is to suggest that this is a, you know, beneficial. There's actually, you know, that, that statement needs to be unpicked and verified.

And I think a number of climate scientists would counter him on that. To me, Page seems to really double down on that, you know, messaging as, hey, you know, we are, you know, we're going to unleash LNG, and it's, you know, it works as a coal replacement. But actually, again, in reality, it's never, it's never like that, you know, what they're doing at the moment, or, you know, they've, in response to, say, you know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, again, like, you know, they've, you know, Rice and others have been going to Brussels and Berlin to say it.

Again, as we've just been talking about, you know, let's lock Europe into LNG, um, from the U. S. And so that's, you know, it's not, they're not replacing coal, they're basically trying to, you know, make a new market for, for U. S. LNG.

 Right. It's more often just replacing other gas than coal. And yeah, to your point, we don't even know that it's a net good to replace coal with gas either. So,

 but, but, but what it is doing, as you said before, is you're, they're trying to lock Europe and other consumers into these long term contracts, which never existed before. So in that sense, it's even worse for the climate.

 Um, can I have you talk about that a little bit, like the fact that they never existed before? How, how unusual is it for, um, Um, for companies to get the kinds of like 20, 30, even more, you know, year contracts that these guys are trying to lock in.

 My understanding is like European and potentially sort of maybe even Russian contracts were done on a much shorter timescale. But, you know, the US LNG industry is, is basically it's had to, it's having to build the infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure to, to do the exports. So the only way they can make that sort of financially viable in the long term is to lock their consumers into long term contracts.

So the US industry has been really pushing and trying to sort of get, you know, decades long contracts where Europe wasn't sort of used to having to do that before. And now, Because of, say, the Ukraine, you know, Russia's invasion and the Ukraine war, they've, they've been at their sort of most energy vulnerable, you know, and into that sort of, into that space, companies like EQT, you know, people like Toby Rice have just sort of jumped and said, Hey, you know, we've got your solution.

But the, you know, the problem with that is we want a long term contract.

 Yeah. I mean, that's, it's so interesting. Cause I do feel like, um, know, the U S especially the, you know, the EQTs, um, of, and. You know, Chesapeake and Chenier and all of these like small, they're not small anymore, but like the, the upstart fracking guys. Um, it's so, it seems to me like so much of the, the desire for long term contracts is not just, you know, of course, everybody wants to lock in, you know, a high volume, long term contract, but those guys in particular have had, uh, Really like an endless boom and bust cycle their entire existence.

It's like, you know, they have not been able to figure out. This is kind of like a new a stable business model. Um, and you I don't know. I feel like I always just kind of get that vibe from Toby Rice, like whatever I see him on a news show or whatever. It's like it's just sort of like, like a magpie going from shiny thing to shiny thing looking for, like what's gonna what's going to deliver the the best The kind of profitability that I'm looking for.

Like I just, you know, it's like, Oh, that's Europe. Oh, it's Asia. It's AI, you know?

 you've got to keep, you know, you've got to produce another card out of your pack to, to justify, you know, carrying on drilling, carrying on LNG expansion, carrying on building the infrastructure, you know. when at the same time the reality on the ground is impacted communities who can't drink their water, you know, with all the sort of health impacts, the climate impacts, the, you know, the UN, all climate scientists basically saying we cannot carry on drilling for more.

And, and, you know, the LNG industry saying, Oh, yes, we can. And this is how we're going to do it.

 We're, well, we're, we're also now hearing from Europe, like we, we just don't need that much, like they're, you know, there are all of these reports coming out that the, the import buildout has already outpaced. Uh, the actual need for LNG in Europe. So, um, you know, that's concerning too. Cause like what happens with a gas glut historically more plastic and petrochemicals, you know?

Transcription

As part of our ongoing series looking into new climate problems the fossil fuel industry is peddling as solutions, we did a deep dive into the push to position liquefied natural gas—a fossil fuel—as "green" and discovered one particularly active lobbying group.

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Denial to Delay

The Great Greening of LNG

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A true-crime podcast about climate change.

The Great Greening of LNG

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Behind the Push to Re-brand LNG as “Green”

For LNG, the Moment of Truth Is Now