American Petroleum Institute’s Blatant Hypocrisy on Climate Action

Last week, President Biden and his Climate Cabinet got to work, taking swift climate action to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, undo the last four years of rollbacks, and lay the groundwork to build back better with clean energy. In response, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry’s largest trade association, exposed their hypocrisy and provided us with a glimpse of their strategy to attack climate action.

“This is hardly surprising behavior from API, which has spent years lying to the public by acknowledging the need for climate action in the press but then wielding its money and influence to halt even minute progress on the climate crisis,” said Climate Power Senior Advisor Noreen Nielsen. “API, and the oil and gas industry it shills for, has taken billions of taxpayer dollars only to turn around and lay off workers, pollute communities’ air and water, and create roadblocks for any leader trying to make progress to address the greatest threat of our time.”

At the same time they were “praising” President Biden’s decision to rejoin the Paris Agreement, API spread lies about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the impacts of drilling on our public lands. In addition, they started to run an attack ad from their “Energy Citizens” front group claiming that schools benefit from the very same royalty payments they tried to cut.  Here’s a glimpse of API’s hypocrisy:

Track Record of Lies and Misinformation

Track Record of Misleading Ad Campaigns

Record of Supporting Climate Deniers and Election Objectors