Big Oil revs up its PR machine.
As the incoming Congress is “readying probes into oil companies’ profits and eyeing legislation aimed at curbing global warming, the American Petroleum Institute and its K Street allies are looking to assemble a $100 million war chest to rally policy makers and public opinion to their side,” the National Journal reports. “The image and education effort … will include expensive television, radio, and print ads, tours of oil patch facilities for lawmakers and opinion elites, and financial contributions to sympathetic think tanks and industry-friendly organizations.”
Sort Comments By: Top Rated | Date
19 Responses to “Big Oil revs up its PR machine.”
Register
RSSLogin
View Most Popular
Visit Our Affiliated Site
What We're About
What We're Fighting For
What We're Fighting Against
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Got a hot tip?
Have a hot news tip? We'd love to hear from you. Use the form below to send us the latest.
Reports
In depth studies on select topics
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Afghanistan
Beck
Big Oil
Bolton
Bush
Cheney
Civil Rights
Dobbs
Drudge
Economy
Energy
Environment
Ethics
Feith
Fox News
GI Bill
Global Warming
Gore
Guantanamo
Hagee
Health Care
Immigration
Impeachment
Iran
Iraq
Justice
Kristol
LGBT
Lieberman
McCain
McClellan
Media
Military
O'Hanlon
O'Reilly
Obama
Politics
Race
Radical Right
Rove
Terrorism
Torture
Veterans
Wiretapping
Women's Rights
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Think ProgressContact Us
Donate
they are going to need much more than $100 million to save them… the American public is onto their bull, especially with oil prices going down while gas prices are now rising since the election. If they want good PR, all they have to do is lower gas prices to a national average of $1.50/gallon or less … then people will be happy.
And I do not know how they can argue that targeting them is bad for the economy. High gas prices are bad for the economy, period. Not only does it cost more to get from point A to B, but prices on every item goes up because of rising transportation costs. if they think the American public is stupid, they are in for a real suprise.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:07 pmRead Thomas Friedman in the NY Times today. The money quote:
December 1st, 2006 at 4:16 pm“Not only would ending our oil addiction protect us from the worst in the Arab-Muslim world, it would help us support the best. These regimes will never reform as long as they enjoy windfall oil profits, which allow them to maintain closed societies with archaic education systems and protected industries that can’t compete globally. The small Persian Gulf state of Bahrain just held its second free election, in which women could vote and run. Bahrain is also the first Arab gulf state to start running out of oil. No accident.”
Wow, I was opposed to subsidizing an industry making record profits until I toured their oilfields.
Idiots.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:18 pm.
If they’d just put this money into R&D, they’d help us all… and they’d look better to the public (and their shareholders) in the process. Or, am I being too simplistic?
December 1st, 2006 at 4:22 pm100 million dollars could go a long way to helping a few problems in this country… sinful…
December 1st, 2006 at 4:22 pmMoney that could be much more wisely spent on investments in renewable energy.
What a shame.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:24 pmThe smartest thing our politicians can do is forget wasting money on investigations like this and spend that money on incentives/tax breaks/research into developing alternative fuels. Because without government pushing this or, at the very least, backing it, there is no incentive for current industries to worry about it. They already make way too much on oil or oil based products.
the same is true for car companies. They make way too much money selling outdated technology (ie. combustion engines) and all the spare parts/fluids, etc. They won’t push electric cars and I doubt even Hydrogen fuel. We need all vehicles ot either be flex fuel or electric. No hybrids.
Once big oil sees that people are serious and fed up and promoting OPTIONS and CHOICE, then they will finally get thier own priorities straight.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:26 pmJust keep digging, Corporate America, the hole isn’t quite deep enough. Your worship of ‘The Profit’ makes extreme fundamentalism look like child’s play.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:27 pmUnbridled greed is destroying our country politically, socially and financially.
And the beat goes on…
Oh boy, so we are going to get campaign style ads year around? Yeah, that won’t piss a bunch of people off, who are already pissed off.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:39 pmThis is all to do with money, money, money. We need to whole these jerks accountable.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:42 pmI’d like to know how many board of directors ole Tom Friedman is on. Then when he comes out with his puff pieces on globalization one could take it with the grains of salt they deserve.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:24 pmExxon Mobile profits are at 10.36 Billion dollars.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:58 pmI recommend Nationalization. In that case our debt of
8.3 Trillion dollars goes down slightly…
Come on! Oil companies, lobbists and politicians using a war chest of $100,000,000 to try to sway public opinion during a period of (hopefully) intense congressional hearings and investigations into price gouging, supply manipulation, the definition of pollutants, global warming and the future of the internal combustion engine……..give me break……they would never do that……..our president and vice-president would never let it happen…….it would be against the public good…….
December 1st, 2006 at 7:27 pmA Dream made Fiction:
December 1st, 2006 at 7:32 pmhttp://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=143205
Gas prices are going UP were I live….justice be done
December 1st, 2006 at 11:21 pm# 17 Dude… put down the meth pipe man…. seriously.. what dude.. its only ok to use forged documents when your trying to talk your countrymen into supporting an invasion?
Honestly man, if jesus were actually looking down from heaven (hes not, hes rotting away, not the son of god but merely an inbred with strong psychic abilties), he’d hate that people like you proport to follow his teachings.
Please go back to doing what you red staters do best.. having sex with people related to you..
And take that picture of the naked 10 year old girl running away from the napalm in vietnam to lay over moms back when your porking her, ok?
Just put a feeding trough in front of her, she wont get offended.
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:34 amWow, Juan, those are some harsh words. I bow down!!! Your correspondant’s ignorant words were deleted but they had to have been pretty bad.
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:38 pmNationalization would be nice but we know it won’t happen, so I’d be content to just see restoration of some semblance of decentralization and regulation by people like the recently canned auditor, Bobby Maxwell (Blowing the Whistle on Big Oil, NY Times @ http://www.nytimes.com/ 2006/ 12/ 03/ business/ yourmoney/ 03whistle.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin).
And, yes, gas prices did jump a dime within a day or two of the election and another dime since, probably so they can pay for this advertising spree.
December 4th, 2006 at 4:12 pm[…] Notice the argument: It would “open the floodgates.” That is, Maxwell’s suit to expose wrongdoing must not be allowed to continue because it would generate, uh, more suits exposing wrongdoing. I can see why they’d be afraid of that. So, being the proactive folks they are, the American Petroleum Institute and its K Street allies are looking to assemble a $100 million war chest to rally policy makers and public opinion to their side,” the National Journal reports. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 1:48 pm