By the time Word War II drew to a close 77 years ago the world geopolitical map saw Australia identified not just as an existing state within the United Kingdom's wider economic zone, but as a prospective permanent political and economic client state of other Big Powers. Its natural resources to be harvested by fossil fuel corporations & extractive industries, exploited by foreign investors and its population a reliable supplier of future cannon fodder in support of their individual and sometimes joint global ambitions.
For her part, Australia would present as obligingly grateful for being treated as a commodity 'owned' by the wealthy top percentile of the northern hemisphere and the largest transnationals.
Nothing much appears to have changed since then…..
The Saturday Paper, 7 January 2023:
A United States congressional committee investigating fossil fuel disinformation has published internal documents on a major Australian fossil fuel project – described by energy multinational Chevron as “an Australian icon” – in what has become the investigation’s final publication before Republicans took control of congress on Tuesday.
The second and final memo, released by the US house oversight and reform committee, includes information from internal documents subpoenaed by the committee about Chevron’s plans to extract gas from its Gorgon project on Barrow Island, off the coast of Western Australia, beyond 2056. The committee included Gorgon as an example of how the industry is “doubling down on long-term fossil fuel investments” while publicly claiming that gas is “merely a ‘bridge fuel’ ” to cleaner energy in spite of scientists’ “significant concerns about continued reliance on natural gas in a warming climate”.
The committee released memos in September and December last year, alongside thousands of pages of internal documents subpoenaed from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. A sixth subpoena issued to the American Chamber of Commerce did not result in any documents being provided.
The two memos include references to the Australian activities of three of the four big oil companies it investigated – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil – however, the December 2022 memo includes a particularly detailed focus on the Gorgon project, a joint venture led by Chevron, with partners including Shell and ExxonMobil.
According to the committee, the documents reveal that Chevron “is prepared to swoop in and expand its own fossil fuel business … even if other companies ultimately agree to reduce oil and gas production …”
In total, more than 200 of the 589 pages of Chevron documents published by the committee in December relate to Chevron’s operations in Australia, although many are covered almost completely by black boxes. The documents include a heavily redacted 179-page binder provided to Chevron board members visiting Australia and the Gorgon project in 2016, including details ranging from cultural advice on how to order a flat white to information on Chevron’s long-term ambitions for what it is describing as the “largest single-resource development in Australia’s history”.
According to the committee, internal documents shared with the board by then chief executive John S. Watson “emphasize” Chevron’s “long-term intentions for [Gorgon], despite climate concerns” and “the profits Chevron predicts it will reap”…...
Of the unredacted pages related to Chevron’s Gorgon trip, some are less pertinent than others. A cultural information section explains how light mocking should be considered “friendly banter” and not “an insult”. A rare unredacted section of the agenda shows the executives, directors and spouses were scheduled to receive a two-hour overview of Australian politics from Peter van Onselen, who is introduced as contributing editor at The Australian.
The December 2022 memo was not the first time the Gorgon project attracted the committee’s attention. Its September 2022 memo noted a carbon capture and storage facility at Gorgon that had “repeatedly failed to meet its storage target by about 50%” as an example of problems with that technology.
Another Australian example included in the December memo relates to BP’s strategies towards working with regulators here. A 2016 email from a BP executive to John Mingé, chairman and president of BP America, compares the company’s mindset in engaging with regulators in countries including Australia, the US and Germany.
The email describes how BP had gained an “advantaged position” with the regulator of its Australian oil refinery by engaging “proactively”. According to the internal memo, BP documents provided to the committee “show BP executives acknowledging that the company’s actions are often obstructionist towards the development of climate policy”.
Overall, the internal documents, along with further scientific sources cited by the memo, reveal that many of the public claims made by fossil fuel companies have been intentionally misleading.
As the committee’s then chair, Carolyn Maloney, said at a hearing in February: the investigation revealed that ExxonMobil scientists knew about the dangers of fossil fuels in 1978, and in the decades since, the fossil fuel industry has “waged a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign” to prevent climate action, “all to protect its bottom line”…..
On December 25, journalist Amy Westervelt reported that, contrary to previous plans stated by the committee during its term, the December 9 memo may be the last document it publishes.
That same week, the new chair of the Democratic minority in the house oversight committee, Jamie Raskin, shared that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma.
The committee’s work being abruptly curtailed after only 18 months contrasts with the long-term time scales of the companies it is investigating, such as Chevron’s plans to secure profits beyond 2050. The Saturday Paper put a request for comment to Chevron but did not hear back before going to press.
Although the committee’s investigation is on hold, the US is significantly in front of Australia in its attempts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
Last month, Puerto Rico became the latest US jurisdiction to file climate accountability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, joining dockets filed by seven US states and at least 35 municipal governments.
Puerto Rico – an unincorporated territory of the US in the Caribbean, where storms made worse by climate change have caused major recent disasters – is the first to use the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in its climate fraud case against Shell and other companies.
According to Wiles, it could be a “big loss” for these cases if the million pages held by the committee “never see the light of day”.
“The documents that have been released so far definitely provide new evidence on the side of the plaintiffs against the defendants.”
In Australia there are currently at least two court cases related to so-called greenwashing making their way through courts, including one case lodged by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.
In 2022, two Australian regulators, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, announced plans to investigate greenwashing using existing laws.
Considering the memo’s revelation that BP has internally described its more proactive approach of working with regulators in Australia, it is unclear to what extent regulators alone can address the industry’s influence…..
BACKGROUND
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