How Big Oil and Gas created the fraud of “clean” natural gas

Gas companies peddled the myth of “clean” natural gas for decades despite knowing the dangers posed by methane and the gas system, a new investigation from CCI featuring never-before-published documents finds. As officials across the globe debate expanding natural gas extraction and use, “The Fraud of ‘Clean’ Natural Gas: How Big Oil and Gas Created the Myth that Natural Gas is a Climate Solution” reveals how the gas industry manufactured and promoted the falsehood that natural gas is “clean” in the 1970s and purposefully deceived decisionmakers and the public about the safety and risks ever since. 

“The fraud of clean natural gas has been essential to the industry’s success in the marketplace, and the idea that gas is climate-friendly has been at the heart of the rapid expansion of gas infrastructure over the last two decades,” the report’s introduction states.

The investigation is based on newly discovered documents, public records requests, internal industry communications, confidential reports, scientific papers, and interviews with climate scientists, industry consultants, and representatives from environmental groups. While previous reports and investigations have demonstrated the way in which the oil and gas industry responded to carbon pollution with delay and denial, this is the first to trace the history of the gas industry's response to its methane pollution problem and to place it in the context of decades of deception.

Included in the report is evidence that the gas industry was warned of methane pollution issues as early as 1968 — far earlier than previously reported. Through a review commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, the industry was informed that methane in the atmosphere was connected to “oil fields” and “[gas] distribution system leakage,” noting that natural environmental sinks could be “overburdened by excessive emissions.” 

Fearing a decline in customers during a period of rising environmental consciousness, the gas industry adopted a public relations campaign in 1971 titled “GAS, CLEAN ENERGY FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW.” To reinforce the idea of “clean” gas, industry-owned media sources misrepresented and downplayed the risks of methane with claims including “Studies Suggest Methane Is Not a Major Greenhouse Gas” and “[M]ethane: no drawback.” 

Gas companies went so far as to steer the outcome of a 1996 study on methane that was co-funded with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Internal communications published in the report show that EPA officials said they “simply do not have the expertise” to independently review the data presented by the gas industry in the study and they were “unlikely to find problems even if they exist.” The study, which was published with the credibility of the EPA, was then used by the gas industry to downplay concerns about methane emissions.

The gas industry’s fraud has had lasting impacts on the continued use and beliefs about natural gas. Natural gas use in the United States has increased dramatically in the decades since the industry first started pushing the myth of “clean” natural gas. A poll conducted by Data for Progress and CCI found that 50 percent of likely voters now consider natural gas to be a form of clean energy. However, when voters were informed of natural gas’s relation to fracking and the deception surrounding its “clean” identity, overall support for gas decreased 46 points.

The same poll found that nearly 3 in 4 U.S. voters would support legal action to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for misleading them about the harms of natural gas.

“Big Oil and the gas industry knew decades ago that methane was a harmful climate pollutant, but they manufactured the myth of ‘clean’ natural gas in order to protect and expand their business, with no regard for public health or the climate impacts that they knew would result,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity. “Officials who continue to justify expanding natural gas reliance by still claiming it’s clean or safe for the climate are using the same script and manipulated science that gas executives and their PR teams concocted decades ago. It’s time that these profoundly dangerous lies are finally put to rest. By exposing the gas industry’s deception, we can get one step closer to accountability.”