Oil Industry Seeks to Engage Public on Energy Policy

One of the overarching messages coming from the oil industry these days is that they have generally done a bad job of engaging, educating and communicating with the public.

The oil and gas industry made the case this past week at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston* that if they could just educate and engage the public about oil development through honest and transparent communication, the public—and by extension, the Congress—would buy into it.

The message from the industry is clear: domestic oil and gas development is cleaner, safer, more efficient and more productive than ever (which it is). Existing perceptions about the industry are failing to keep up with accurate representations, industry representatives and others argue, and to prevent the economy from collapsing on itself, the United States must make it easier to develop its own fossil fuel resources, both offshore and on.

“I think the rhetoric is really seriously getting in the way of progress,” Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil, said during a panel discussion at the event. While Odum and leaders of the petroleum, trucking, and airline industries in the opening session defended the need for an honest, open dialogue, others in that coalition apparently didn’t get the memo. One oil company executive from the exploration sector argued that because they continue to find more resources than were originally predicted, “the world is not running out of energy [oil] resources.”

Cleavages in the left, right and middle

Whether real or perceived, cleavages within the industry are not as sharp as those in the public sphere - at least not as sharp as the mainstream media would like you to believe. But those divisions are not necessarily cast along party lines says Jason Grumet, executive director of the non-partisan National Commission on Energy Policy.

“When energy policy gets serious it becomes much more about regionalism than partnership,” said Grumet.

Grumet said he has had some success finding areas where desperate parties can agree through his bipartisan group that was formed to find consensus on energy issues. Grumet also said that moving forward on energy was easy in principle, but much tougher when it came down to the nuts and bolts of policymaking.

“It’s too easy to see the vision and think you can get there by Thursday,” Grumet said on Monday morning.

*Thanks to the American Petroleum Institute for providing travel and lodging support for the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. In part II I will explore some of the policy implications I gleaned over the week.

Image: Tim Hurst

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