An advocacy group funded by the American Petroleum Institute has helped hundreds of people write and rehearse comments to government agencies in favor of decisions that could benefit the oil industry’s bottom line.
Energy Citizens has launched mass mobilization efforts in recent years to influence agencies at both the federal and state level. It helped supporters draft oral comments urging EPA to grant Louisiana and Texas permitting authority over carbon dioxide sequestration wells. More recently, the group rallied dozens of people in New Mexico to write and offer oral comments against a proposed state rule requiring oil and gas operators to pay higher insurance bonds.
Such efforts are not uncommon in the regulatory world, where advocacy groups sometimes provide their supporters with form letters that can flood an agency’s docket. But Energy Citizens’ efforts have prompted environmental groups to accuse the oil industry of spreading misinformation, at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back pollution rules and challenging accepted climate science to help the industry “drill, baby, drill.”
API on Tuesday confirmed to POLITICO’s E&E News that members of Energy Citizens have commented on the New Mexico rules and in the Texas and Louisiana primacy hearings, “as they have many times before.”
“API is proud to amplify the voices of millions of Americans who recognize the importance of U.S. energy leadership and to keep them informed of the state, local and federal issues that impact their everyday lives,” spokesperson Bethany Williams said in an email.
Some environmental groups have said Energy Citizens’ efforts amount to a form of astroturfing — or organizing efforts to make it appear there is more support for an issue than actually exists. But experts say that doesn’t appear to be the case and that the impact of the comment campaigns may be limited.
“It strikes me that astroturfing is in the eye of the beholder,” said Steve Balla, a political science professor at George Washington University and co-founder of the school’s Regulatory Studies Center. “Assuming these are real people who really believe what they’re saying — it’s mass mobilization.”
Environmental groups that offered comments and expert testimony at the same meetings as Energy Citizens’ supporters accuse the advocacy group of providing inaccurate messages. Tannis Fox, senior attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, said the Energy Citizens-driven comments for New Mexico’s hearings are the most organized and “misleading pro-industry response” she’s seen in 20 years of watching rulemaking processes.
“I have no objection to an organized public comment effort. Our groups do it,” Fox wrote. “I do object to the misinformation campaign.”
In a statement, EPA said it followed the Administrative Procedure Act — including giving the public time to review and comment on proposed rules — in its decision-making process on whether to grant Texas and Louisiana primacy over Class VI wells that store CO2.
Political cover?
Groups working to amass hundreds or thousands of boilerplate comments is hardly new, Balla said. Those efforts are especially obvious when looking at written comments.
Balla pointed to written comments given to EPA. He said in some cases, there are thousands of practically identical comments originally drafted by industry groups or environmental groups like the Sierra Club, signed and submitted by thousands of their members.
“What EPA will do when they post on regulations.gov and post all the comments, they won’t post all 1 million identical comments,” Balla said. “They’ll say, ‘This is one emblematic of 1 million duplicate or identical comments,’ treating it as if it’s one piece of information.”
He said those many identical comments often don’t mean much to regulators. Balla said state agencies and federal departments like EPA usually place more importance on technical comments that offer evidence, studies and data about how a potential rule change could affect the environment or industries.
“Agencies’ decision-making processes are not exercises in vote counting,” Balla said. “The agencies are the ones making the decision, based on the law, the economics. If they’re going to get sued when they issue a decision, they want to make sure their decision is as solid as it can be legally and scientifically.”
However, agency heads can use repetitive public comments as political cover.
In 2015, for example, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy pointed to public comments when defending the Waters of the United States regulation in testimony before a Republican-led Senate committee. About 87 percent of the comments on that rule were supportive of the administration’s efforts.
But about 90 percent of the comments came from mass comment campaigns, according to a 2019 analysis from Balla and his colleagues on mass comment campaigns during EPA rulemakings.
“The Obama administration already knew what they were going to do, regardless of the comments, but it gave the EPA cover to go before a Republican Senate and say, ‘Well, the vast majority of comments supported this,’” Balla said.
The analysis also found little consistency between the comment campaigns and the content of rules that were eventually passed.
A familiar script
At a three-day EPA hearing in Baton Rouge in June 2023, dozens of people lined up to give their opinion on whether the agency should allow Louisiana to regulate and permit Class VI carbon dioxide injection wells.
The comments followed a similar script: Speakers spoke about how long their family has lived in Louisiana, talked about why they love the state and mentioned how important the oil and gas industry is to the state and its economy. Then, they said that not giving Louisiana so-called primacy over Class VI wells could endanger the fossil fuel industry and potentially see oil and gas jobs and facilities move out of state. Some added that they were supporters of Energy Citizens.
The support of primacy at the hearing has since been belied by a groundswell of local opposition to carbon sequestration projects across Louisiana. Jane Patton, U.S. fossil economy campaign manager with the Center for International Environmental Law, argued that EPA can now point to those Energy Citizen-prompted comments as political cover.
“Regulators who are very pro-industry are grasping at straws for support because they’re up against a wave of public opposition,” Patton said. “Any public statement they have that’s supportive of these projects backs up their decisions.”
Energy Citizens supporters echoed the script from the Louisiana hearing earlier this summer when EPA sought public input about whether to give Texas oversight over Class VI wells. Some claimed, without evidence, that granting Texas that primacy would do everything from lower residential electricity prices to increase funding for local special education programs.
EPA has not decided on whether to grant Texas that primacy, and Energy Citizens and API pointed out that environmental groups in Texas also rallied supporters to give comments that aligned with their viewpoints.
Environmental groups and other organizations have long urged members to submit identical form letters during agency public comment periods. Balla pointed to public comments made in 2014 for EPA’s Clean Water Rule. At the time, EPA said mass-mailing and petition letter campaigns made up the majority of more than 1 million comment letters it received on the topic, 90 percent of which expressed support for the Obama-era rule.
Organizational goals
Over the past three weeks, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission has heard dozens of comments against raising insurance rates for oil and gas wells.
The commission is considering raising the amount companies must pay for insurance, or surety, bonds from as little as $2,500 per well to $150,000. The bonds are meant to help the state cover the cost of plugging and cleaning up wells abandoned by operators that go out of business or are unable to do the well plugging themselves. The state’s Legislative Finance Committee says that the average cost of plugging a well is about $163,000.
The proposal has sparked intense pushback from the oil and gas industry, including from members of Energy Citizens. The New Mexico Oil & Gas Association has also asked its members to submit written comments against the proposal, with a boilerplate comment on its website.
Oil and gas supporters say the new rules will push smaller producers out of business and will jeopardize the industry statewide, potentially leading to declines in production. Environmentalist say that is inaccurate, pointing to two studies of similar bonds in Texas and North Dakota that did not find a correlation between the higher insurance rates and overall fossil fuel production.
In a statement, a commission spokesperson said the public comments help the agency understand public interest on issues and potential impacts of rulemaking proposals.
“The weight given to a comment is generally tied to its relevance, substance, and supporting evidence: substantive, evidence-based comments that raise significant issues or provide detailed analysis tend to be weighted more heavily than mere statements of position or repetitive comments,” said commission spokesperson Sidney Hill.
And most of the Oil Conservation Commission’s hearings so far have been focused on expert testimony.
But even if New Mexico officials don’t give much weight to repetitive comments, Balla said the effort still benefits Energy Citizens and API.
“Why bother? Part of it is demonstrating to your base and membership that you’re doing something that means something — they’re fighting,” Balla said. “For more narrow organizational goals, it’s good for fundraising, it helps identify people who might be willing to become more involved members of the organization. There’s a lot of organization-building elements to this.”
