Secret Tribunals and Hand-Picked Arbiters—A Little-known System Undermines Environmental Regulation

“Like a War on the Environment” —Texaco’s 30 Years in Ecuador

Blood of the Devil

S5, Ep3 | The Trial

S5, Ep10 | The Kill Step

S5, Ep6 | A Verdict And a New Charge

S5, Ep5 | The Big Guns

S5, Ep4 | The Secret Tribunal

S5, Ep2 | The Colonizers

S5, Ep8 | Damages

S5, Ep9 | The Judge

S5, Ep7 | The Linchpin

S5, Ep1 | Lockdown

La Lucha En La Jungla

For decades now, the fossil fuel industry has told the same story: Oil equals development and prosperity. Access. Equality. Stability. A better quality of life. As the world’s fossil fuel companies race to tap the last of the planet’s oil reserves we have a chance to examine that promise up close, in real time.

What it looks like on the ground in countries like Guyana, Uganda, and Mozambique is a lot like what the first phase of extractive colonialism looked like a hundred years ago. Working with reporters living in these countries we are continuously investigating what this new flavor of oil colonialism looks like, starting with an in-depth, two-year reporting project in Guyana. 

Several miles off the coast of Guyana sits one of the world’s largest oil reserves. In 2015, ExxonMobil, which had held offshore drilling leases in the country for decades, announced it had found oil and would begin production as soon as possible. Government officials quickly got in line, and in 2019 the first barrels shipped from ExxonMobil Guyana. Today, Exxon projects that oil from Guyana could account for 25% of its total production in the next few years. But environmentalists and government corruption watchdogs have begun to push back on the project. Why 

 an oil industry in the midst of climate crisis? And especially in a country at great risk of climate impacts? Via a contract that will sooner put Guyana in debt than make it a rich oil state, no less?

In just a few years, Exxon has co-opted both government and civil society, buying up social license in every corner of the country. Oil executives and Guyanese officials are still telling the story that oil equals development and prosperity, and on paper Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the world, but average citizens aren’t benefiting from the boom. Today, there are only a couple of journalists left covering the project with any sort of skepticism, and one lawyer left willing to take it on in court. 

New Oil Colonialism

The fossil fuel industry was one of the first major users of PR in the U.S. and it continues to spend more than most other industries. PR firms don’t just handle media placements and advertising for fossil fuel clients, they help craft strategies. As one publicist put it to me recently, “it wasn’t the oil companies that invented greenwashing, it was PR firms.” Despite the billions of dollars it’s spent on PR over the years, the industry and its favorite firms are not exactly innovative. They come back to the same five key narratives over and over again, leaning on whichever plays best at any particular point in time: 

 - From fueling wars to preserving national security, the industry loves to highlight it’s role in keeping America safe…even when it’s profiting from wars that it has also helped to manufacture. 

- Keeping nature separate from humans and reminding us over and over again that economic growth is more important than conservation has helped the industry stave off regulation for decades. 

 - From keeping the lights on to providing the building blocks for life-saving medical devices, smart phones, cosmetics and fast fashion, the industry loves to remind consumers that they need it. 

 - Nothing keeps regulation away like voluntary solutions that make it seem like the industry is really trying. 

 - Just in case people still aren’t thrilled about dirty air, dirty water, and climate change, the industry makes sure to fund museums, sports, aquariums, and schools, which serves the dual purpose of cleaning up its image and making communities feel dependent on the industry and thus less likely to criticize it.

Information Pollution

For a long time there’s been a call amongst some climate advocates in the U.S. for the government to nationalize oil in order to manage the transition away from fossil fuels. The counter-argument is usually to point at countries like Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, all of which have only doubled down on fossil fuel development since nationalizing their industries. With that in mind, we began in 2023 to dig into this question and get a feel for how petrostates operate, starting with the host of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP28), the United Arab Emirates. 

Our partners on much of this first phase of petrostate reporting are the Centre for Climate Reporting in the U.K. 

Petrostates

In the U.S., the response to climate litigation is often “who cares when this Supreme Court is ultimately going to knock it back anyway?” And the answer is simple: discovery. Discovery is a term that describes the fact-finding phase of civil litigation. During the discovery phase, lawyers can access primary documents, depose current and former employees and executives, and generally get a whole bunch of information they couldn’t previously access. 

The oil companies have been fighting like hell to avoid this phase because it will undoubtedly produce ten more “Exxon Knew” series, if not more. It will provide evidence for all the other cases, too, not just in the U.S. but globally, where the industry doesn’t have Supreme Court justices ready to do their bidding. It’s true that it’s entirely possible that any climate case that gets to the U.S. Supreme Court will result in a pro-oil ruling. But not before massively increasing the risk of accountability for these companies along the way. Even the U.S. government might be forced to finally act if the public, armed with mountains of evidence that politicians have colluded with fossil fuel executives to sell their future, demands it.

And it’s important to remember that climate litigation does not begin or end with the U.S., nor does accountability for U.S. oil companies. It’s entirely possible that documents unearthed via litigation in one country can be used to hold a company accountable in one of the other 100 countries in which it operates. 

Given the importance of climate litigation today, and the fact that in its 2022 mitigation report the IPCC included litigation as a key mitigation tool for the first time ever, we keep tabs on these cases, both on the website and via multiple podcasts.

La Lucha En La Jungla

About

S5, Ep3 | The Trial

S5, Ep10 | The Kill Step

S5, Ep6 | A Verdict And a New Charge

S5, Ep5 | The Big Guns

S5, Ep4 | The Secret Tribunal

S5, Ep2 | The Colonizers

S5, Ep8 | Damages

S5, Ep9 | The Judge

S5, Ep7 | The Linchpin

S5, Ep1 | Lockdown

Share This Investigation

Date Created

Last Updated

Tags

New Oil Colonialism

Information Pollution

Petrostates

Climate Cases

La Lucha En La Jungla

About

S5, Ep3 | The Trial

S5, Ep10 | The Kill Step

S5, Ep6 | A Verdict And a New Charge

S5, Ep5 | The Big Guns

S5, Ep4 | The Secret Tribunal

S5, Ep2 | The Colonizers

S5, Ep8 | Damages

S5, Ep9 | The Judge

S5, Ep7 | The Linchpin

S5, Ep1 | Lockdown

Share This Investigation

Date Created

Last Updated

Tags

More Investigations

New Oil Colonialism

Information Pollution

Petrostates

Climate Cases