Record gas prices are “prompting Americans to drive less for the first time in nearly three decades, squeezing family budgets and causing major shifts in driving habits.” And more Americans feel the same way Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) does about Big Oil:
Major oil companies “are getting away with murder” and “gouging” consumers as the price of oil continues to soar, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin said Thursday. […]
“The oil companies are getting away with murder,” Levin said. “Their profits are achieved at the pain and suffering of the American people.”
And what are the oil companies planning to do to change public opinion? Spend more of their massive profits on alternative energy research?
Nope. Instead, they plan to pump millions of dollars into a massive public relations campaign. The Washington Post reported last week:
Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image.
The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation’s largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea.
The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters — who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress — that rising energy prices are not the producers’ fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse.
API has only said it would spend less than $100 million a year, but according to ad exec Bill Replogle, this “dwarfs” the amount most groups spend on issue campaigns.
At least the oil lobby isn’t setting the bar too high:
“There’s no expectation that the public will end up loving the oil and gas industry,” [API President Red Cavaney] said.
Tags: big oil
