"Carbon Copy": How Big Oil and King Coal Ghost Write Letters for Public Officials, Business Groups

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The Billings Gazette has revealed that coal mining company Cloudpeak Energy ghost wrote protest letters to the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) on behalf of allied policymakers and businessย groups.ย 

Reporter Tom Lutey examined numerous letters written to DOI from Montana-based stakeholders and noticed something unusual: the language in every single letter was exactly the same. That is, the same except for a parenthetical note in one of them instructing the supposed writer of it to โ€œinsertย name/group/entity.โ€

The โ€œcarbon copiedโ€ (pun credit goes to Lutey) letters requested for the DOI to give states a time extension to begin implementing new rules dictating the coal industry give states a โ€œfair returnโ€ on mining leases granted to industry by the states. DOI ended up giving King Coal the 60-dayย extension.

โ€œLast month, coal proponents scored a major victory by convincing the Department of Interior to hold off on its rule making for 60 days so that more people could respond,โ€ Lutey wrote. โ€œMembers of the Montana Legislature, along with county commissioners and mayors from Montana and Wyoming communities put the weight of their political offices behind letters asking the DOI for more time. What they didnโ€™t offer were their ownย words.โ€

Among those who submitted a โ€œcarbon copiedโ€ letter originally written by Cloudpeak Energy include the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Billings Chamber of Commerce, Montana Coal Council, Montana Sen. Debby Barrettย and the Yellowstone County Board of Commissioners.ย ย 

Unlike others, the Montana Chamber of Commerce embarassingly forgot to take out the boilerplate โ€œinsert name/group/entityโ€ย language.ย 

Montana Chamber of Commerce Ghostwriting Coal Letter
Image Credit:ย Quitย Coal

Cloud Peak responded by saying this was a โ€œsample letterโ€ฆincluded as part ofโ€ฆbriefings,โ€ but did not clarify if those allied stakeholders were supposed to send them to DOI in verbatim fashion, as did the Montanaย Chamber.

Like Coal, Like LNG

DeSmogBlog has also obtained documents via Texas Open Records Act from theย Sabine-Neches Navigation District of Jefferson Countyย that showย liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry players doing the sameย thing.ย 

In its U.S. Department of Energy docket, Golden Pass Productsย โ€” owner of the Golden Pass LNG facility co-owned by ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleumย โ€” lists 11 โ€œletters in support of applicationโ€ submitted by policymakers and business groups in Januaryย 2013.

Those submitting letters included U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX),ย The Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce, Port Arthur’s Chamber of Commerce andย others.ย 

Like the Cloudpeak Energy letters, all of them have mostly the same language, except that they explain what they described as benefits to their districts or communities in the โ€œfill in the blankโ€ย section.

Emails obtained via the open records request filed by DeSmogBlog reveal that Renwick DeVille, vice president of the firmย Harris, DeVille & Associates, Inc. and head of political and governmental affairs for the Golden Pass project, provided โ€œsample draft lettersโ€ for those submitting them to DOEย on behalf of Goldenย Pass.

Meta-data taken from the original โ€œsampleโ€ย shows thatย Harris, DeVille & Associates associate Payton Keith drafted up the letter now part of the official DOE permit docket for Golden Pass. That letter isย signed off on by Randall Reese, general manager of the Navigationย District.ย 

Image Credit:ย DeSmogBlog

Sabine Neches Navigation District officials agreed to submit the Keith-drafted letterย on their own letterhead to the DOE, offering no push-back in doing so.

Golden Pass LNG Ghost Writing
Image Credit: Sabine Neches Navigationย District

โ€œMr. Reeseโ€™s letter correctly states ‘the importance of this particular project to the economy of our area and importance to our waterway,’โ€ Hubert Oxford III, legal counsel for the Sabine Neches Navigation District, toldย DeSmogBlog.

โ€œHopefully the Federal Energy [Regulatory] Commission will look favorably on this project and increase the use of natural gas as a clean burning fuel to energize not just the United States but the wholeย world.โ€

Golden Pass LNG has yet to receive a final permit from FERC to export LNG to the globalย market.ย 

โ€œCarbonย Copyโ€

In May 2014, DeSmogBlog also published documents obtained via a public records request submitted in North Dakota revealing that private equity giant Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts (KKR) โ€” where former CIA director David Petraeus now worksย โ€” ghost wrote a press release on behalf of The Office of North Dakota State Treasurer.

KKR was promoting Petraeus’s trip to the Bakken Shale hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) fields nearly a year ago. Petraeus traveled to the Bakken Shale to explore potential investment opportunities for KKR.ย 

And as the case study of theย American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)ย has made clear, copy-paste jobs for โ€œmodel legislationโ€ are the norm and not an aberration when it comes to industry-friendly politicians and the industries that bank-roll them working together to undermine publicย policy.

A โ€œcarbon copy,โ€ย indeed.ย 

Image Credit: Quitย Coal

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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