Oil Sands Fact Check: New API Front Group

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How do you sell a rotten bag of goods? Rule number one of effective propaganda: repackage it into something seemingly lessย grotesque.

In that spirit, theย Houston Chronicleย recentlyย reportedย theย American Petroleum Instituteย (API) has created yet anotherย front group, this one to promoteย tar sandsย crude, one of theย dirtiest sources of fuel in the world, as a safe and secure energyย resource.

It’s name? โ€œOil Sands Fact Checkโ€ (OSFC).

OSFCย describes itselfย this way on itsย website:

Well, as the name might suggest, weโ€™re about checking facts and providing the proper context โ€” making sure that the best and most accurate information is available when it comes to the development, delivery and impact of secure sources of energy derived from Canadaโ€™s oilย sands.

By now, perhaps, youโ€™ve heard that the size of the resource is immense: some experts believe Albertaโ€™s oil sands could someday prove to be the largest reserve of oil in the worldโ€ฆ[E]verybody is entitled to their own opinion โ€“ as they say โ€“ but not their own facts. Here at OSFC, weโ€™re not in the business of opinionsโ€“ we provideย facts.

The facts provided by climatologists such as NASA‘s James Hansen, though, are that the full steam ahead extraction of Alberta’s tar sands crude could mean โ€œgame overโ€ for the climate. OSFC will assuredly not be providing citizens and journalists with these inconvenientย facts.

A Parallel to Energy Inย Depth

Theย Chronicleย articleย highlightsย the fact that OSFC is a direct parallel to another currently existing industry shale gas industry front group, Energy in Depth (EID),ย outed by DeSmogBlog last year as a frontย for Big Oil and Bigย Gas.ย 

In fact,ย theย Chronicleย explains, OSFC will utilize many of the same public relations tactics as its cousin, EID:

Oil Sands Fact Check is borrowing a page from Energy In Depthโ€™s playbook, with regular โ€œissue alertsโ€ to reporters and others, and plans for touting the message via Facebook, Twitter and other social media. To lure in critics as well as supporters, the group has ads that appear on Google when users search for โ€œtar sandsโ€ โ€“ a synonym often used derisively โ€“ and other relatedย terms.

Will OSFC, then, be EID‘s โ€œkissing cousinโ€? Willย grassroots activistsย andย journalistsย have to put up with theย EID-type abuse?

In three words: let’s hopeย not.ย 

Recent history has shown, though, that this will likely be theย case.

Image credit: Shutterstock |ย Christopherย Kolaczan

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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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