Congress-backed Interstate Oil Commission Call Cops When Reporter Arrives To Ask About Climate

picture-7018-1583982147.png
on

On October 1, I arrived at the Oklahoma City headquarters of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) โ€” a congressionally-chartered collective of oil and gas producing states โ€” hoping for an interview.

There to ask IOGCC if it believed human activity (and specifically oil and gas drilling) causes climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, my plans that day came to a screeching halt when cops from the Oklahoma City Police Department rolled up and said that they had received a 9-1-1 call reporting me and my activity as โ€œsuspiciousโ€ (listen to the audio here). 

What IOGCC apparently didnโ€™t tell the cops, though, was that I had already told them via email that I would be in the area that day and would like to do an interview.

That initial email requested an opportunity to meet up in-person with IOGCCโ€˜s upper-level personnel, a request coming in the immediate aftermath of its Oklahoma City-based annual meeting, which I attended. After the cops came to the scene and cleared me to leave, I sent a follow up email to IOGCC outlining the questions I would have asked if given the opportunity to do so.

Days later, IOGCC finally responded to those questions and told me its climate change stance. Well, as youโ€™ll see later, they kind of did.

โ€œClosed Businessโ€

I was no stranger to IOGCC to begin with, which exists due to an act of Congress in 1935.

Indeed, the compact had granted me a press pass to attend and cover its industry-funded extravaganza that took place in the days before. I also attended its 2014 annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio and did a 41-minute interview with Carol Booth, IOGCCโ€˜s communications manager, while there. 

According to the Oklahoma City Police officer who arrived and held me for about seven minutes to ask me questions and do a background check on me, IOGCC had โ€œclosed businessโ€ that day, though that was neither posted on its front door nor anywhere online. It is also not listed as a state holiday on the Oklahoma Secretary of Stateโ€™s website and it is not a federal holiday.

Whyโ€™d they close business, then? I asked IOGCC.  

โ€œMike and I gave the staff a couple of days of R&R [rest and recovery] after a weekend and late nights associated with our Annual Meeting (and 80th Anniversary),โ€ Gerry Baker, associate executive director of IOGCC, told DeSmog via email. โ€œWeโ€™ll be closed again tomorrow [Friday, October 2], but will work on a response to your questions next week.โ€

Late Night Parties

Bakerโ€™s response makes some sense, at least in so far as late nights go.

The IOGCC meeting agenda featured an opening night reception on the 50th and top floor of the Devon Energy Center, a second night industry-funded reception at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel located two buildings away from Continental Resourcesโ€™ corporate headquarters and across the street from that of SandRidge Energy, and a third night secretive dinner at Cafรฉ Do Brasil that went unlisted on the public agenda and I found out about by hanging out on the sidelines of the annual meeting.

Closing Luncheon Ceremony; Photo Credit: Steve Horn | DeSmog

IOGCCโ€˜s Oklahoma City meeting also featured industry-funded breakfasts and lunches.

Photo Credit: Steve Horn | DeSmog

Fleeing the Scene

But Bakerโ€™s claim that no one was in the office seems suspect for two reasons, both centering around the two cars parked at IOGCCโ€˜s office when I arrived. Both of those cars, it turns out, were owned by IOGCC staff members I had emailed before showing up.

One of them was owned by Carl Michael (โ€œMikeโ€) Smith, IOGCC executive director, confirmed to me by the officer who held me temporarily.

โ€œMike called about you being suspicious out here,โ€ the officer told me. โ€œI donโ€™t have a choice about what people call 9-1-1 about.โ€

Smith was the assistant secretary of fossil energy for the Bush Administration Department of Energy from 2004-2006, as well as Oklahomaโ€™s former Secretary of Energy. He was also formerly a senior advisor for the lobbying firm Abraham Consulting LLC, owned and run by former Bush Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham.  

Carl Michael โ€œMikeโ€ Smith; Image Credit: IOGCC

The other car present was that of Carol Booth, the IOGCC communications manager. When I was held by the police officer, I overheard via his intercom system that it was her car parked in the back of IOGCCโ€˜s office, which someone at the Oklahoma City Police Departmentโ€™s office confirmed to him by looking up her license plate in a database and reporting it back to him.

While Booth was still seemingly at the office when the officer arrived, Smith had already fled the scene in his car, doing so out of the side-door attached to his office while I stepped away from the building for a second to take a phone call before the cops arrived.

Baker told DeSmog that the cops came on their own volition and not because IOGCC called 9-1-1.

โ€œDue to the location of the IOGCC office, which is adjacent to the Governorโ€™s Mansion property, there are sensitivities about who is in the area,โ€ said Baker. โ€œOklahoma City police officers often keep track of whoโ€™s using the property for obvious reasons.โ€

But I was told by both the officer and Oklahoma City Police Department staff members that the 9-1-1 call came from the IOGCC office address.

*Further, DeSmog has obtained the call log from the incident in question from the Department, which lists IOGCCโ€˜s address as the location the call came from and a call type of โ€œsuspicious activity.โ€ And the receipt for the log, which we paid for, lists it as coming from a 9-1-1 call log.

Oklahoma City Police IOGCC Call Log

Image Credit: Oklahoma City Police Department

IOGCC and Climate

Smith also wrote us a letter on IOGCCโ€˜s climate change stance, copying the IOGCC chairwoman and co-chairmen on it, explaining that it โ€œdoes not have a position on climate changeโ€ and is โ€œnot part of conversations on climate change.โ€

Mike Smith IOGCC Climate Change Letter

Image Credit: Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission

Historical records obtained by DeSmog, on the other hand, sing another tune about where IOGCC stands on climate change.

In 1998, IOGCC passed a climate change denial resolution stating that โ€œthere is continuing scientific debate as to what the impact of increasing contributions of greenhouse gases would be on the climate,โ€ even issuing a press release after it passed.

Then in 2002, IOGCC invited prominent climate change denier Bjรธrn Lomborg to speak at its annual meeting and sign autographs of his then-new book โ€œThe Skeptical Environmentalist.โ€

IOGCC 101

But what exactly is IOGCC and why do they โ€” and their stance on climate change โ€” matter anyway?

Officially, IOGCC is a collective body of top-level state-level oil and gas industry regulators and permitters, not to be confused with environmental regulators. Though in the case of some states, such as North Dakota, agencies have a dual mission of permitting oil and gas drilling, as well as protecting the environment. 

Chartered by Congress in 1935, IOGCCโ€˜s existence has flown under the radar for 80 years by most.

Meanwhile, its meetings and the organizationโ€™s existence serve as ground zero for industry influence-peddling. A case in point: 39-percent of attendees present at its Oklahoma City meeting worked for the industry, according to a roster obtained by DeSmog and the majority of its members at-large work for the industry

IOGCC, like the more well-known American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), passes model resolutions at its annual meetings. It also brings together regulators, industry executives and lobbyists under one roof to do networking and rub elbows with one another.

At its most recent meeting, IOGCC presented two draft model resolutions, one of which would leave regulating methane emissions ensuing as a result of shale oil and gas drilling to the states as โ€œthe proper authority to encourage capture of methane emissions.โ€ That resolution, published here for the first time, does not mention climate change a single time even though methane is a greenhouse gas 86-105 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

IOGCC Methane Resolution

Image Credit: Steve Horn | DeSmog

Its other draft resolution introduced in Oklahoma City, which calls for states to have authority over federally-controlled conservation areas in order to do oil and gas drilling, also fits within its broader โ€œStates First Initiativeโ€ push.

Shadow Lobbying Organ?

IOGCC has a rich history of serving as a key apparatus through which the oil and gas industry flexes its muscles.

It has done such a good job of doing so, in fact, that in 1978 then-U.S. Department of Justice attorney Donald Flexner โ€” now working as a namesake of the powerful firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP โ€” wrote and testified in front of Congress that IOGCC should no longer exist as a compact because it does โ€œessentially lobbying work.โ€ 

IOGCC Lobbying

Three years later in 1981, instead of heeding Flexnerโ€™s counsel, Congress decided to stop reauthorizing IOGCC every three years and instead introduced an amendment giving it de facto permanent reauthorization

For an entity of its clout, the public knows very little about IOGCCโ€˜s inner-workings. And thatโ€™s not without reason.

For example, IOGCC has responded to an open records request sent by DeSmog by claiming a wholesale exemption to both state-level and federal-level open records laws because they are an interstate compact and not a government agency, even though its own by-laws claim its records are open to the public.

Interstate compacts, over 200 of which currently exist, can exist due to a clause in the U.S. constitution reading, โ€œNo State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.โ€ 

Meanwhile IOGCCโ€˜s own website describes it as a โ€œmulti-state government agency,โ€ IOGCC staff members use โ€œstate.ok.usโ€ email accounts, and its office is located on property given to them by the Oklahoma government and located adjacent to the Governorโ€™s Mansion. Current IOGCC chairwoman Mary Fallin, Oklahomaโ€™s Republican Governor, lives in said mansion. 

IOGCC Office Oklahoma City

IOGCC office located next to Governorโ€™s Mansion; Image Credit: Google Maps

IOGCC tried โ€” and failed โ€” to use the cops as its private security service. It was a maneuver symbolic of the groupโ€™s propensity for secrecy when it comes under scrutiny. 

Photo Credit: Steve Horn | DeSmog

*The article has been updated to reflect the fact that DeSmog has obtained a copy of the 9-1-1 call log that IOGCC made to the Oklahoma City Police Department, which is now published here

picture-7018-1583982147.png
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.

Related Posts

on

Former BBDO Creative Partner Polina Zabrodskaya: โ€œItโ€™s devastating to know your work causes real harm, so people suppress that knowledge.โ€

Former BBDO Creative Partner Polina Zabrodskaya: โ€œItโ€™s devastating to know your work causes real harm, so people suppress that knowledge.โ€
on

Danone, JBS, Mars, Nestlรฉ and PepsiCo net zero plans marred by โ€œpatchy and unsubstantiated targetsโ€ say campaigners.

Danone, JBS, Mars, Nestlรฉ and PepsiCo net zero plans marred by โ€œpatchy and unsubstantiated targetsโ€ say campaigners.
on

Newly in power, Nigel Farageโ€™s party is testing its anti-climate playbook.

Newly in power, Nigel Farageโ€™s party is testing its anti-climate playbook.
Analysis
on

More than 50 high-level Trump administration officials have links to groups behind the Heritage Foundation-backed plan, a DeSmog analysis found.

More than 50 high-level Trump administration officials have links to groups behind the Heritage Foundation-backed plan, a DeSmog analysis found.
Series: MAGA