Gazprom– and Shell-Paid Lies: How the russian and American political model of disseminating climate crisis disinformation to truckle to polluters works! (INVESTIGATION)
Liubov Velychko

The russian and US governments influence the climate policies of hundreds of other nations. America is the global leader in the use of carbon capture technology, while russia pushes the narrative of “climate-friendly and economic-friendly” natural gas. Both ideas are beneficial to oil and gas corporations, which is something they say publicly. In this piece we are going to explain why governments and politicians in russia and the United States play along with the biggest polluters by producing the laws and decisions they need.
Money as an argument
This summer, temperatures in the southern regions of russia reached record highs of +36°C and more. This put a huge strain on the power grid, causing power outages in households and industrial facilities. In July, the power grid experienced disruptions due to the failure of generating equipment at the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant. Several million consumers were left without electricity due to the shortage of generation.
But the heat does not interfere with the fuel market and oil refining, which continued to receive electricity uninterrupted. This is because oil refineries in russia are strategic facilities.
The global community once again agreed in 2023 to phase out oil, coal and gas, the main source of carbon emissions.
Although russia joined the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, there has been no significant development of alternative energy sources in russia since then.
In 2022, solar power plants in russia had an average annual capacity of about 240 MW. The country has enormous potential in the development of solar power plants, according to experts from the Institute for Energy Strategy, with enough solar energy potential to increase the existing capacity by more than 9,000 times.
All that is needed is appropriate economic incentives, which should come along with political decisions. But they don’t exist. Despite joining the Paris Agreement, the russian government is not interested in developing renewable energy sources at all. Therefore, not a single law has appeared in russia over the past 5 years to create any economic incentives for the development of renewables.
As of early 2023, the total capacity of solar power plants in the russian federation amounted to 1816 megawatts. For comparison, in Ukraine, where the population is more than half as large and the country’s area is 28 times smaller, the total capacity of solar power plants is 8062 megawatts.
Over the past six years, the russian government has not made any decisions to develop solar and wind power plants, relying instead on “blue” or “grey” hydrogen produced from fossil fuels and nuclear power – all are considered by domestic authorities to be “clean energy sources”. What is the reason for this?
Even if the government had decided to develop solar and wind power plants, key positions would still be held by people who reap the lion’s share of their income from the oil and gas business, which is not interested in losing market share to environmentally friendly competitors.
For example, Dmitry Kobylkin, a former deputy director general of the Purneftegazgeologia oil company, served as the Minister of Ecology in 2018–2020. While holding a public office, he was a public disinformer when discussing the climate crisis. Before his trip to the 24th UN Climate Change Conference in 2018, he actively promoted the message that “oil, coal and gas in russia have a stable future”. He also stressed that natural gas is “an environmentally friendly fuel”
Since then and over the next three years in office, he has repeatedly said that russia has made advances in green fuels. He does not refer to solar and wind power plants as green fuel, but rather to “liquefied natural gas, which does not cause any harm to the atmosphere”.
russia is aggressively promoting natural gas as a “green” fuel, though this is not entirely true. Natural gas does produce less CO2, yet it is still a fossil fuel and emits significant amounts of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. Therefore, it is not “clean” by climate policy standards.
That is why the relevant ministry was in no hurry to make revolutionary decisions to stimulate the development of renewable energy sources.
Kobylkin has been no longer in charge of the russian federation’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology since 2020. However, Dmitry Tenenkin, also experienced in senior positions at coal companies, became the vice minister in 2021. He had served as the director of Amursky Ugol LLC, one of the largest coal mining companies in russian Far East.
According to the russian Ministry of Energy, $5.5 billion is spent annually in russia on geological exploration: specialists study what is underground to understand where oil, gas, metals or other resources can be found. And these expenditures are planned to be increased at the federal level.
As a reminder, emissions from coal combustion are one of the main causes of the climate crisis. That is why the signatories to the Paris Agreement have agreed that coal emissions should be cut to zero by 2050.
Whether the people who used to hold top positions in the coal industry will consider environmental protection a top priority is a big question.

russian oil and gas giants have no need to invest in political lobbying because they are already wholly or partially owned by the state. This means that the government itself strives to protect the company’s economic interests.

Rosneft, for example, the world’s largest public company in terms of oil production, is 100% owned by the russian federation. 50% of the capital of the russian gas monopoly Gazprom is also under government control.
Former top managers of private polluting companies are being promoted to top positions in the russian government en masse.
Two energy deputy ministers used to work for oil and gas corporations. For instance, Pavel Sorokin combines his government position with membership on the board of directors of three oil companies: Zarubezhneft, Rosgeo and Transneft. Yevgeny Grabchak was until recently the CEO of Rostoprom.
It is clear that since the oil and gas industry plays a major role in the country’s energy sector, it makes sense to have people with a background in this area in the Ministry of Energy.
But having analysed their decision-making and their public behaviour, it is evident that they abuse their positions to spread disinformation and a distorted narrative about the climate crisis. These “arguments” are then used to justify further government policies.
For example, Pavel Sorokin gives interviews in which he emphasises that “russia should take a sober stance and not do the renewable energy lobbyists’ bidding.”
And in lockstep with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, he refers to natural gas and nuclear power as “clean resources”.
A similar trend is unfolding in the russian parliament.
Based on an analysis of the biographies of members of the relevant State Duma’s environmental and energy committees, we can see numerous examples of former top officials from energy corporations lobbying for the interests of oil and gas companies during the law-making process after they have received their seats.
For example, Pavel Zavalny, chairman of the State Duma’s energy committee, had held key positions at enterprises owned by the state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom for more than 20 years. He combines his work as a lawmaker with the leadership in the russian Gas Society, a union of oil and gas industry organisations whose main goal is to assist the government in drafting effective laws.
For the past 13 years, Zavalny has been writing and supporting laws that expand the rights of Gazprom. In particular, he drafted a bill to provide tax breaks for oil production and supported a bill on administrative liability (instead of criminal one) for violations of gas supply exclusion zones.

Why does the MP persist in working for his former employer, ignoring the threats posed to russia by the climate crisis?
After analysing data from russian federal registers we found out that the MP’s son, Nikolay Zavalny, earns huge amounts of money through cooperation with Gazprom subsidiaries.
In particular, several of Zavalny’s companies own stakes in companies of the Tashir business group, one of Gazprom’s largest contractors. It was Tashir that received government funding for the construction of major gas pipelines, including the Power of Siberia. For over 10 years, the contract values of Tashir Group companies for such public procurement has exceeded $2.5 billion.
Yet neither russian law enforcement, nor his fellow MPs pay attention to this obvious conflict of interest.

American transparency
Concealing the fact of receiving funds for advocating for companies is illegal in the United States. Politicians report every dollar they receive – who paid them, when and how much. And most importantly, for what services.
We analysed the open lobbyist register on the US Senate website and found that 70 out of 100 currently serving senators received funds from oil and gas companies. And this is more than enough to pass the laws necessary for industrial giants. After all, most bills that do not require special procedures require 51 votes out of 100.
The distribution of money among party representatives is uneven: 28 lobbyists are Democratic senators, 42 are Republicans.

However, dry mathematical calculations indicate that oil and gas companies seem to rely more on the support of Republican politicians. In total, Republicans received more than $49 million, while Democrats, only about $4 million. That said, the lion’s share of Democrats on this list received insignificant amounts by American standards – from $2,000 to $5,000.
An analysis of the public activity of these Democrats on the climate crisis and ways to address it did not reveal a surge of support for the oil and gas industry or active lobbying for their ideas. We assume that a few thousand dollars is not enough to sacrifice one’s reputation to please the biggest polluters. These senators, instead, are the ones who do not voice their criticism of the wrong solutions offered by Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron to solve the climate crisis.
So, is this a hush payment?
Since the US ratified the Paris Agreement, the Senate has passed numerous pieces of legislation that the oil and gas industry has been dreaming of (examples of legislation are here and here and here). A major achievement that the above-mentioned polluters have been working on for years is to partially shift the financing of carbon capture projects to the state and to reduce taxes as much as possible while introducing this technology.

In the opinion of such global oil and gas giants as ExxonMobil and Shell, CCUS is perhaps the most crucial for overcoming the climate crisis. This statement contains misinformation, as it contradicts the existing practical experience of applying this technology – so far, the commercial feasibility of this technology is doubtful due to its high cost and discussions in engineer circles about its effectiveness, so its scalability remains in question.
An excerpt from ExxonMobil’s lobbying report in 2022:
ExxonMobil supports a policy and regulatory framework for carbon capture and storage that would:
· Provide long-term government support for research and development.
· Set standards to ensure safe, reliable and permanent storage of CO2.
· Allow trading of high-quality offsets generated from carbon capture and storage, low-carbon fuel production, and carbon removal projects.
But did those senators who had received massive funding from oil and gas companies spread disinformation?
We analysed their public statements and found the answer to this question. Republican Mitt Romney received the most money – more than $8.6 million – for lobbying for the oil and gas industry. This senator’s public position on the climate crisis and ways to solve it completely copies his sponsors’ ideas.
On his YouTube page and in interviews, Romney also promotes a dubious solution to global warming – carbon capture technology: “I’m focusing on how do we encourage investment in breakthrough technology relating to new energy sources or ways to recapture CO2 from the environment. These are the kinds of things that I think have the greatest promise for solving our global problem as opposed to just making a more modest Amerian reduction.”
At the same time, he is critical of renewables such as wind and solar power stations: “We don’t have enough battery capacity to provide electricity to wind and solar farms that don’t work at night. So what are we going to do in the interim? At the moment, it looks like we’re trying to guess that we can cope (with the climate crisis – Ed.) with more wind and solar power plants – but that’s not going to solve the problem.”
A similar pattern–disinformation in exchange for cash–can be observed in the behaviour of other senators who act as lobbyists for polluters.
And oil and gas companies are very careful about who they pay the most to.
Oil and gas corporations paid over $5 million for lobbying services to Republican Senator John Cornyn. Why him? His official biography reads that before becoming a senator for the first time in 2002, he worked for many years as a judge and prosecutor. This means that he is not an expert on energy and natural resources.

But–and this is very important for energy companies–Cornyn represents the state of Texas, which has more than 30 per cent of the country’s oil refining capacity. Therefore, the senior senator there plays a key role in shaping legislation and representing the interests of this territory.
Along with that, it is Texas that is feeling the effects of global warming perhaps the most in the US. For more than twenty years in a row, this state has been ranked first in terms of the number of disasters. The state spends about a billion dollars a year to cover the effects of hurricanes and droughts. It would seem that who better than the senator from this state to sound the alarm and lobby for the toughest possible climate policy?
Instead, during the Texas Energy Summit, John Cornyn ridiculed climate change concerns, calling them a “cult”: “It’s pure fantasy. … This is part of the cult, or religion, of renewable energy,” he said.
While receiving millions of dollars from oil and gas companies, Kornin focuses his efforts on defending their private interests. He has authored numerous initiatives to support the operation of oil and gas companies. He has also sponsored legislation to encourage research and development of carbon capture technology.

Another Texas senator, Republican Ted Cruz, also receives generous financial rewards for lobbying from oil and gas companies. Since he was elected senator in 2013, he has earned more than $5 million in total.

Cruz has been openly defending the oil and energy sector in Texas for a long time – on his official website. In this political struggle, the politician does not hesitate to use arguments that contain misinformation. Specifically, that “by exporting U.S. LNG, the United States (…) reduces global emissions”.
However, LNG exports leave a carbon footprint 33% higher than coal when energy consumption for LNG production and transportation is taken into account, as the leading US methane expert Robert Howarth has found.

The amount of money Senator Ted Cruz has received from oil and gas companies for lobbying since the US ratified the Paris Agreement
Along with senators, polluters also financially incentivise politicians who have a major influence on natural resources policy.
Bruce Westerman, chairman of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, for example, helps to create relevant laws and influences important policy decisions, including those on climate change and energy security.
According to the Federal Election Commission, he has been earning money from lobbying for the oil and gas sector year after year. Only in 2023 and 2024 (January–September) alone, Westerman received $306,000 from oil and gas companies for lobbying services. No wonder why he opposes restrictions on fossil fuel production. He calls climate programs “economy-killing”.

Westerman also vigorously shares his views on environmental policy on his page on the social networking site X. We found a lot of posts there that contain disinformation favouring oil and gas companies.
In particular, in February 2024, the politician tried to whitewash the reputation of natural gas: “American natural gas is the cleanest, safest, and most ethically sourced on earth. The Biden Administration’s short sided restrictions on the export of U.S. natural gas will be a major loss for the environment, geopolitical landscape, the U.S. economy, and national security.”
There are several cases pending in US courts at present against oil and gas companies–Shell, British Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Chevron–for spreading disinformation about the climate crisis and for damages for its consequences. The defendants strongly deny the charges.
At the same time, we have not found any lawsuits against the politicians and government officials whose names were mentioned in our investigation in either the russian court registers or in American government databases. None of them responded to our requests to comment on their motives for spreading disinformation that copied the position of the oil and gas corporations they worked for or that sponsored their lobbying efforts.
Liubov Velychko is the Ukraine Correspondent of MAHABAHU and an Investigative Journalist
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