Unnatural Alliances: Former Democratic Politicians Do the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Bidding

Key Findings

• Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future was launched in 2020 in an effort to reach Democratic lawmakers, unions, and other political constituencies key to securing support for gas expansion.
• Natural Allies hires former Democratic politicians to leverage their reputations and connections from their time in public service to peddle natural gas industry priorities such as “permitting reform” legislation packed with fossil fuel giveaways that would undermine the Biden administration’s climate commitments.
• Natural Allies’ revenue grew to $9.1 million in 2022, the most recent year available, from $1.75 million in 2020, for a total of $15.6 million in its first three years of activity. The group’s funding members include gas giants Williams Companies, EQT, and Kinder Morgan.
• Natural Allies spent $10.4 million over three years on public relations efforts, over $8.9 million of which went to advertising and public relations giant Omnicom, owner of PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, the lead public relations firm that launched Natural Allies.
• Natural Allies spent up to $1.2 million on more than 2,000 Facebook and Instagram ads between 2020 and 2024, eliciting between 61 and 72 million impressions.
• Political action committees and super PACs tied to Natural Allies’ corporate funders have spent $3.5 million on federal political races since 2020, with 79 percent going to Republicans.
• Nine top executives at Natural Allies member companies have personally contributed nearly $921,000 to federal political campaigns and political action committees since 2020.

Introduction

In February 2024, former Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to denounce the Biden administration’s pause on new approvals of methane gas exports  as “atrocious politics.” Later in the spring, former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, and former Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL) participated in a pro-gas panel at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s civil rights convention in New York, with Ryan in the audience.

In July 2024, Natural Allies hosted a Capitol Hill discussion with  Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in an event co-hosted by a sister methane gas industry advocacy group Partnership to Address Global Emissions (PAGE). The event’s leaders touted gas exports as a climate solution, promoting a study commissioned by those groups claiming supposed climate benefits of exported liquefied natural gas (LNG), which involves chilling gas extracted from the U.S. to super-cold temperatures, placing it on giant tanker ships and sending it around the globe for consumption.

What do these gas-peddling former Democratic former politicians have in common? They are the leaders of a gas industry-created lobbying and influence group called “Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.” Its goal is to pitch methane gas, also known as natural gas, to key Democratic constituencies such as civil rights groups and labor unions and advance industry-friendly policies.

While the group does not deny the reality of climate change, it insists that a rapid transition off fossil fuels is unrealistic and undesirable, while misleadingly branding natural gas as a “clean” energy source. To build support from Democrats, the group has engaged with the Congressional Black Caucus, conducting events with the caucus’ chairman, Rep. Stephen Horsford (D-NV), and Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA), and has also used labor unions as spokespeople to accomplish the industry’s goals.

Another example of the group’s tactics came at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 2024. Natural Allies co-hosted an energy briefing with gas industry executives, union representatives, and the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, which despite its name has several fossil fuel industry executives on its board of directors and frequently pushes for policies that boost fossil fuels. Landrieu and Ryan also appeared with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Willie Phillips. The event stressed “the importance of an energy transition including natural gas, which when partnered with renewables, can advance America’s climate goals while also ensuring energy affordability and reliability,” according to a post on X, formerly Twitter.

A Natural Allies internal strategy document, which was obtained in a public records request by the Energy and Policy Institute, sheds light on the group’s aims. According to the document, the organization aims to build and promote the “long term brand of natural gas, independent of other fossil fuels,” and asserts that “success for the natural gas industry will be rooted in whether we can message to the left and the Democratic base of black and Latino and age 18 to 34 voters as effectively as we have messaged to the right.”

Natural Allies’ appearance at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) conference in April 2024 is an example of this strategy. Several of Natural Allies’ leaders spoke on a NAN panel dubbed “Affordable Energy is a Civil Rights Issue: Why we can’t leave Black and Brown voices out of the clean energy conversation.” The panel omitted environmental advocates and voices from Gulf Coast communities affected by fossil fuel infrastructure. It was moderated by Donald Cravins, a former Biden administration official who leads the Washington lobbying office of Williams Companies, an Oklahoma-based pipeline company that spent $1.6 million on federal lobbying in 2023 and is one of Natural Allies’ top funding members, according to the group’s web page.  Cravins is also a former aide to Landrieu, who spoke on the panel.

The speakers explicitly framed methane gas as clean, reliable, and affordable, while casting doubt on whether electrification was affordable or realistic for low-income consumers. For example, Nutter, the former Philadelphia mayor, said that “everybody’s not putting (a) solar panel on their house, and I can’t put a windmill in my backyard.” And Meek, the former Florida congressman, said that “natural gas is a clean-burning fuel, and affordable” while claiming that fossil fuel critics “don’t think about the reality that you’re facing on a day-in, day-out basis of higher rent and higher energy costs.”

Greenwashing in Service of a Dirty Agenda

In reality, Natural Allies and its corproate members are perpetuating myths about methane gas. A dose of reality follows.

METHANE GAS IS NOT CLEAN. Methane, the main component of natural gas, has a shorter atmospheric lifespan than carbon, but packs a harder planet-warming punch in the meantime, with a global warming potential between 84-87 times that of carbon over a 20-year timeframe, and 28-38 times that of carbon over 100 years. Rampant methane leaks across the oil and gas supply chain, including extraction, processing, transportation, and use, significantly reduce the benefits of switching to natural gas from other fossil fuels. More than 100 studies have documented the toxic air pollution, water contamination, health problems and safety risks that accompany fracking. Studies of natural gas burned in homes have found that it contains air pollutants hazardous to human health, including known carcinogens like benzene, and have attributed nearly 13 percent of childhood asthma cases to gas stove use.

METHANE GAS IS NOT EQUITABLE. Fossil fuel infrastructure has long created “sacrifice zone” communities that experience the brunt of health damage from toxic air pollution and threats to water supplies. The rapid buildout of US gas export infrastructure deepens this legacy of environmental injustice in the United States, even as the Biden administration has sought to put policies in place to hasten decarbonization. Until the Energy Department placed a pause on new LNG export approvals in early 2024, the federal government ignored the overwhelming evidence that exports of gas through massive LNG terminals expose American families to higher energy costs, pollute communities, and lock in decades more greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the group’s purported focus on energy affordability, Natural Allies enthusiastically supports the export of natural gas to overseas customers, heedless of its impact on domestic prices. Across the country, the price households pay for natural gas has increased by 52 percent since 2016, the year that US gas exports started, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. By tethering America’s natural gas prices to overseas markets, gas exporters—including Natural Allies’ corporate backers—have made both residential and business consumers of gas vulnerable to global market volatility and price shocks.  “The fossil fuel industry puts Black lives in danger,” Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former EPA official, told climate outlet Heated. “Energy affordability is a serious concern for communities on fixed budgets, but it should never be a higher priority than our lives.”

The majority of new and proposed US gas export terminals have been proposed in Louisiana and Texas, located in economically disadvantaged and predominantly Black and Brown communities. These frontline communities have long coped with the toxic impacts of environmental racism in the Gulf Coast, including air and water pollution that causes serious health impacts. Research by the Sierra Club and Greenpeace found that a full buildout of 32 proposed LNG terminals would result in air pollution (not counting carbon pollution) that would cause 4,470 avoidable deaths and more than $62 billion in excess health care costs by 2050 if all planned projects are built. These impacts are disproportionately concentrated in the Gulf Coast, but new LNG terminals and expansions of existing ones have been proposed in other parts of the country such as Pennsylvania and Georgia, as well as in Mexico.

Natural Allies’ efforts represent the latest iteration of longstanding greenwashing tactics used by the fossil fuel industry to justify our continued reliance upon methane, or natural gas, despite a decade or more of accumulating scientific evidence that methane is a false climate solution and indoor health hazard. Industry portrayals of gas as preferable to coal often ignore the climate impact of the gas supply chain, which includes significant methane leaks.

Oil and gas behemoths have wrestled with how to manage perceptions of gas in recent years, hiring consulting firms to protect their gas businesses in the face of increasing evidence of methane’s harms. A draft communications campaign plan from 2018 by the oil giant BP sought to portray natural gas as a “partner to renewables” as part of an effort to combat “ongoing commentary that aims to discredit gas as part of the future energy mix.” In the company’s internal documents, BP represents legitimate criticisms of natural gas as a communications challenge to be overcome through aggressive messaging, while acknowledging that when you take methane leaks into account, natural gas does not support climate goals. Natural Allies and like-minded groups such as Partnership to Address Global Emissions, or PAGE, which share gas companies EQT, TC Energy and Williams as founding members, have embraced this deceptive strategy of framing gas as clean and a “partner” to renewables. An August 2024 briefing from InfluenceMap charts a rapid rise in online advertising from oil and gas industry groups including PAGE on LNG specifically since the Biden administration announced its pause on new gas export permits in January 2024.

One of Natural Allies’ key agenda items is to build Democratic support for “permitting reform” legislation sought by drillers, pipeline companies and LNG terminal operators. This legislation would weaken environmental reviews and speed the construction of energy facilities, from pipelines to gas export terminals to the electricity transmission lines sought by renewable energy developers.

This sort of “all of the above” energy strategy emphasizing natural gas as a “transition fuel” to renewables was popular in the early 2010s, but has lost credibility over the past decade as climate disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes and mounting economic damage have added urgency to the need for a speedy transition off fossil fuels. The astonishing growth of the renewable energy sector in recent years has made the goal of a full transition to renewables increasingly practical and affordable.

Permitting legislation introduced in July 2024 by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), the fossil fuel industry’s favorite erstwhile Democrat, and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) passed a Senate committee with strong support from the fossil fuel industry as well as some renewable energy proponents. However, it is opposed by more than 360 environmental and community groups, who object to tethering policies intended to speed decarbonization with policies intended to expand dirty infrastructure. While the bill does include electric transmission provisions that could accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, they should not be paired with massive giveaways to the fossil fuel and mining industries.

The bill would undermine several Biden administration policy priorities. It would weaken the gas export review process that evaluates whether export projects serve the public interest in favor of corporate interests. This process, long deferential to fossil fuel exporters, is currently being revamped by the Biden administration. But the Manchin-Barrasso bill would deem gas exports as approved after a 90-day waiting period even without any substantive analysis.

In an environment of divided government in Washington, D.C., industry lobbyists seek to curry favor with politicians of both parties as they push to enact corporate-friendly policy. Seeking to enact fossil fuel-friendly provisions with a Democratic controlled Senate with many strong environmental voices, Natural Allies helps gas industry executives build alliances and relationships with traditionally  Democratic constituencies.

(Above: A 30-second Natural Allies advertisement that ran in the summer of 2023 used  children’s cartoon depicting a wedding ceremony between a methane gas flame and a windmill. Below: A parody of that ad, by Clean Creatives)

Spending on Public Relations

Natural Allies spends the vast majority of its revenue on public relations efforts aimed at promoting gas. Natural Allies received a total of $15.6 million in revenue from 2020 to 2022 and spent more than $10.4 million on public relations services, according to the group’s tax filings. The group’s explicit goal is to work against the current of progressive climate policymaking. In an internal document, they identify the Biden administration’s “strong focus on climate” as a “challenge,” along with state policies that reduce demand for gas.

Natural Allies has identified the next five years as critical to determining whether methane gas becomes associated with renewable energy or other fossil fuels like oil and coal, and indicated that a “robust, multi-million dollar, long-term public affairs campaign” to prevent natural gas from becoming “the next coal” is “urgently and critically needed.”

Such a campaign would purportedly include “proactive earned media outreach to shape the narrative” and “multi-channel advertising targeting women, communities of color, opinion leaders and youth voters.”

Natural Allies’ part-time pro-bono executive director Susan Waller is a longtime oil and gas executive who was previously vice president at Natural Allies funder Enbridge. In a February 2021 energy business podcast, Waller said that Natural Allies is an attempt by energy business leaders to “address the misinformation that plagues our industry.”

Waller described creating Natural Allies through a request for proposals sent to multiple public relations firms. According to Waller, the group ended up working with two firms, Mercury Public Affairs and Kivvit, to create their campaign. The project was led by Mike DuHaime, a Republican political operative and longtime strategist for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Maggie Moran, a Democratic strategist and pipeline lobbyist who worked as a campaign manager to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and numerous other political candidates.

As of 2022, Natural Allies’ other officers and trustees were current employees at TC Energy, National Fuel, EQT, Kinder Morgan, Quanta Services, FirstEnergy, and Otis Minnesota Services, a pipeline construction company. According to their 2022 tax filings, none of the officers are compensated for their work for Natural Allies, indicating that the organization’s work is seen as an extension of these oil and gas companies’ work.

In 2020, Natural Allies received $1.8 million in member contributions. It spent 99 percent of that money on hiring Omnicom, a New York-based public relations and advertising giant with more than three dozen fossil fuel clients. Between 2020 and 2022, Natural Allies spent over $8.9 million on its contracts with Omnicom, which owns Mercury Public Affairs, where DuHaime worked until late 2021.

In 2021, Natural Allies more than doubled its public relations spending from the year prior, paying Omnicom $3.7 million for its PR services, nearly 80 percent of the group’s $4.7 million in 2021 contributions. As Natural Allies’ revenue has increased, so too has its investment in advertising and PR.

In 2022, the group received $9.1 million in contributions and proceeded to spend $5 million of it on public relations. In 2022, on top of paying Omnicom $3.5 million for its services, Natural Allies paid New Jersey-based public affairs firm Mad Global LLC more than $1 million. After DuHaime left Mercury, he founded Mad Global in early 2022.

Natural Allies spent almost $400,000 in 2022 to have two former Democratic lawmakers stick up for methane gas. The group paid former Sen. Mary Landrieu’s consulting firm VNF Solutions LLC $210,690 and former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) $185,266. Landrieu and Heitkamp co-authored a pair of op-eds touting fracked gas. Landrieu and Heitkamp appeared in ads making the same case, including “Real Talk with Heidi Heitkamp,” which has over 500,000 views on YouTube. Since then, Heitkamp has left the organization and Ryan, Meek, and Nutter have joined Natural Allies’ leadership ranks.

 

Revolvers at the Helm

The former Democratic politicians on Natural Allies’ leadership council—Mary Landrieu, Tim Ryan, Kendrick Meek, Michael Nutter, and previously Heidi Heitkamp—epitomize the harmful “revolving door’’ phenomenon common among political elites. They leverage their previous stature as public officials to lend credence to the private interests they are now paid to represent, explicitly couching their lobbying and industry advocacy as insight or analysis from former Democratic officials, and often failing to mention their conflicts of interest. An internal strategy document frames the usefulness of the leadership council as providing “third party validation” of the gas industry’s talking points.

MARY LANDRIEU

“You can absolutely be pro-gas and pro-environment, because again, you need a partner for renewables. We cannot run the economy of the United States on wind power and solar power alone.” – former Sen. Mary Landrieu in a Natural Allies advertisement

Mary Landrieu represented Louisiana in the US Senate for 18 years from 1997 to 2015. She received nearly $1.8 million from the oil and gas industry over her career; one of the highest tallies for any US Senator. After losing her 2014 reelection campaign to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), she joined the lobbying and law firm Van Ness Feldman LLP as a Senior Policy Advisor, where she’s worked for the past nine years.

Van Ness Feldman isn’t shy about how it capitalizes upon the revolving door between government and industry; it notes that one of Landrieu’s value-adds is providing “high-level contacts within the Executive Branch, federal agencies, and state and local governments” to her corporate clients. Landrieu joined Natural Allies’ leadership council in January 2022, while remaining a lobbyist for Van Ness Feldman and its fully-owned subsidiary VNF Solutions.

In both her public and private sector careers, Landrieu has been a consistent advocate for expanding the natural gas industry. In 2014, a full two years before US terminals started exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Gulf Coast, Sen. Landrieu was leading the charge to push President Obama to expedite approvals for gas exports to Europe – a playbook that gas exporters later deployed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She was the top Senate recipient of pipeline industry money in 2014.

As chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014, Landrieu led a push to ram through the construction of TransCanada’s (now TC Energy) infamous Keystone XL Pipeline, which failed by one vote. When Landrieu joined Van Ness Feldman LLP after losing reelection, the firm was representing TransCanada in its efforts to realize a long-running yet still unrealized LNG export project in Alaska.  TC Energy, which abandoned the Keystone project after the Biden administration rejected a key permit, pivoted to using special corporate investor protection rules to seek $15 billion in damages from US taxpayers—a case that was dismissed in July 2024. TC Energy is one of Natural Allies’ core funders.

One of Landrieu’s first clients at Van Ness Feldman was a company Landrieu was already wellacquainted with through her work in the Senate: Noble Energy, a Texas-based natural gas company substantially involved in building out Israel’s natural gas industry. In 2011, Landrieu traveled with executives from Louisiana-based oil and gas companies to Israel to meet with executives from Noble Energy and Israeli officials, citing the opportunity presented by Noble Energy’s discovery of significant offshore gas reserves. Landrieu was one of the top congressional recipients of donations from Noble Energy’s PAC in her 2012 and 2014 campaign cycles.

With a deep and varied bench of fossil fuel clients, Landrieu has lobbied on issues including LNG, crude oil, environmental deregulation, bioenergy, and carbon capture. She lobbied for Venture Global LNG ($90,000+)^[1], a Natural Allies member, to receive its federal permits to build the Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana. Calcasieu Pass has violated its air pollution permits almost constantly since it began operating in 2022.

She lobbied Congress for oil and gas company Enterprise Products ($610,000+) not to pass legislation limiting LNG exports and fracking, and spent the past three years lobbying Congress, the White House, and permitting agencies to advance Enterprise Products’ deepwater crude oil export terminal, the largest ever proposed. The Biden administration approved the terminal in April 2024. On behalf of major natural gas producer Williams Companies ($690,000), Landrieu lobbied Congress to pass permitting reform legislation like the SPUR Act and Lower Energy Costs Act that would expedite fossil fuel buildout. She did this while simultaneously working for Natural Allies, which is partly funded by Williams.

Landrieu has pushed some of Big Oil’s favorite fake solutions, lobbying Congress and agencies on behalf of UK-based power generation company Drax Group ($180,000+) to support bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (razing forests to burn for fuel and then drilling wells to store underground the carbon which trees would have otherwise sequestered). Landrieu lobbied Congress and the White House throughout 2023 on behalf of Air Products and Chemicals ($180,000) to allow the notoriously lax Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to take over enforcement authority for carbon sequestration wells in the state; authority which it received in January 2024, spurring outrage from environmental groups.

Landrieu has continued lobbying for fossil fuel clients while leveraging her past public service to burnish Natural Allies’ greenwashing efforts. In her first year at Natural Allies, Landrieu made $210,690 through Natural Allies’ contract with VNF Solutions for public relations efforts like producing sponsored content for Politico calling ironically for an “honest conversation” about energy not fueled by “special interests.” Subsequent op-eds in Newsweek and NOLA.com kept up the drumbeat of Natural Allies’ favorite greenwashing formula: “switching from coal to natural gas” plus “partnering natural gas with renewables.”

While Natural Allies leaders claim they see gas as a “partner” for renewables, they also espouse a negative message about renewables. For example, in a May 2024 letter to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the four Natural Allies leaders claimed that renewables’ adoption would “significantly increase our reliance on foreign adversaries like China,” and was a “risky gamble.”

Recently, Landrieu has been active in criticizing the Biden administration’s pause on approving new LNG exports, calling the decision “tragic,” telling POWER Magazine that Democrats don’t understand “math” on the energy transition, and arguing in an op-ed for The Hill that the pause would make it harder to meet climate goals. Through her roles at VNF Solutions and Natural Allies, she is currently on the payroll of several major LNG stakeholders including Enbridge, Enterprise Products, EQT, Kinder Morgan, TC Energy, and Williams Companies.

TIM RYAN

“We’re really trying to get a lot of Democrats to come around to seeing natural gas as this fuel that’s going to help us both address climate and help the economy hum.” – Tim Ryan in a radio interview.

Tim Ryan represented Ohio’s 17th congressional district from 2003-2013 and Ohio’s 13th congressional district from 2013-2023 in the House of Representatives. While in Congress, Ryan took significant political contributions from the chemical industry, becoming the top House recipient of chemical industry money in his final term. The chemical industry substantially overlaps with the fossil fuel industry via petrochemicals. Natural gas, for example, is a main feedstock for producing plastics and fertilizers. The American Enterprise Institute noted that the plastics industry found a “receptive ear” in Ryan, who was given a 100% rating by the Plastics Industry Association in 2019-2020.

Two major chemical industry groups joined Natural Allies as funding members after Ryan joined Natural Allies’ leadership council: the American Chemistry Council and the Fertilizer Institute. Both groups have track records of lobbying to evade accountability on environmental and health issues, including successfully lobbying to delay rail safety legislation in the wake of the East Palestine derailment in Ohio, Ryan’s home state. The American Chemistry Council includes petrochemical subsidiaries of oil and gas majors BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Saudi Aramco, and TotalEnergies among its members, and has lobbied against legislation that would tackle plastic pollution and hold the chemical industry responsible for cleaning up its own messes. The Fertilizer Institute has lobbied against clean air legislation and supported weakening environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

While in Congress, Ryan co-sponsored several bills that aimed to expand US natural gas production, including unsuccessful legislation in 2015 and 2017 that would have expedited and repealed restrictions on US gas exports. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Ryan signed a pledge to take no fossil fuel money and walked a fine line between supporting fracking while calling for more oversight of the polluting industry. Ryan’s campaign finance pledge apparently only applied to his presidential campaign; as a congressman he took more than $107.000 in political contributions from the political action committee and employees of Ohio-based utility company FirstEnergy, whose former executives were embroiled in a bribery and bailout scandal, making the utility his ninth-largest donor.

While running to represent Ohio in the US Senate in 2022, Ryan vocally touted his support for the gas industry. Yet fossil fuel companies poured their resources into funding the campaign of his competitor, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). Ryan joined Natural Allies’ leadership council in January 2023 after losing the Senate race.

Ryan has said his focus at Natural Allies is to get Democrats in line behind natural gas. In 2023, Ryan wrote sponsored content for Natural Allies in the Washington Post arguing that natural gas was the quickest way to reduce carbon emissions, and testified as an industry spokesperson at a Philadelphia LNG Export Task Force meeting in support of building a gas export terminal in Pennsylvania.

Ryan joined Third Way, a centrist think tank, as a senior visiting fellow in 2023. He also became a senior advisor to the Progressive Policy Institute in February 2024, where he helps shape the Institute’s “all-ofthe-above” approach to energy policy advocacy. Progressive Policy Institute shares some of the same fossil fuel funders as Natural Allies, including TC Energy and EQT, and has proposed lifting the LNG pause for companies that submit to third-party emissions certification.

In late January 2024, the Natural Allies leadership council condemned the pause on new LNG export approvals as “tragic,” framing their opposition as the sentiments of former Democratic leaders, though they were being paid by LNG industry players to make such statements. Nine days later, Ryan published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling the Department of Energy’s pause on new gas export approvals (which he incorrectly dubbed an “LNG export ban”) a “political misstep.”

Ryan also sought to portray the Biden administration’s policies as anti-labor, claiming that “natural gas is a crucial bridge to a clean-energy future, but with so many environmentalists cheering the new Biden policy, it’s almost impossible for American workers not to conclude that Democrats have moved the goalposts.” Ryan continued to push these ideas at CERAWeek, and in an open letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson urging him to pair foreign aid with pro-gas provisions “to move natural gas around the country more expeditiously.”

In an op-ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Ryan claimed that natural gas is needed to meet electricity demand from data centers used for artificial intelligence, arguing that “Technology companies will not wait decades for renewable energy alone to catch up; a partnership with natural gas is needed.” Ryan’s anachronistic pro-gas talking points ignore the rapid growth of renewables around the world in recent years, with electricity generation from renewables surpassing fossil fuels in Europe in 2024, and experts forecasting that renewables will meet most of the U.S. electricity supply growth needs in 2024 and 2025.

Ryan also ignores a basic economic reality: Building massive gas pipelines and new liquefaction terminals to export US LNG overseas means US consumers of gas will pay more in both the residential and industrial sectors, which currently pay lower prices than in Europe or Asia. Concerned by the impact of exports on their business, major US industrial companies have supported the Biden administration’s decision to scrutinize LNG exports. In a letter to lawmakers, Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, wrote: “As LNG exports increase, reliability and affordability of natural gas and electricity are impacted. US manufacturing is especially impacted because we are price sensitive industries and affordable natural gas is our only global competitive advantage.”

While Ryan continues to peddle the natural gas industry’s talking points through his role at Natural Allies, he is also Chief Global Business Development Officer at technology company Zoetic Global, which markets itself as in the climate solutions business, and sells refrigerants and carbon credits. In 2023, Ryan leveraged his political stature to pitch the company’s carbon credits to President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry.

KENDRICK MEEK

“There are individuals in this country that feel that they know what’s best for us… You have folks of wealth and good intention who says oh we need zero emissions, we need to do away with quote-unquote fossil fuels. Well, natural gas is a clean-burning fuel, and affordable… They don’t think about the reality that you’re facing on a day-in, day-out basis of higher rent and higher energy costs.” – former Rep. Kendrick Meek during a panel at the 2024 National Action Network Convention

Kendrick Meek represented Florida’s 17th congressional district from 2003-2011 in the House of Representatives. Meek was a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of lawmakers who seek to make the Democratic Party and its platform “more business friendly.”

Meek received less than $25,000 from the oil and gas sector during his congressional career, but accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from other predatory industries, including tobacco companies, payday lenders, and for-profit prisons.

During the 2008 election cycle, Meek was the House’s top recipient of tobacco industry cash ($73,527) and its second-biggest recipient of money from payday lenders ($38,950). During the 2010 election cycle, when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate, Meek was the House’s top recipient of money from the tobacco industry ($120,342), payday lenders ($83,900), and for-profit prisons ($19,100). Overall, the two sectors that contributed most to Meek’s congressional campaigns were law/lobbying ($1.8 million) and finance, insurance, and real estate ($1.4 million).

While in Congress, Meek faced ethics questions and media scrutiny over his connections to a fraud case that saw a real estate developer charged with stealing roughly $1 million from a biotech development

in Miami. Kendrick Meek and his mother, former congresswoman Carrie Meek, a corporate lobbyist, were embroiled in an apparent conflict of interest when Carrie Meek  was a paid consultant for the real estate developer while he was pursuing a project in Meek’s district, for which the lawmaker sought millions in federal funds.

Several years after his 2010 election loss to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Meek followed in his mother’s footsteps by becoming a corporate lobbyist. In 2017, Meek joined King & Spalding LLP, which says he “works with US corporations to develop and strengthen their corporate social responsibility initiatives.” Since then, Meek has lobbied on behalf of various Fortune 500 companies and industry groups, including Padron Cigars, which paid Meek and others at King & Spalding $840,000 to lobby for legislation that would prohibit the Food and Drug Administration from implementing any public health protections related to what the cigar industry calls “traditional large and premium cigars,” despite the known health hazards of cigar smoking.

The shared tactics of Big Tobacco and Big Oil are widely recognized, as both rely on disinformation to perpetuate their exploitative and life-threatening business models. After  joining Natural Allies’ leadership council in September 2023, Meek is now a paid messenger for both industries. Meek said he joined Natural Allies to push for an “energy policy that is pro-climate without sacrificing reliability and affordability for families and businesses.” Six weeks later, in one of his earliest public acts after joining Natural Allies, Meek and his fellow co-chair Michael Nutter promoted methane gas in an opinion piece published in November 2023 by The Washington Informer, a newspaper that serves the DC-area African-American community.

The piece sought to cast doubt on the viability of relying only on renewables, claiming that “pursuing renewable energy sources alone, without considering the price tag or timeline to expand America’s power grid by 60 percent, will come at the expense of millions of working-class Americans.” This argument ignores the reality that marginalized communities are also disproportionately exposed to the environmental and health harms of fossil fuel pollution, including from fracked gas, and that as gas is currently widely-adopted, it is the source of the energy burden for many households. In a similar vein, Meek espoused the supposed environmental virtues of methane, calling for an energy policy that was “pro environment and pro natural gas like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” in a Natural Allies video.

At Natural Allies, Meek and fellow co-chair Michael Nutter leverage their identities as Black men to argue that natural gas will benefit Black communities despite ample evidence of its harms. Their progas advocacy has earned them praise from corporate voices, including an executive from natural gas giant and Natural Allies funder Williams Companies, who called Meek and his Natural Allies co-chairs “Democratic voices who are joining us in making sure that we tell the story of how natural gas has been the most powerful decarbonization tool here in the United States”—a highly misleading claim.

MICHAEL NUTTER

“We believe, certainly, that natural gas is a part of the clean energy solution … I can assure you … everybody’s not putting (a) solar panel on their house, and I can’t put a windmill in my backyard. But I know when I go home tonight, I know that the place is going to be nice and toasty, right? Because it’s there, all the time. It’s available, it’s reliable, it’s affordable.” – Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter during a panel at the 2024 National Action Network Convention

Michael Nutter was mayor of Philadelphia from 2008-2016, announcing at his inauguration his goal of making Philadelphia the greenest city in America. Nutter’s track record as mayor was decidedly less ambitious, and his environmental messaging was undermined by his advocacy for privatizing a public gas utility and openness to fossil fuel infrastructure in Philadelphia.

Since leaving office, Nutter has shown himself to be a quintessential corporate revolver, leveraging his mayoral tenure to land a dizzying number of paid and unpaid professional roles. According to Philadelphia Magazine, Nutter held 19 simultaneous positions in 2017.

Early in his first term, Mayor Nutter established a sustainability office whose modest plan included reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels and purchasing or generating 20 percent of electricity from alternative energy sources.

In 2006, a decade before the US embarked on its meteoric rise as an LNG exporter, there was widespread concern that the US would not have enough gas, and projects to import natural gas were proposed around the country. At the time, Nutter was a Philadelphia City Council member, and Philadelphia Gas Works, the largest municipally owned gas utility in the US, proposed to build a $150 million LNG import terminal on the Delaware River.

The LNG terminal faced staunch community opposition, and most city council members rejected considering the plan outright based on constituents’ opposition. “Our vision of giving the Delaware River back to the people of Philadelphia does not include football-field-sized LNG tankers floating up our river hauling potentially hazardous and dangerous chemicals vulnerable to spillage or attack,” wrote three of Nutter’s fellow city council members. Nutter disagreed, and was one of two votes against a successful City Council resolution rejecting the proposed LNG import terminal.

Shortly before Nutter joined Natural Allies’ leadership council, Natural Allies co-chair Tim Ryan testified at a Philadelphia hearing arguing in favor of an LNG export terminal to be built on the Delaware River, part of the fossil fuel buildout which continues to be opposed by residents of Philadelphia and nearby communities.

As mayor, Nutter continued to demonstrate openness to local fossil fuel infrastructure development. In 2011, Nutter declined to join a lawsuit to block fracking in the Delaware River Basin. The decision ran counter to requests from the City Council, which passed a unanimous resolution asking Nutter and the Philadelphia water commissioner to take legal action in response to environmental advocates’ concerns about pollution of the Delaware River.

In 2012, the Nutter administration signed off “without hesitation” on transferring emissions credits to Sunoco to reopen a large oil refinery on the Schuylkill River just outside the city. This move was quickly met by a lawsuit, and eventually a 2019 finding that granting the credits was unlawful. As Next City reported, an “unusual provision” in the deal would have transferred the emission credits from Sunoco’s former Marcus Hook site to Philadelphia, “using the somewhat strained logic that the two refineries—17 miles apart—operated as a single facility.” Nutter’s support for such legal gymnastics, while touting his “oft-proclaimed goal to make Philadelphia ‘the greenest city in America,’” is a clear demonstration of the logic of greenwashing: drawing attention to high profile “sustainability” projects and false solutions while simultaneously supporting the fossil fuel industry’s expansion.

In 2014, Nutter advocated for a plan to privatize Philadelphia Gas Works by selling the nation’s largest publicly owned gas utility to UIL Holdings Corporation, a Connecticut-based utility operator for $1.86 billion. Supporters of the deal highlighted a vision shared by Mayor Nutter’s Manufacturing Task Force to make Philadelphia “the Silicon Valley of energy” and “spark new manufacturing” through the use of shale gas, which he framed as “cleaner energy.” The city council refused to support this effort, and the deal did not proceed.

(Note: The parenthetical dollar amounts in this section indicate the total amounts reported in the lobbying contracts on which Mary Landrieu was a named lobbyist for the specified company, not the amount made by Landrieu specifically, as many contracts named multiple lobbyists. A + indicates that a client company indicated that it additionally spent an undisclosed amount of money less than $5,000 in at least one reported quarter.)

Ad Campaigns Push Deceptive Climate Misinformation

In June 2024, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global ban on fossil fuel advertising. “Billions of dollars have been thrown at distorting the truth, deceiving the public, and sowing doubt,” Guterres said. “Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns.”

One of Natural Allies’ main objectives is to make fracking and gas exports more palatable to constituencies ideologically inclined to reject fossil fuel expansion. Through its advertisements, Natural Allies has worked to sow doubt about the feasibility of switching to renewables, pushing misleading messages to community groups and civil rights coalitions.

For example, an ad from Black History Month in 2022 invites viewers to learn more about Alice H. Parker, a Black inventor “famous for inventing central heating using natural gas” in the 1920s. Such ads are cynical attempts to bolster the environmental justice bonafides of a product that harms disadvantaged communities, including Black and brown communities located near industrial facilities such as LNG export terminals.

Thousands of ads purchased by Natural Allies on social media peddled claims that natural gas is more affordable and reliable than renewable energy and central to US national security objectives. The ads appear designed to spread doubt about the viability of renewables, while also avoiding the more aggressive anti-renewable, climate-denying language favored by Republican politicians and some oil and gas drillers.

Natural Allies’ Facebook and Instagram ad buys lean on Democratic party officials to get its message out. For example, Ernest Moniz, who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations and is now CEO of the gas-funded Energy Futures Initiative Foundation, has been mentioned dozens of times in Natural Allies’ pro-methane gas ads.

According to data published by Meta, Natural Allies spent between $865,800 and $1,228,687 on more than 2,000 Facebook and Instagram ads delivered from September 23, 2020, to April 26, 2024. Each ad was written in English and shared on both Facebook and Instagram, eliciting between 61.1 million and 71.7 million impressions. (Note: Information about how much Natural Allies spent on Facebook and Instagram ads, as well as the number of social media impressions they evoked, varies due to Meta’s data collection and reporting methods.)

Natural Allies’ ad spending and impressions peaked in the fourth quarter of 2022, during which the US midterm elections were held. The second-highest level of spending and impressions came during the second quarter of 2022—closely following the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which destabilized global energy markets and expedited a boom in US LNG exports. In third place was the final quarter of 2020, which coincided with that year’s US presidential election.

Natural Allies purchased ads for distribution to regions around the United States, with a pronounced emphasis on the DC area, home to federal policymakers and a vast ecosystem of think tanks, lobbyists, and other political actors. All of the 2,013 Natural Allies ads circulated nationwide during the period in question were distributed simultaneously to multiple jurisdictions. The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia received 1,102 (55%), 974 (48%), and 920 (46%) of them, respectively.

Pennsylvania (937 ads, or 47% of the total), Texas (605, 30%), Louisiana (541, 27%), and Ohio (540, 27%)—states heavily involved in the production, transportation, and export of fracked gas—were also all in the top-third of ad recipients by absolute volume. See the table below and map above for more details.

Misleading Myths

In addition to falsely portraying gas as a clean energy source, Natural Allies’ ads typically perpetuate three other pervasive and misleading myths about natural gas:

• It cannot be replaced because renewables are too unreliable;
• It is more affordable than renewable energy; and
• it is essential to the energy and national security interests of the US and its allies.

Each of these myths is highly problematic, based on outdated assumptions that ignore market realities, climate science, and massive advances in renewable energy technology that have occurred over the past decade.

MYTH:   Natural gas cannot be replaced because renewables are too unreliable.

A central idea repeated throughout Natural Allies’ ads is that the United States cannot depend on renewables alone to get through harsh winters or to meet its emissions reduction targets. There are indeed periods when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, but the intermittent nature of renewables can be overcome with better battery storage and other technological improvements. Meanwhile, natural gas has proven unreliable amid severe winter weather.

REALITY:   Natural Gas Is Not Reliable.

Natural gas replaced coal as the top source of electricity in the U.S. in 2016, and by 2023 accounted for roughly 43 percent of the nation’s power generation. Although the grid’s growing dependence on gas was initially raved about, it is increasingly recognized as a key vulnerability. That’s because natural gas plants are responsible for an outsized share of power outages during extreme weather events, which are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity due to unmitigated greenhouse gas pollution (a problem exacerbated by methane leakage across the fracked gas life cycle).

One notable example of the unreliability of natural gas came in February 2021, when Winter Storm Uri, a major cold snap made more likely by rapid warming in the Arctic, battered Texas with frigid temperatures. Texas’ isolated, under-regulated, and gas-dependent grid was ill-prepared to handle the extreme cold and as a result, millions of people were forced to go without electricity, and thus, heat, for days amid dangerously cold conditions. Nearly 250 people died as a result of the storm, according to Texas officials; an independent analysis put the death toll above 750. Meanwhile, fossil fuel profiteers capitalized on the disastrous power outages, raking in billions of dollars in windfall profits thanks to surging energy prices.

Republican lawmakers, fossil fuel interests, and right-wing media figures falsely blamed the wind industry for the crisis despite ample evidence that natural gas was the biggest culprit. Incidentally, solar was the only energy source that outperformed expectations during the winter storm. One analysis found that while an additional 10 GW of utility-scale solar capacity would not have prevented the blackouts, it would have provided enough energy to power more than 1 million homes for between four and eight hours per day.

Such technological advances are nowhere to be found in the messaging of Natural Allies, which consistently pushes misinformation about the supposedly superior dependability of methane gas. The following ad, which ran from December 1, 2022, to March 16, 2023 distributed mostly in DC, asserts that “Reliable, affordable natural gas can provide stability during peak winter conditions while helping the US to reach its clean climate goals.” The ad links to a Reuters article with the following subhead: “A large portion of North America is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions, the organization responsible for the reliability of the US power grids said on Thursday.”

The ad above accumulated between 900,000 and 999,999 impressions—by far the most of the roughly 2,000 Facebook and Instagram ads that Natural Allies paid for during the period in question. It was the only ad to garner at least 900,000 impressions and one of just 10 to amass more than 700,000. This ad’s above-average performance can be explained in part by the fact that it ran for three-and-a-half months (substantially longer than the single week many ads get).

Another ad in this vein similarly asserted without evidence from late October 2022 to mid-November 2022 that “America needs more natural gas infrastructure to meet domestic and global demands for clean, reliable, affordable gas before it’s too late.”

The ad linked to a Wall Street Journal article with the following subhead: “Severe cold spells in the Northeast could reduce the amount of gas available to generate electricity as more of it is burned to heat homes.”

While it is true that New England gas users have paid some of the highest prices in the country in recent years, the pro-export policies favored by the natural gas industry are partly to blame. The region largely imports its supplies from foreign countries and so is exposed to dramatic international price gyrations.

The two ads documented above were the first- and fourth-best performing Facebook and Instagram ads purchased by Natural Allies during the period under review. But they were far from the only ones pushing the myth that legitimately green energy sources such as solar and wind are fickle. The words “reliable” and “reliability” appeared more than 800 times throughout the ads in question, and that’s only taking into account the body text of the ads.

MYTH:   Natural gas is more affordable than renewable energy.

A second misleading idea pushed frequently in Natural Allies’ ads is that natural gas is necessary because it’s cheaper than renewables, which are portrayed as prohibitively expensive. Natural Allies and other fossil fuel industry defenders downplay the full costs of methane gas and exaggerate the costs of genuinely clean energy sources like solar and wind.

REALITY:   Natural Gas Is Highly Volatile In Price And Increasingly Unaffordable.

Across the country, the price households paid for natural gas has increased 52 percent since 2016. The price went up 31 percent for industrial customers nationwide over the same period, during a time when overseas gas exports soared.  Politicians on both sides of the aisle have ignored warnings from consumer advocacy and environmental groups about the economic impact of increasing gas exports, and sided with corporate profit at the expense of climate stability and vulnerable communities. An analysis from Energy Innovation found that the Biden administration’s temporary pause on permitting new gas export terminals could be insulating the American public from a 9-14 percent spike in gas prices, or up to $18 billion in new annual energy costs from gas pricing volatility, with low-income households shouldering the largest burden. Additionally, the same taxpayers and ratepayers who pay for the cost of maintaining and expanding polluting gas infrastructure also bear substantial public health costs associated with the entire fracked gas supply chain.

Yet Natural Allies’ messaging ignores these harsh realities. In one ad delivered in April 2024 to adults aged 35-44 in mid-Atlantic states, Natural Allies leaders Nutter and Meek take an implicit swipe at renewables while claiming that gas is clean-burning. In reality, natural gas releases toxic chemicals when burned that have been found to be carcinogenic and increase childhood asthma rates. Natural Allies representatives also claim the fuel is affordable, ignoring low-income communities’ lived experience of natural gas price volatility.

Another post-NAN convention ad invites those who missed it to watch Meek, Landrieu, and Nutter discuss “the role natural gas plays in building a more equitable and affordable clean energy future for all.” The ads described above constitute a tiny fraction of all those purchased by Natural Allies during the period in question. The words “affordable” and “affordability” appeared more than 560 times within the body text alone of the ads under review.

MYTH:   Natural gas is essential to the energy and national security interests of the US and its allies.

A third misleading idea pushed by Natural Allies’ ads is that methane gas is indispensable to advancing the energy and national security interests of the US and its allies. (Nevermind that two of Natural Allies’ top financial backers, Enbridge and TC Energy, aren’t even American companies.) Such ads were more prominent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the fossil fuel industry capitalized on the war to justify a massive buildout of gas export infrastructure. These social media ads were still being distributed in late 2023 despite waning European demand for US LNG exports and mounting evidence that the coal-substitution case for fracked gas is weaker than originally thought, even in China.

REALITY:   Natural Gas Exports Do Not Ensure The Energy And National Security Of The US Or Its Allies.

When expressing its opposition to the Biden administration’s pause on pending approvals of LNG exports, the Natural Allies Leadership Council claimed in January 2024 that U.S. LNG exports are “enhancing global security by freeing allies of energy from hostile nations.” But given that existing LNG exports, which were not affected by Biden’s now-blocked moratorium, are already adequate to meet Europe’s needs, freezing the authorization of new LNG shipments while reevaluating whether they are in the public interest has no bearing on Europe’s security. In fact, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found in February 2024 that European demand for gas had fallen to a 10-year low. This decrease in gas demand is largely attributable to improvements in energy efficiency and investments in clean energy—changes that European leaders, many of whom have affirmed the Biden administration’s efforts to reassess the impacts of additional LNG exports, understand are essential to achieving real security.

The fossil fuel industry has portrayed increased LNG exports as a necessity because shipping more and more U.S.-produced energy overseas boosts the bottom line of big oil and gas corporations. But those enhanced profits come at the direct expense of U.S. consumers who are forced to foot higher energy bills; low-income frontline communities, disproportionately Black and brown, that are forced to endure the devastating health and environmental impacts of expanded gas production and distribution; and the world at large as continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure locks in decades of greenhouse gas emissions, consuming our rapidly shrinking carbon budget and making catastrophic levels of warming more likely. All of those negative consequences are at odds with enhancing national and global security, and they only underscores the extent to which the cleanest sources of energy are also the safest.

The first Natural Allies ad to mention the word “security” went live on March 22, 2022, one month after Russia launched its war on Ukraine, promoting a talk on energy security from Heidi Heitkamp. It ran in numerous US markets through May 13, 2022.

The ad above ran concurrently with two similar ads promoting gas as key to “energy security.” Natural Allies subsequently ran an ad promoting a Boston Globe op-ed written by former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz which argued that “American LNG is a major geostrategic tool for the United States and its allies and trading partners.”

Corporate Members: The Dirty Details

The ten natural gas industry corporations behind Natural Allies have a common history of environmental disregard, methane greenwashing, and working against the energy transition.

Williams Companies

Williams is a US-based fossil fuel producer and pipeline operator that handles roughly one-third of the country’s methane gas. It reported $3.3 billion in profits in 2023. The company is a leading proponent of “gas certification,” an industry-led push to greenwash the extraction and combustion of methane, a potent planet-heating gas. While attempting to extend the fossil fuel industry’s social license, Williams and its subsidiaries have paid millions of dollars in civil penalties to settle allegations that the company failed to comply with the Clear Air Act’s pollution standards.

Williams continues to invest in fossil fuel expansion. In November 2022, Williams signed a preliminary agreement with Sempra Energy to supply gas to two LNG export terminals planned for Texas and Louisiana, Port Arthur LNG and the Cameron LNG Phase 2 project. In December 2023, Williams purchased a portfolio of underground methane gas storage facilities and pipelines around Louisiana and Mississippi for $1.95 billion.

EQT Corporation

Based in Pittsburgh, EQT is the second largest gas producer in the US, operating mainly within the Marcellus shale basin in Appalachia. EQT owns the Mountain Valley Pipeline which was developed by Equitrans, a pipeline company that spun off from EQT in 2018 and was repurchased by EQT in 2024.

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) has long sought construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. EQT CEO Toby Rice has personally made thousands of dollars in political contributions to Manchin, and is among the top fossil fuel boosters in Congress. After Manchin inserted language into the 2023 debt ceiling deal that guaranteed approval of the pipeline, Manchin, Rice and Equitrans Executive Chairman Thomas Karam appeared together to celebrate the pipeline’s opening and praise Manchin for his efforts to lobby for it.

Rice is a self-described “champion of natural gas” whose Twitter (X) handle, “Shalennial,” is a portmanteau of millennial and the shale basins where fracking takes place. He has falsely characterized fracked gas as the “cleanest energy in the world,” even as it accounts for over 20 percent of global GHG emissions from the energy sector, and called liquified natural gas “the biggest green initiative on the planet.”

EQT claims to be the largest producer of “certified” natural gas in the US as well, a controversial label designed to designate gas with fewer methane emissions. The rapidly growing gas certification industry contends that it can accurately measure methane pollution and verify which fracking operations are less-emitting. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. gas is now considered “certified” by third-party companies. However, as Earthworks and Oil Change International have shown, these claims are deceptive, relying on faulty measurements to make unverifiable claims about emissions reduction. The two groups warned in a recent report that “gas certification threatens climate goals by promoting false data and enabling gas companies to expand operations under the guise of reduced emissions.”

EQT is also heavily involved in the effort to boost US LNG exports, and would derive massive financial benefits from it. In January 2024, EQT agreed to provide 500,000 tons of methane gas per year to Texas LNG’s proposed liquefaction facility in Brownsville, Texas near the Mexico border. This plant is one of two export terminals placed on hold after a court decision finding that federal energy regulators failed to properly analyze the impact of two plants. EQT also has a  15-year contract to provide 1 million tons of gas per year to Commonwealth LNG’s facility in Cameron, Louisiana.

In a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Rice opposed the Biden administration’s efforts to pause new approvals of gas export projects, claiming that gas exports would benefit the climate and waving away the problem of increased volatility and price shocks from increased exports that have stuck households and businesses with higher gas bills. He also testified at a February 2024 hearing convened by U.S House Republicans entitled “Politics Over People: How Biden’s LNG Export Ban Threatens America’s Energy and Economic Security” in the same week as a $250,000 donation by EQT Corp to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates.

In May 2022, Rice met with Amos Hochstein, President Joe Biden’s top energy security advisor, to “discuss issues related to expanding LNG exports to Europe and building capacity to replace overseas coal with cleaner, more reliable US LNG,” according to a copy of Hochstein’s calendar obtained by Friends of the Earth through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

EQT was also named in a 2022 lawsuit in which West Virginia homeowners alleged that EQT tried to dodge its responsibility to clean up more than 700 wells by transferring them in 2018 to Diversified Energy, which owns thousands of wells and has faced doubts about whether it has the financial resources to clean them up

Kinder Morgan Inc.

Kinder Morgan is a major US pipeline and terminal owner co-founded by Richard Kinder, a former president of Enron Corp. who left several years before the energy giant’s collapse in 2001. Kinder Morgan has grown into one of the largest pipeline companies in the country through numerous mergers and acquisitions.

The company is responsible for one of the largest gasoline spills in US history: a 2014 spill in South Carolina, where an estimated 369,000 gallons of gasoline seeped into the soil and waterways after an earlier pipeline repair failed. The company’s actions also came under scrutiny in early 2021 when, as Winter Storm Uri left Texans without power, Kinder Morgan capitalized on the crisis, raking in a windfall of approximately $1 billion.

In February 2024, Kinder Morgan claimed that it routinely collaborates with federal and state agencies to protect public and environmental health. The following month, the company sued to block the EPA from applying its Good Neighbor Plan—which sought to reduce ozone-forming emissions of nitrogen oxides from power plants and industrial facilities—to the engines used to transport gas through pipelines. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to block enforcement of the rule.

Kinder Morgan has argued that methane gas will remain a necessity for years to come, and is in the process of increasing the gas processing capacity of the Elba Island LNG export terminal that it operates in Georgia. It is also the lead investor in the long-delayed Gulf LNG project in Mississippi, which would add export capacity to an existing import terminal.

TC Energy

Canadian fossil fuel firm TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, is the co-owner of the Keystone pipeline system, including the abandoned Keystone XL, which faced years of grassroots resistance.

TC Energy transports an estimated 30 percent of North American methane gas. The company has a substantial record of oil spills and safety problems. In December 2022, TC Energy was responsible for 14,000 barrels of oil spilling into a Kansas creek adjacent to an alreadycompleted section of the Keystone pipeline. In July 2023, a section of the company’s gas pipeline in Shenandoah, Virginia exploded.

TC Energy has sought to circumvent regulations in Canada, asking the government to exempt LNG facilities and methane pollution from federal emissions limits. The company has also acted in defiance of US officials, moving to expand the capacity of its fracked gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest despite vocal opposition from local policymakers. Like its counterparts, TC Energy is barreling forward with plans to build out gas exports, building a controversial pipeline through indigenous territory to an export terminal in British Columbia. The company also supports efforts to weaken permitting regulations. “For natural gas to realize its full potential, we have to see permitting reform. We need the infrastructure to get that gas to where it needs to be consumed, so that we can help decarbonize, not only here in the US but abroad.” TC Energy executive Tina Faraca said in a panel discussion.

Enbridge

Enbridge is the Canadian fossil fuel giant behind the controversial Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota, which opened in 2021. Enbridge says its pipeline network serves 15 percent of gas export capacity in the Gulf Coast. It has a 30 percent stake in the Woodfibre LNG export terminal in British Columbia, scheduled to open in 2027. In 2023, Enbridge acquired three U.S. natural gas utilities in Ohio, Utah and North Carolina from Dominion Energy.

While opposing actual decarbonization, Enbridge pushes misleading claims about “clean” fracked gas. The company has formed a joint venture to invest in the buildout of additional gas infrastructure in the Gulf Coast, including the Rio Bravo pipeline, which would supply the Rio Grande LNG project in Brownsville, Texas and has proposed a major pipeline expansion known as Project Maple, in New England.

The company was responsible for the largest inland oil spill in US history, which in 1991 when an older iteration of Line 3 ruptured in Minnesota and leaked into a Mississippi River tributary. In the aftermath of a pair of devastating 2010 oil spills in Michigan and Illinois, Enbridge agreed to pay over $110 million to settle with the US government, plus $62 million in civil penalties for Clean Water Act violations.

Those fines did little to alter the corporation’s conduct. Enbridge-supported groups provided undisclosed funding for the University of Minnesota, Duluth to publish a flawed study that was then cited in defense of the company’s Line 3 project. In 2018, Enbridge shared dubious materials authored by a climate change denier in a bid to get city officials in Boston to approve a proposed gas compressor station. And in March 2024, Enbridge urged shareholders to oppose climate disclosure requirements.

National Fuel

A pipeline, utility and exploration midstream gas company based in New York, National Fuel is a member of a fossil fuel front group that has lobbied against the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, a landmark decarbonization law passed in New York in 2019. Not only did National Fuel fight the legislation, but they spent customer money to do so. Using customer fees, the company created a website that encouraged New York voters to ask their representatives to oppose methane gas restrictions.

From 2002 to 2023, the company was cited for 19 environmental and safety-related violations, yielding nearly $1.7 million in fines, according to data compiled in the Violation Tracker database run by Good Jobs First. In 2020, former Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro charged a unit of National Fuel with environmental crimes for their gas operations polluting a tributary and groundwater. The company also paid a $125,000 civil penalty in 2023 for a gas leak and fire in Pennsylvania which was purportedly exacerbated by deficiencies on the company’s part, including failing to stop the flow of gas in a timely manner.

Solar Turbines

Solar Turbines is a US-based subsidiary of Caterpillar, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of mining and construction equipment. Despite the company’s name, Solar Turbines’ business has nothing to do with solar energy; it specializes in making the industrial gas turbines used in power plants and compressor stations. The company’s website claims that fracked gas is a “cleanburning” fuel that can provide “sustainable, cost-effective power.” Meanwhile, the Gas Turbine Association, to which Solar Turbines pays dues used for federal lobbying, has pushed the EPA to weaken and postpone emissions standards for gas turbines.

Venture Global LNG

Venture Global is an LNG company headquartered in Virginia. The firm owns multiple gas liquefaction and export terminals in Louisiana. In 2022, the first year the company’s Calcasieu Pass export terminal was operational, the facility violated the Clean Air Act by “exceeding the pollution thresholds specified in its permit more than 2,000 times.” Grist reported that flaring at the site released up to 37,000 pounds of nitrogen dioxide, a carcinogenic greenhouse gas. In December 2023, Venture Global proposed building another gas export terminal, called CP2, adjacent to the existing Calcasieu Pass facility. The expansion would also involve laying down more than 90 miles of new pipeline and constructing a new compressor station. Venture Global has been locked in a dispute with BP, Shell, and other customers after delaying shipments of LNG to customers who signed long-term supply contracts, instead selling them at higher spot market prices.

Venture Global is also developing the Delta LNG and the Plaquemines LNG export terminals in Louisiana. Over the next ten years, the company is slated to receive $834 billion in tax breaks through Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, which is meant to lure jobs to the state. However, it is expected to employ just 300 workers once completed, meaning that Venture Global is netting $2.8 million in tax breaks for each permanent job it creates. Venture Global has also held talks with Alaska officials over a massive proposed gas export project.

Southern Company

Southern Co. is the second-largest gas and electric utility in the US. The Atlanta-based company and its subsidiaries—Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and Mississippi Power—together serve 9 million customers. The company’s gas subsidiary, Southern Company Gas, serves 4.4 million gas customers through Atlanta Gas Light, Chattanooga Gas, Nicor Gas, and Virginia Natural Gas brands. That unit was created in 2016 after the $12 billion acquisition of AGL Resources. Despite touting its commitment to “a net-zero transition focusing on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, decarbonization, and a Just Transition,” Southern Company has no credible plans to move away from gas.

Together, Alabama Power and Georgia Power plan to add more than 7,500 megawatts in new gas power generation capacity by 2030, according to the Sierra Club. Even as Southern Company and its subsidiaries continue to expand their fossil fuel production, the utility is still paying its executives bonuses for slashing pollution.

Quanta Services Inc.

Quanta is a Houston-based construction and engineering fossil fuel infrastructure firm that serves the oil and gas industry. It is involved in a variety of activities “across the refining, petrochemical, midstream, and upstream sectors.”

In 2019, Quanta completed the installation of 27 miles of pipes for EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline project. In addition, Quanta owns 50 percent of LUMA Energy, the private utility company that control’s Puerto Rico’s power grid. The company has come under fire for deferring needed repairs, and for its profit-driven resistance to expanding renewable energy after Hurricane Fiona left hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans without power for weeks.  Like the other companies backing Natural Allies, Quanta has identified the global LNG export market as a profitable opportunity to build more pipelines.

Funneling Millions To Republican Politicians

Despite Natural Allies’  focus on gaining support from Democrats, the political action committees (PACs) of the group’s key corporate members overwhelmingly support Republican candidates for office.

Of about $3.5 million in political contributions made by corporate PACs tied to major Natural Allies members since 2020, about $2.8 million, or 79 percent, went to Republican candidates and Super PACs, while $761,950 went to Democrats. The largest political contribution by Natural Allies members was EQT’s $250,000 donation in 2024 to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates, followed by $50,000 from EQT to Team West Virginia, a Super PAC backing the campaign of Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) for U.S. Senate as well as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The top Senate recipient of campaign contributions from Natural Allies members was Sen. Joe Manchin, the fossil fuel-friendly Democrat turned Independent, followed by fossil fuel friendly

Republican Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Deb Fischer (RNE) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). In the House of Representatives, the top recipient of campaign contributions by Natural Allies members was Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, who has pushed to alter rules to allow shipments of LNG by railroads, followed by Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), a fossil fuel-friendly Democrat who chairs the bipartisan House Natural Gas Caucus.

Besides corporate political action committees and Super PACs, nine senior executives at Natural Allies members are significant political donors, contributing at least $20,000 to political candidates since the 2020 election cycle. Key recipients included political committees backing lawmakers including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV).

Kinder Morgan founder Richard Kinder was the biggest political donor, contributing $310,000 to federal races, including nearly $150,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Other significant donors are Venture Global founder Robert Pender ($222,000), who contributed $100,000 to a Super PAC that unsuccessfully sought to defeat fossil fuel critic Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) in a 2020 primary race. Other big political donors were  former Kinder Morgan CEO Steven Kean ($93,900) and EQT CEO Toby Rice ($92,235).

Conclusion

The dramatic expansion of methane gas drilling over the past 15 years and the expansion of overseas gas exports has enriched fossil fuel companies, securing windfall profits for companies peddling disinformation and discouraging climate action. Meanwhile, American communities are feeling the pain of record oil and gas production and skyrocketing gas exports in myriad ways, from volatile utility bills to skyrocketing temperatures to toxic pollution and health problems.

Through lobbying on Capitol Hill, campaign contributions and deceptive influence groups such as Natural Allies, the fossil fuel industry is doing its best to undermine the public support and institutional clarity necessary to end our deadly dependence on fossil fuels. Tying the American economy to continued extraction of fossil fuels for export to overseas markets is not a viable longterm model for economic growth. It enables short-term profits for a handful of corporations at the immediate expense of local communities, and does lasting damage to our planet’s ecological stability, to which there can be no price tag attached.