“We should never forget that the oil industry, whatever its problems (and most of those are caused by bad government policies) is the single most vital industry in the world.”

This election year, America faces many crucial legislative choices in the oil/gas industry–and the PR strategy of oil companies will certainly affect the outcome.

What should oil company executives do to improve their industry’s reputation and secure their freedom to produce the lifeblood of civilization?

Unfortunately, the conventional answer is: pretend they’re not oil companies. BP’s John Browne some years ago infamously declared his company’s aspirations to be “Beyond Petroleum”–a slogan that obviously does not aid the industry’s desire for more petroleum drilling rights. (BP, to its credit, no longer trumpets this slogan, which defaults BP back to the implicit original, British Petroleum.)…

“[T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs. Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state … and voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations…. Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.”

– Edward Crane (quotation), founder, Cato Institute

The worldview for entrusting consenting adults with energy is, broadly speaking, libertarian. Consumers are more knowledgeable than government agents on what (energy) products are most valuable in terms of convenience, price, and reliability. And as experience has shown time and again, politicizing energy creates problems rather than solves them. Restated, there is government failure in the quest to address alleged market failures.

Obama’s GOVERNMENT

Arguments about energy also apply to health care, money and banking, and other pillars of the modern economy.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Some of the more informative articles in this issue are:

The Big Sunshiny Lie

Fraud and Corruption in the Power Generation Industry

Appeals court blasts US Government’s view of key bird law

Study: Intermittency of UK Wind Power Generation 2013 and 2014

CO2 Emissions Reductions – What History Teaches Us

Wind Energy’s Claim that it’s “Clean” is not true

Saving the Environment from Environmentalism

Study: Energy Efficiency Investments Do NOT Deliver

Models vs.…

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), are in the news.

As reported last month in the Los Angeles Times, and more recently in Bloomberg Politics, IER/AEA are involved in the free-market directions that the president-elect and his team have followed to date.

One account described the founding of IER as follows:

The Institute for Energy Research was founded to be a clearinghouse for energy information in 1989 in Houston by Robert L. Bradley Jr., a speechwriter for Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay, who was later convicted of securities fraud.

Given that this association is part of the political conversation (Joe Romm started it in 2009: see below), and the continuing attention that is ahead for IER/AEA, I wish to revisit the historical record about my time at Enron that overlapped with IER.…