Oil And Gas Majors Stick To Their Guns On Climate Advertising
Original story by: International Business Times
Last updated: Oct 23, 2025
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- Context: Oil and gas companies are facing increasing legal challenges regarding their contribution to climate change. Despite this, they continue to promote themselves as leaders in the energy transition and low-carbon technologies through their marketing. This strategy, which shifted from climate change denial to emphasizing "green" initiatives, is under scrutiny for potentially misleading the public.
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- Detailed Summary:
- Since the early 2000s, oil and gas firms have altered their public relations strategy, moving from outright climate change denial to promoting their involvement in the energy transition.
- Recent marketing efforts highlight investments in areas like carbon capture, biofuels, solar energy, and hydrogen power, rather than focusing on fossil fuel extraction.
- Critics argue that these claims are a form of "greenwashing," designed to create a false sense of reassurance and discourage necessary societal changes, with some scholars likening it to climate denial in its impact.
- An analysis of over 2,000 advertisements from five major oil companies in the U.S. since 2006 shows a significant shift in the 2020s towards messages about low-carbon technologies and away from fossil fuels.
- Companies like BP and ExxonMobil use slogans to position themselves as participants in climate solutions and a lower-carbon future.
- There has been a recent prioritization of these green-focused messages over earlier pronouncements on carbon neutrality goals.
- Legal actions against oil majors for misleading climate pledges are emerging, with a French court expected to rule on TotalEnergies' climate claims and other cases in Spain, New York, and Australia concerning alleged greenwashing.
- While other industries like aviation, food, and clothing have faced stricter regulations and crackdowns on vague environmental claims, particularly in Europe, the legal landscape for fossil fuel companies' greenwashing is still developing.
- Fossil fuel producers are accused of being a primary source of global warming and of decades of disinformation regarding their climate impacts.
- Dozens of legal cases are underway in Europe and the United States, with some, like California's actions, seeking to hold these companies financially responsible for climate change costs, drawing parallels to past legal actions against the tobacco industry.
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