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Collection: Look Who's Taking Oil & Coal Money

How the Fracked Gas Industry Plays Politics in Washington

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Capitol building in Olympia, WA

The gas industry has big designs on the Northwest. In Washington alone, its agents are busy in practically every corner of the state: backing a pipeline expansion in north Seattle, a controversial LNG facility in Tacoma, an ammonia fertilizer production site in Longview, a giant petrochemical export project on the Columbia River, and amping up … Read more

Listen In: Washington State’s Important Climate Elections

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Last week, Sightline policy director Eric de Place had two on-air appearances to report on the coal, oil, and gas industry’s influence on three local elections in Washington State. Big Money, Small Elections Eric joins Benjamin Storrow, E&E; Molly Solomon, Oregon Public Broadcasting; and Tom Seng, University of Tulsa on KCRW’s To the Point to discuss three local elections in Washington that … Read more

Big Oil Aims to Buy Democracy in Washington

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With no statewide races or federal level races, 2017 is supposed to be an “off” year election. But for the fossil fuel industry and their allies it’s proving to be a spending bonanza. Coal, oil, and railroad shippers have dumped a jaw-dropping $1.5 million into three relatively small caliber Washington races: a Vancouver port commission … Read more

BC’s ‘Wild West of Political Cash’ Fuels a Fossil Fuel Frenzy

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“The wild west of Canadian political cash.” That’s what the New York Times called British Columbia in a January 2017 investigation into the province’s extremely permissive rules governing campaign donations. Now, a new report by a trio of researchers at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shines a light on fossil fuel political spending … Read more

Green PR Firm Secretly Working for Oil and Petrochemical Industry

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Consulting firm EnviroIssues is a longstanding fixture of the Northwest’s sustainability community. Known mostly for its work with local governments, the company is generally well respected and considered “a white hat” in a field liberally populated with unscrupulous characters. Of themselves, EnviroIssues says: “Our names says it all—we help make the natural and built communities … Read more

Rep. Ryan Zinke, Coal Export’s Man in Congress

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Editor’s note 12/13/2016: President-elect Trump just picked Ryan Zinke to lead the US Department of Interior. It’s hard to imagine a choice more deeply embedded with coal industry interests or hostile to the treaty rights of Northwest tribes. To help shine a light on his record, Sightline is re-posting an examination of Zinke that we … Read more

Oil and Coal’s $20 Million Campaign for Influence in the Northwest

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Oil Check Northwest and is republished here with the editor’s permission. Oil Check Northwest released a report just last week on the flow of fossil fuel money into Oregon and Washington over the last 3 election cycles—the most comprehensive catalog to date of the industry’s influence on our … Read more

The Oil Industry’s California Playbook

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Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared on Oil Check Northwest.

Last week, after intense lobbying from the oil industry, California legislators killed part of a bill that would have set a landmark goal of decreasing statewide petroleum use by 50 percent by 2030. After millions of dollars of furious Big Oil lobbying, legislators dropped the petroleum requirement from the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act (SB 350). While the bill’s other monumental goals of increasing building efficiency by 50 percent and increasing renewables’ share of the state’s energy to 50 percent remain intact, the oil lobby won this battle.

However, Governor Jerry Brown insists the war is not over: “I am more determined than ever,” he stated in a press conference announcing the bill’s changes. He plans to spend his remaining three years in office making meaningful progress on climate change. Under his leadership, California has been a model for the rest of the world on climate legislation and has even led other subnational provinces and states to join its carbon trading market.

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Stop Doing Business with Strategies 360

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The fossil fuel divestment movement has scored a string of successes across the country, convincing universities, cities, and philanthropies to dump their investments in coal and oil. Now, as the Northwest stares down the barrel of five Keystone XLs’ worth of pipelines and export terminals, it’s time to turn the same sort of scrutiny on the lobbying and PR firms who do Big Oil’s dirty work locally.

Over the last few years, Sightline has shined a light on a range of firms surreptitiously pocketing dirty coal and oil money—and perhaps no group deserves a more gimlet eye than Strategies 360.

Senior staff at the firm make liberal use of a revolving door between big business and government: they rotate from top flight positions in Washington’s state capitol to working as paid advocates for coal and oil companies before heading back into key positions in Olympia. Arguably no firm in the Northwest has done as much to advance fossil fuel development. By rights, the firm should be considered an arm of the coal and oil industries, albeit one cloaked in the friendly guise of local boys.

Most recently, Sightline has learned that the firm is behind a controversial bid to site a new oil refinery on the Columbia River at Longview, Washington.

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How Shell Manipulates Washington State Politics

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Yesterday afternoon, Shell Oil’s titanic drilling rig made its way into the Port of Seattle, where it will undergo repairs before heading north to drill in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s north coast this summer. After local company Foss Maritime inked a secretive lease with the Port to repair two of Shell’s skyscraper-sized oil drilling rigs, the region has been embroiled in a raging controversy over the wisdom of allowing the second largest company in the world to use Seattle as a staging ground for Arctic oil drilling. Shell’s last run at Arctic oil, when the company’s flagship Kulluk drilling rig ran aground near Alaska’s Kodiak Island, was a signal failure, but Shell plans to return to the precarious Arctic seas this summer for another try at tapping the oil reserves.

And in Skagit County, Shell has plans to build a large oil train facility at its Anacortes Refinery. After the county hearing examiner recently determined that the company should conduct a full environmental review of the project, Shell sued the county. The case will be heard this month.

Shell’s schemes have the region in an uproar, so now is a good time to explore the oil company’s well documented record of interfering in Washington’s politics.

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