Orleans News

Fossil gasoline spokespeople ask Louisiana tutorial to assist promote carbon seize


After working on the College of Louisiana at Lafayette for greater than 30 years, Ramesh Kolluru says Lafayette will not be the place he grew up. But it surely’s the place he grew outdated.

Kolluru, the varsity’s vp for analysis, innovation and financial growth, mentioned he admires Cajuns, the French descendants who settled in southern Louisiana two centuries in the past after being exiled from Acadia. He appreciates that historical past, which impressed the college’s athletic groups’ nickname: the Ragin’ Cajuns. “How Cajuns got here to be on this a part of the nation. Not a lot was given. Not a lot was anticipated, maybe additionally,” he mentioned. 

Within the signature line of his emails, Kolluru contains the title “Honorary Cajun,” a designation he was given by a former Lafayette city-parish president. It’s additionally on his CV. “I’ve been known as a variety of names however honorary Cajun is the very best factor I’ve been known as,” Kolluru mentioned in an interview with The Lens. 

His adopted hometown, Lafayette, is central to the state’s fossil gasoline trade, he defined. “Lafayette is a hub metropolis. A spot the place the oil and gasoline trade and power trade have grown and been supported,” he mentioned. The variety of oil and gasoline jobs within the space took a success through the COVID-19 pandemic and have not recovered. However Kolluru’s embrace of the fossil gasoline trade stays steadfast. 

Throughout final 12 months’s summer season heatwave in Louisiana, Kolluru was approached by an trade lobbying group known as “Committee of 100 for Financial Improvement, Inc.,” or C100. The request got here quickly after the Environmental Safety Company had wrapped up a three-day public listening to in Baton Rouge about whether or not Louisiana must be given what’s often known as “primacy,” or enforcement duty, of carbon seize and storage tasks inside state borders. Carbon seize and storage, or CCS, is a controversial methodology of decreasing greenhouse gases by becoming industrial amenities with tools that chemically extracts carbon dioxide from the air pollution puffing out of smokestacks. The captured carbon is transported by way of pipeline and, in the end, injected deep underground.

Greater than 150 individuals testified through the listening to about whether or not the state must be allowed, below the Protected Consuming Water Act, to grant permits for the wells the place trade plans to inject captured carbon for storage. The testimony mirrored each neighborhood considerations that the state has a poor historical past of defending residents from oil and gasoline trade endeavors and trade’s hopes that the EPA handing over regulatory authority to the state would velocity up allowing of CCS tasks.

Whereas the listening to was over, C100 wished to proceed to drum up help for Louisiana’s management of CCS.

That’s when Michael Olivier, the previous head of C100, despatched a request to Kolluru, based on emails considered by way of a public information request. “We can be looking for influential enterprise leaders in areas of the state to signal OpEds (see connected instance) and we’ll use social media (beneath) to affect public opinion on the upcoming EPA ruling. Would you be that individual in Acadiana?” Olivier requested.

“Completely!” Kolluru responded.

C100 didn’t reply to requests for remark. In a letter to the editor revealed by The Advocate final summer season, C100 government committee member Scott Ballard wrote that granting Louisiana regulatory authority of carbon seize “would kick our state’s oil and gasoline trade into overdrive.” 

Amongst C100’s members are representatives of corporations which have proposed carbon seize tasks within the state — equivalent to ExxonMobil, AirProducts and Gulf Coast Sequestration — and the presidents of UL Lafayette and Louisiana State College.  

Inside Kolluru’s analysis management place at UL Lafayette, he informed The Lens, he’s labored with a number of trade lobbying teams to supply neighborhood schooling about carbon seize expertise, together with C100, Louisiana Affiliation of Enterprise and Business, and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Fuel Affiliation. Data present that C100 offered Kolluru with speaking factors to share on social media and in opinion items in newspapers, about why Louisiana ought to take over regulatory authority of carbon-capture tasks within the state. A political guide working with the trade lobbying group later adopted up with a draft letter for Kolluru to evaluation that may be shopped round to Lafayette space newspapers. Kolluru informed The Lens he by no means shared speaking factors written by anybody else in opinion items, social media posts or at neighborhood conferences. He didn’t reply to a follow-up query in regards to the draft letter.

After reviewing the e mail chain between C100 and Kolluru, Michael Mann, a local weather scientist and distinguished professor at Pennsylvania State College, known as the connection between UL Lafayette and C100 “deeply problematic.” 

“It is a manner of buying ethical license, through the use of tutorial establishments as a friendly-appearing facade behind which dangerous actors within the fossil gasoline trade are in a position to cover as they promote greenwash and local weather delay,” Mann mentioned.

Business’s shut ties to UL Lafayette additionally created less-direct methods for trade speaking factors to seek out their manner into Kolluru’s writings. In public information acquired by The Lens, Mark Zappi, the Government Director of the Power Institute of Louisiana, who experiences to Kolluru, requested to talk with an Exxon government for a letter that Kolluru was writing for “a broad viewers.” 

“We go the place there’s the best alternative to maximise affect and that comes from working with trade,” Kolluru mentioned of the college’s fossil gasoline relationships.


For fossil gasoline trade, lecturers can ‘improve credibility’

“Lafayette is a hub metropolis. A spot the place the oil and gasoline trade and power trade have grown and been supported,” mentioned Ramesh Kolluru, the College of Louisiana at Lafayette’s vp for analysis, innovation and financial growth. Pictured above, The Petroleum Membership of Lafayette, a non-public social membership on the town. Till 1986, solely oil and gasoline males might be members. (Photograph by Greer Hernandez for The Lens)

The partnership between UL Lafayette and the fossil-fuel trade matches into a bigger, nationwide sample, described in a Congressional report issued earlier this 12 months, after a multi-year investigation into the “deception campaigns” launched by main oil corporations to unfold climate-change denial and disinformation. The report notes that “strategic partnerships” solid with universities by fossil-fuel corporations are supposed to “improve their credibility, form tutorial analysis packages to supply research supportive of a protracted life for oil and gasoline, leverage the ensuing analysis to their benefit, and bolster entry to policymakers.”

Business-sponsored analysis can have actual affect on which local weather options universities embrace, mentioned Melissa Finucane, the vp of science and innovation for the Union of Involved Scientists. A 2022 examine by Columbia College researchers discovered that college power facilities that acquired fossil gasoline funding have been extra prone to favor pure gasoline over renewables of their experiences and social media. For facilities much less depending on fossil fuels, the alternative was true – their experiences favored photo voltaic and hydro energy. 

“If you concentrate on it from the attitude of the fossil gasoline corporations, by affiliation they get individuals to understand them as being extra credible,” Finucane mentioned. “In addition they are constructing relationships with establishments that themselves have connections with different coverage makers or influencers.”

In Louisiana, fossil-fuel corporations’ current investments at universities have centered round carbon seize and storage. Kolluru was amongst a handful of Louisiana lecturers who submitted written testimony or testified on the EPA’s public listening to in June 2023, about whether or not the state must be granted regulatory authority over carbon seize tasks in its borders. Reporting by The Lens reveals that most of the professors who testified on the hearings got here from college departments that acquired funding from fossil gasoline corporations which have proposed carbon seize tasks within the state.

“Louisiana has the intensive experience and information of its personal geologic regional sources for efficient governance of the (CCS) program. In reality, this regional expert-base is extra educated of regional geological formations than that of out of doors regulators,” Kolluru wrote in his public remark. “I strongly help primacy for Louisiana which can place the financial and ecological future in our personal fingers – the place it must be.” Kolluru’s written remark to the EPA seems to match the messaging of C100’s speaking factors, which additionally confused the necessity for Louisianans to make their very own selections about trade within the state, fairly than leaving it within the fingers of the federal authorities. Kolluru didn’t reply to a query about what has knowledgeable his views on carbon seize.

Finucane, with the Union of Involved Scientists, mentioned that the general public advantages from questioning the motives and advantages of educational establishments that have interaction with trade. For instance, have they got the technical experience that’s related? And what proof is there to again up their claims? 

Kolluru started his profession, in 1996, at UL Lafayette as a analysis scientist within the college’s former Attire-Pc Built-in Manufacturing Middle, which appeared for methods to assist automate the textile trade. In an interview with The Lens, he mentioned he was not an skilled on carbon seize expertise. He views it as “a instrument within the toolkit” to handle carbon emissions and “a chance for Louisiana,” he mentioned.


‘Worrisome stuff’

Final 12 months, Louisiana, ExxonMobil donated $500,000 to the UL Lafayette’s power institute and public coverage heart for “outreach efforts.” Photographed beneath, the rig in entrance of Frank’s Worldwide, the place employees take a look at new instruments and discover ways to set up casing into oil rigs. It’s one other well-known reminder of Lafayette’s dominant oil and gasoline trade. (Photograph by Greer Hernandez for The Lens)

Final spring, Kolluru appeared to acknowledge the worth of his function, as a tutorial, in making carbon seize extra palatable to individuals who dwell close to proposed injection websites. “Business can’t – fairly mustn’t – do that as a result of they’re seen as biased and conflicted. College companions must be known as on to assist by offering science-based data to handle considerations,” Kolluru wrote in an e mail to Bryan Hanks, an oil landman who beforehand served as chairman of the Louisiana Oil & Fuel Affiliation and now chairs UL Lafayette’s board of trustees. 

Kolluru’s colleague at UL Lafayette, Mark Zappi, has been making the rounds at public conferences to reply to “anti-CCS and anti-petroleum efforts,” based on emails considered by way of a public information request.  

Zappi didn’t reply to requests for remark. 

It’s unclear if these in Zappi’s audiences knew about his college’s relationships with trade. Final fall, he spoke at a gathering hosted by Cleco, the utility firm, about its plans to retrofit a petroleum coke-burning energy plant in central Louisiana with carbon seize tools. 

“If you take a look at this general course of, it’s using expertise that’s been round for a very long time, so it’s confirmed expertise,” Zappi informed neighborhood members on the open discussion board at Northwood Excessive College, based on KALB tv. Cleco requested Zappi to talk on the assembly, Kolluru mentioned.

Jackson Voss, the local weather coverage coordinator for the Alliance for Reasonably priced Power, disagreed with Zappi’s assertion that carbon seize expertise is “confirmed.” When requested to call carbon-capture successes, advocates have little to quote, Voss famous. “There has not likely been any public demonstration of the success of carbon seize to date by way of everlasting storage of carbon dioxide and different pollution,” he mentioned. “There have been some actually costly failures.”

In 2021, a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in Satartia, Mississippi, sending 45 individuals to the hospital. The carbon dioxide displaced oxygen within the air, inflicting automobile engines to show off and main individuals to change into confused. 

Due to what occurred in Sataria, Voss believes that the CCS trade’s approaches to UL Lafayette, as detailed by The Lens, are “worrisome stuff,” he replied in an e mail. In April, one other CO2 pipeline owned by ExxonMobil ruptured in Louisiana, leaking 2,548 barrels of carbon dioxide.

“After all, it’s not new for universities to be tied to trade monetarily and in any other case,” Voss wrote. “(However), it’s definitely very regarding how intently Louisiana universities appear to be coordinating with oil and gasoline firms round CCS particularly, particularly given your earlier reporting on how these relationships have been allowed to form college analysis to current a extra favorable image of trade than might be merited.”


Business and college work collectively on carbon-capture messaging  

William Holmes, with UL Lafayette’s power institute, teaches a pupil about carbon seize. Business has donated tens of millions to Louisiana universities to advance the controversial expertise. (Photograph by Greer Hernandez for The Lens)

On the primary day of the EPA’s listening to in Louisiana, ExxonMobil donated $500,000 to the UL Lafayette’s power institute and public coverage heart for “outreach efforts,” based on a college information launch.

As Exxon’s present to UL Lafayette was being finalized, Zappi made clear that he hoped Exxon would get one thing out of the association. “We additionally need these presents to be areas of nice delight and benefit to ExxonMobil,” Zappi wrote in an e mail to Brandon Maxwell, from ExxonMobil’s public and governmental affairs workplace. “We need to make these presents a superb expertise in your nice firm.”

Inside emails considered by way of a public information request by The Lens present that Exxon’s present to UL Lafayette would assist pay for 2 positions, each for a three-year span: an “power justice outreach coordinator” within the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Coverage Middle and an outreach coordinator for the Power Institute of Louisiana. Exxon directed additional questions in regards to the donation to the college. 

The college hasn’t tapped into the Exxon funds but, Kolluru mentioned, although his workplace is presently paying for college employees to talk to communities about carbon-capture expertise.  Even after the college begins to make use of Exxon’s funds to pay outreach coordinators’ salaries, Exxon is not going to form outreach conversations with neighborhood members, he informed The Lens. “The truth that (the outreach workforce is) funded by Exxon doesn’t imply it’s going right into a neighborhood to speak about Exxon’s efforts or Shell’s efforts.” 

Emails present that Zappi usually up to date Maxwell, with Exxon, about his carbon seize talking engagements, even asking Maxwell to assist him formulate a response to considerations that carbon captured from industrial sources may comprise different pollution. For his half, Maxwell offered Zappi with data to fight “myths” about carbon seize expertise.

As Maxwell wrote to Zappi final summer season: “Delusion: CO2 pipelines are harmful. However they really take pleasure in a top-notch security efficiency report regardless of one or two non-fatal occasions over the course of many years.” Maxwell wrote. 

“Many thanks –  that is very useful,” Zappi replied.

Final spring, as Zappi spoke to legislators and different neighborhood leaders on behalf of the Louisiana Affiliation of Enterprise and Business, he referenced Exxon’s carbon seize venture in LaBarge, Wyoming — the most important current carbon seize venture on the earth. 

In a message with Maxwell, Zappi described LaBarge as a “nice story and success.” 

Between 1986 and 2020, the treating facility captured about 47% of carbon emissions. But it surely was captured, not as a local weather answer –  based on the Institute for Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation (IEEFA) – however for use by oil producers to push extra fossil fuels out of the bottom.

Solely 3% of the carbon emissions have been captured and saved.

The opposite half of the CO2 emitted at LaBarge was vented again into the environment, based on IEEFA.

Zappi emailed Maxwell after his presentation. “Word the information I introduced on LaBarge – y’all got here off being the specialists,” he wrote. “The Shell of us commented on the great PR I gave you all.” 


This story is a part of the “Captured Viewers” collection, which is supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism sponsored by The Lens, a nonprofit newsroom in New Orleans.


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