Message From the Editor
Just in time for your weekend reading, we published atwo part investigation into NW Natural, a gas utility in the Pacific Northwest that is using every tool in its arsenal — from activity books for kids to a blue hydrogen project — to keep gas flowing.
This new work draws on internal ethical complaints that allege, among other things, that NW Natural executives downplayed or ignored employee concerns about billing accuracy issues associated with projects that facilitated extremely profitable energy market speculation.
The complaints further allege that company practices and regulatory policies allowing utilities more time to replace inaccurate meters were resulting in insufficient customer reimbursements and unearned corporate profits associated with systematic overbilling.
Freelancer Chris May, dug into company and public documents to investigate these and other allegations in the first part of the series. In the second part, he examined the challenges — old and new — that utility regulators face when trying to hold gas companies accountable during the energy transition.
Together, the pieces make for an illuminating read. We hope you’ll make them part of your weekend.
Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmog.com. Want to know what our UK team is up to? Sign up for our UK newsletter.
Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director
P.S. Deeply reported investigations like these are made possible by our generous donors. Can you donate $10 or $20 right now to support our team?
Image credit: Sarah Gilbert (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Defective Meters and Whistleblower Complaints Raise Questions About Gas Utility’s Profits
— By Chris May (17 min. read) —
A little over a decade ago, Gary Dye, then a gas measurement engineer at NW Natural, Oregon’s largest gas utility, lost faith in his employer to responsibly deal with what he believed to be systematic inaccuracies among the company’s hundreds of thousands of gas meters.
On a quest to tame these inaccuracies, in late 2011, he proposed a simple technical fix that he claims will “result in more accurate billing, extended meter lives, reduced landfill waste, and a more efficient utilization of [utility] personnel.”
Phantom Gas and Missing Documents Reveal Gaps in Utility Oversight
— By Chris May (11 min. read) —
When Gary Dye, a former engineer with Oregon’s largest gas utility, began blowing the whistle on alleged unethical behavior by his employer, he never dreamed his nearly two-dozen complaints would amount to nothing.
He filed 21 internal complaints in 2012, then bumped them up to the Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC), the group that regulates utilities in the state, later that year. There, he met with OPUC staff in person and exchanged emails with Lori Koho, then OPUC’s senior official overseeing natural gas utilities. He hoped that his list of complaints would show “how the unethical culture [at NW Natural] goes all the way to the top,” as one of his emails to Koho explains.
House Committee Wraps Up Historic Investigation Into Oil Industry
— By Nick Cunningham (6 min. read) —
Congressional investigators released a new set of documents that underscored the oil and gas industry’s ongoing attempts to block climate policies and confuse the public about their long-term investments in fossil fuels. The latest tranche of documents caps off a nearly two-year investigation that appears set to come to an end with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January.
New Study Reveals Billions of Dollars in Political Spending by US Trade Associations, Most of It on PR
— By Dana Drugmand (4 min. read) —
Industry trade associations in the United States that work on climate and energy issues spent more than $3 billion over 10 years on political activities, according to a new study that sheds light on trade associations’ role in influencing policies and obstructing climate action.
The new paper by scholars Robert Brulle of Brown University and Christian Downie of The Australian National University, published Monday in the journal Climatic Change, examined the political spending of nearly 90 U.S. trade associations from 2008 to 2018.
Gazprom ‘Anticipates’ Further North Sea Gas Exploration Amid Bumper Profits
— By Christopher Deane and Rich Collett-White (5 min. read) —
Gazprom expects to continue exploring for new reserves in the North Sea, having paid itself a £28 million dividend from drilling operations in the area, its latest accounts show.
Subsidiaries of the Russian state-owned gas giant still have stakes in multiple fields more than nine months after the invasion of Ukraine began and despite its chief executive being under UK sanctions.
From the Climate Disinformation Database: The Texas Public Policy Foundation
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas, founded by James R. Leininger in 1989. According to their website, “The Foundation’s mission is to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach.” While TPPF claims that it is a non-partisan research institute, and as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit it isn’t legally required to reveal its donors, a 2010 list of funders surfaced that revealed significant contributions from Koch Industries, Koch family Foundations, the Tobacco Industry, ExxonMobil, and many others.
Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.
