THE AIR WAR FOR OIL: WHY WE LOSE AND HOW TO WIN

by Henry Lyatsky, 2017, The Source (Canadian Association of Geophysical Contractors), v. 13/4, p. 31-32.

Incompetence, negligence and hubris are the prime causes of the Canadian oil industry’s comprehensive failure of public relations. This PR failure is reflected in the recent denials of vital pipelines by out-of-province interest groups and governments whose goal is to sabotage the oil industry and Alberta itself.

Greater confidence among mainstream Canadians that oil and gas activities are essential for their own well-being and are being carried out responsibly would allow the industry to be more successful. For now, polls seem to suggest that support for pipelines among Canadians is weakening. We oil people must finally stop talking to ourselves. What’s obvious to us may not be at all clear to others. We must learn to address our true audience of everyday Canadians who are not necessarily familiar with the oil industry: the hockey mom, the guy in the truck. As with a commercial sales pitch, we must get to understand our audience.

A grass-roots appeal to the silent majority of everyday Canadians across the country is the most effective way to protect the oil industry from ideological assaults by bigoted anti-oil activists. “What does it mean for me?” is a regular voter’s question when evaluating a public policy or a politician’s platform. We need to explain to everyday members of the public country-wide, from first principles and in their own terms, what oil and gas mean for them.

How it should be done

Experience of major federal political parties in their campaigns in Canada shows that $15-20 million per year can buy superb, sustained national public outreach which would tell Canadians how energy from fossil fuels makes possible their cherished way of life. In political campaigns, this is called the “air war”.

This air war is not about shooting down enemy warplanes. It is a political party’s broad-scale media effort. This contrasts with the “ground war” (doorknocking, posting billboards and lawn signs, etc.) which is typically done by local candidates’ constituency campaigns.

Mass media are the main tools of the air war. Radio, TV and printed matter can reach millions of voters fast. Especially crucial – and very low-cost – are the online social media, whose use has become universal in PR, politics and advertising. Millennials and kids live online. Political campaigns the world over are won and lost, and corporate reputations made and ruined, on Facebook and Twitter.

False or exaggerated alarmism about fossil-fuel environmental damage and climate change must be countered with a sober discussion of scientific uncertainties and with hard facts about the oil industry’s strong environmental record on the ground. Canadians should hear from experts about how climate alarmists are financially and politically self-interested, and thus have every incentive to lie. Everyday Canadians should hear again and again about how the alarmists’ predictions of imminent doom have been falling flat for decades. After all, the climate alarmism when I was in college was about global cooling!

A true scientist is never a denier, always a skeptic. Skepticism of dubious dogmas is not blind denial. It is merely good science. Canadians need to hear more about this.

We must tell the silent majority of mainstream Canadians across the nation what irreplaceable benefits oil and gas bring specifically for them. A radical, top-down transition away from fossil fuels now would cause devastating economic disruptions, with loss of both prosperity and freedom. As technology advances, the free market will itself identify efficient and clean new energy sources over the coming decades. Fossil fuels, especially natural gas, will probably remain a huge part of the expanding energy mix until at least the mid-century.

Ethical Canadian oil in the market means less oil imported from problematic or odious regimes overseas. Canadian oil production means more jobs for Canadians, not just in one region but across the country.

Prosperity and clean environment both are rightly important to Canadians. Prosperity means jobs, cheap energy, and good public infrastructure and services.

Clean environment is like keeping your home clean: if you don’t, you will deservedly end up living a pigsty. Responding to Canadians’ justified demands to be clean, the oil industry works hard to keep reducing its environmental footprint. With generations of experience, it excels at local community engagement. Canadians need to hear more about this.

We should invite Canadians to starkly imagine a life without oil and gas. Alternative energy sources are far too immature and too costly to fill the gap. Without oil and gas, Canadians should be asked if they would like to live medieval, or at least like our pioneer forerunners lived. They would probably not agree.

Our stark messages, especially online, should be summed up as catchy soundbites and accompanied by vivid graphics. To be successful, a soundbite or picture must encapsulate a realistic idea and avoid being vacuous.

Our public messaging should be repeated over and over again, in different variants and permutations to keep it from becoming stale. Response to relevant current events should be instantaneous. In all cases, we should get our message out early and define our opponents in the public mind before they have a chance to define us.

Our positive case for oil, made to the widest general public, must be level-headed and easily accessible. We must completely avoid the deranged, off-putting rants of the alt-right.

As in political campaigns, everyday Canadians will notice and respond. And it is everyday Canadians who ultimately decide how the country is run.

A modest proposal

The air war for oil is a war we are currently losing. This failure is our own.

The admirable, hard work of grass-roots outreach to mainstream Canadians is today being done on the fringes of – or even completely outside – the oil industry. It is carried out by a few tiny volunteer groups, self-starter NGOs and individuals. They need and deserve the industry’s maximum help.

The flagship oil-industry lobby groups, by contrast, have squandered vast amounts of time and resources – and they have been out-campaigned by media-savvy anti-oil activists. Held back by diverging strategies among their corporate members and by their own lofty hubris, these slumbering dinosaurs have failed.

So complete is their failure that during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I found myself virtually the only person in the country willing to go on the radio to defend the oil industry. Merely a geology and geophysics consultant without institutional affiliations, I was debating a leading anti-oil federal politician on the national radio. The powerful oil-industry lobby groups, meanwhile, sat mostly silent, even refusing my requests for assistance.

Calgary has always been a city of vibrant politics, both regional and national. Many active and retired political and campaign operators live here. Using their vast experience, they should be put to work doing PR for the oil industry

Even in the tough economic times, the oil industry can find $20 million a year for this vital work. In the low-cost online world, this money can go far. The future of the industry itself may depend on it. Diverting the funding away from the failed mainstream lobby groups and towards media-savvy and politics-savvy new upstarts is the best way to rev up the industry PR fast.

Consolidating the disparate efforts, a new, nimble oil-industry service corps for PR and public outreach should be created now. It should operate like a non-profit NGO. Experienced political campaigners and online wizards should run it. To avoid institutional paralysis, this new PR corps should be given some autonomous freedom of action and room to make decisions independently and fast. Its work could be overseen by an arms-length supervisory board representing the corporate donors and partners.

Like in a political campaign, this new PR group would tell individual Canadian voters and families across the country, in their own terms, what oil and gas mean for them. Prosperity, cheap energy and jobs do not need to come at the expense of the environment. All energy sources are good, provided they can be used economically and without market-distorting taxes and incentives. Mainstream Canadians should hear how oil and gas make their entire way of life possible, and they should be asked to imagine a bleak life without these blessings.

We cannot afford for the oil industry’s catastrophic PR failure to continue. The proposed new PR corps, staffed by experienced and modern-minded operators, would be a huge step forward. A few years of hard and nimble campaigning, much of it online, can shift the Canadians’ perceptions decisively in our favor. The truth, after all, is on our side.