University ties to fossil fuel industry face growing scrutiny

Good morning and welcome back to Energy Source, coming to you from New York. 

The Financial Times has a scoop this morning on new allegations by Shell that US liquefied natural gas provider Venture Global has “wrongfully earned” $3.5bn through shipment arbitrage, the latest escalation in a bitter dispute between some of the largest players in the LNG industry.

The oil major accuses Venture Global of failing to deliver shipments to European customers under long-term supply contracts and instead selling them on high-priced spot markets when gas prices soared following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Venture Global has dismissed Shell’s claims, declaring force majeure on its contractual commitments.

Today’s newsletter comes to you an hour later than usual so we can look at a new study out this morning reviewing the oil and gas industry’s influence on higher education. Universities are under growing pressure to disclose and cut their ties with the fossil fuel industry as faculty and students raise concerns that the relationship poses a threat to academic integrity and climate change mitigation.

Thanks for reading,

Amanda

New study raises concerns of university ties to fossil fuel sector

Western universities are facing growing pressure to cut ties with oil and gas companies as critics raise concerns that the industry’s donations undermine research and efforts to address climate change.

A new study released this morning provides the first review of research looking at the sector’s extensive role in higher education. It draws from nearly three dozen reports on how university ties to oil and gas companies have created biases in research, supported unproven solutions for climate mitigation and curbed academic freedom.

The review cited a report last year from Data for Progress, a progressive think-tank, which found that six fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell have contributed at least $700mn in donations to US universities from 2010 to 2020. Another recent study from Columbia University found that university energy centres that accepted donations from the gas industry were more favourable in their research towards the fuel than renewables, while institutions less dependent on gas funding displayed the opposite trend.

“Everything that’s been done so far by researchers on this indicates an emerging consensus . . . that this is a really serious and significant problem that needs to be taken a lot more seriously,” said Geoffrey Supran, director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami and a co-author of the review, which looked at research on institutions in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Conflicts of interest go beyond fossil fuel funding for research and include academic posts, scholarships, training and recruitment events, the study says.

Nearly 1,000 academics have signed an open letter organised by Fossil Free Research calling for US and UK universities to halt funding from the industry for climate, environmental and energy research. In the past two years, Princeton University and Cambridge have made commitments to limit ties with fossil fuel companies. And over the summer, Columbia created a committee to consider the implications of fossil fuel-funded research for the university after pressure from students.

The push for universities to sever relations, or “dissociate”, from the fossil fuel industry expands on earlier student campaigns for the institutions to divest their portfolios of oil and gas stocks and comes as the private sector plays a greater role in funding academic institutions. 

“These calls by scholars and students for universities to cut funding ties with the oil industry is basically divestment 2.0,” said Supran, who helped lead the divestment campaign as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has not made any fossil fuel divestments. More than 270 students and faculty members at the university earlier this year signed a letter calling for the dissociation of fossil fuel companies in the Climate Project, a new policy centre.

The study’s authors likened the oil and gas industry’s tactics to influence academic research to those of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries and called on universities to publicly disclose corporate contributions to research funding. A multiyear investigation from congressional Democrats earlier this year outlined instances in which oil majors partnered with universities to order to bolster their credibility and strategic aims. Their findings included a spreadsheet from BP that rated how the research plans of Princeton, Harvard and Tufts University aligned with the priorities of the major, such as the shift to gas and growth in refining. 

“It’s not just research, but it’s also this culture of . . . perpetuating fossil fuel’s future,” said Jennie Stephens, a professor at the Icarus Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University and a co-author of the review. “The bigger picture question for higher education is public funding for public good versus private industry funding to advance the interest of corporate private interests.”

Opponents of dissociation argue that cutting ties to the fossil fuel sector could create financing challenges for research, isolate an industry that is needed at the table to address climate change and polarise academic discourse.

In June, a Stanford committee recommended against dissociating from the fossil fuel industry, warning it could have an “inhibiting effect” on academic freedom, but called for more guardrails.

“The scale and seriousness of this [climate] crisis, especially given the acute energy poverty remaining in much of the world, requires a robust and diverse community of views, actors and tools,” the committee wrote in its report.

A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute said that the US oil and gas industry “will continue to work with experts and organisations committed to advancing solutions that tackle climate change, meet growing demand and ensure continued access to affordable, reliable American energy”.

Job moves

• US oilfield services giant Baker Hughes appointed Amerino Gatti as executive vice-president of oilfield services and equipment, Maria Claudia Borras as chief growth and experience officer and Muzzamil Khider Ahmed as chief people and culture officer. Deanna Jones, chief human resources officer, is moving into an advisory capacity before leaving the company next year.

• Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned electricity company, was ousted on Tuesday, prompting the resignations of board members Peder Andreasen and Daniel Dobbeni.

• Víctor Rodríguez, an energy academic, has been selected by Mexico’s incoming president to run Pemex, the state-owned oil company.

• Swedish EV maker Polestar appointed Michael Lohscheller as chief executive and Jean-Francois Mady as chief financial officer, succeeding Thomas Ingenlath and Per Ansgar, respectively. Lohscheller previously led Nikola and VinFast, and Mady most recently served as a senior vice-president at Stellantis.

• The Kamala Harris presidential campaign has tapped Rewiring America’s Camila Thorndike as climate engagement director, according to Politico. Thorndike previously served as senior director of public engagement at the electrification non-profit.

• X-energy appointed Robert Taylor as vice-president of regulatory affairs and licensing. Taylor joins the nuclear energy start-up after more than two decades at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where he most recently served as deputy office director for new reactors.

Power Points

Energy Source is written and edited by Jamie Smyth, Myles McCormick, Amanda Chu, Tom Wilson and Malcolm Moore, with support from the FT’s global team of reporters. Reach us at energy.source@ft.com and follow us on X at @FTEnergy. Catch up on past editions of the newsletter here.