http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2019/07/corporate-mapping-project-names-top-fossil-fuel-industry
[links in online article]
Corporate Mapping Project names top fossil fuel industry players,
unlocks online database
David J. Climenhaga
July 3, 2019
"The fossil fuel industry … is the biggest obstacle to real action on
climate change today," says the co-director of the Corporate Mapping
Project, which this morning published an eye-opening list of the 50 most
influential players in the industry and a publicly accessible database
with information on more than 200 extractive corporations with assets
over $50 million.
The reason is easy to understand, explained Bill Carroll, a sociology
professor at the University of Victoria: the industry's "economic
interests are served by continued expansion of oil and gas production."
The Corporate Mapping Project, partly funded by the federal government's
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, has spent most of the
past four years plumbing the interlocking directorships and other
relationships that link entities within the Canadian fossil fuel
industry with one another and the wider corporate sector in Canada and
abroad.
The online Fossil Fuel Top 50 list published this morning contains
in-depth information and profiles of the most influential players in the
Canadian fossil fuel industry, which the Corporate Mapping Project
defines as emitters, enablers and legitimators.
Emitters are described by the project as corporations mostly based in
Western Canada that extract, process and transport oil, gas and coal.
Nineteen of the top 20 emitters listed in a handout with today's
publication are based in Calgary.
Enablers are defined as organizations that enable fossil fuel
production, such as big banks and industry-friendly regulators including
the National Energy Board and the Alberta Energy Regulator.
Legitimators are designated in the documentation as organizations whose
job is to persuade the public and decision makers that business as usual
must continue and that a shift away from the world's dependence on
fossil fuels is unnecessary or infeasible. The Corporate Mapping Project
names the Calgary-based Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and
such market-fundamentalist "think-tanks" as the Fraser Institute, C.D.
Howe Institute, and Macdonald-Laurier Institute as top legitimators. It
also names the publicly financed University of Calgary, which really
ought to be embarrassed to find itself on a list that also includes
Rebel Media!
A Corporate Mapping Project study published in the fall of 2018
suggested centralized ownership in the fossil fuel sector partly
explained the pressure to complete the Trans Mountain Pipeline, despite
the weak business case for the project. Industry decision makers,
Carroll said then, "are really leaning toward maximization of their
long-term investments. They want to get the full value out of their
major corporate investments."
The public database unlocked yesterday was created in partnership with
LittleSis.org, a U.S.-based online corporate watchdog whose name is an
ironic tribute to author George Orwell's creation Big Brother. LittleSis
tracks the relationships among corporations, their leaders, politicians,
lobbyists, financiers and affiliated institutions.
Each of the Fossil Fuel Top 50 profiles includes network maps based on
information from Corporate Mapping Project data.
The data gathered by the project "allows us to see the network of fossil
fuel industry influence, track the close connections between this
industry and other economic sectors, and uncover the links between
powerful corporations, governments and advocacy groups that support
them," said co-director Shannon Daub, who is also director of the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' British Columbia office.
Formally known as Mapping the Power of the Carbon-Extractive Corporate
Resource Sector, the Corporate Mapping Project is a six-year research
initiative jointly run by the University of Victoria, the B.C. and
Saskatchewan branches of the CCPA, and the University of Alberta's
Parkland Institute.
It is financed by a $2.5-million partnership grant approved by the SSHRC
in 2015 during the final days of Stephen Harper's Conservative
government, plus $2 million in matching funds from partner
organizations. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was minister of defence in
Harper's cabinet at the time.
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