Dear BP Lower 48 CEO David Lawler,
Two months ago you moved your onshore headquarters 1,000 miles northwest from Houston to Denver. Describing the move in The Denver Post, you cited Colorado’s environmental values as one of the reasons that Denver is a good fit for BP, and even characterized your company as the community’s “partner” to “care about the environment.”
Your timing is impeccable.
This Wednesday, just a short walk from your new office, the Environmental Protection Agency will convene a hearing in Denver to take public comments on the Trump administration’s proposal to gut safeguards that require the oil and gas industry to cut its methane and associated toxic air pollution.
Your opportunity to partner with the Colorado community on the environment has arrived. Rolling back methane safeguards would be bad for public health, threaten our climate, and makes no economic sense. Please consider this letter an open invitation to attend the hearing and publicly declare your opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal.
It is important that you testify on Wednesday because, when it comes to climate, BP has a huge credibility problem.
While BP has publicly promised to eliminate its methane pollution and has celebrated Colorado’s environmental values, privately your company has acted to undermine the very safeguards that would require you to fulfill your climate promises and uphold those environmental values. BP has formed the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) along with other large oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell, and has publicly committed to eliminate methane emissions throughout the entire oil and gas supply chain. Yet public records reveal that — after you made your OGCI climate commitments — your company lobbied the Trump White House to weaken the oil and gas methane safeguards… as the Trump EPA has now proposed.
Consider this hearing your opportunity to set the record straight. Oppose the Trump administration’s proposal to weaken EPA’s methane safeguards and prove that you’re willing to walk your talk regarding climate change.
The decision to accept this invitation should be an easy one.
Oppose the Trump administration proposal because oil and gas methane pollution is 86 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told us last month that we only have a few years to get climate pollution under control.
Oppose the Trump administration proposal because other pollutants harmful to public health are released alongside methane, such as benzene — a carcinogen — and smog-causing volatile organic compounds which are responsible for 750,000 asthma attacks in children under 18 annually.
Oppose the Trump administration proposal because not doing so demonstrates BP’s climate promises, commendable if they could be believed, are just more oil and gas industry greenwash.
So, come join us. Give Denver and Colorado and the world some clarity on who you really are as a company. Come and put those promises that you’ve made into action. Make up for past mistakes. Come and join hundreds of people from around the country who will be convening in Denver to stand up for their health and the future of our climate.
The Trump administration is only allowing one hearing to be held. Here’s your chance to do something right. Fortunately for you, it’s close enough for you to stop by during your lunch break.
Lauren Pagel, policy director, joined Earthworks full time in August 2002 after previously assisting with its 2001 campaign to stop the Bush administration from rolling back important rules to protect public lands from mining.
Sara Loflin, a resident of Eris, is the founding executive director for the League of Oil and Gas Impacted Coloradans.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.
