Jack Gerard
Jane Van Ryan
Members of the Oil and Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, which includes API along with fifteen labor unions, have written to senior members of Congress encouraging them to support tax policies that will protect and encourage the development of quality U.S. jobs, while at the same time fortifying our nation's energy and economic security.
In letters sent to Sens. Max Baucus and Charles Grassley, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and Reps. Charles Rangel and Dave Camp, chairman and ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Committee said avoiding tax increases on the oil and natural gas industry is "not only good tax policy--it is good energy policy."
For more information, read the full letter and press release.
The API certainly has been spending substantial money on TV ads. I think they are disingenuous. 1. They suggest that the proposed climate bill would be responsible for $4 gasoline. We had $4 gasoline long before the climate bill was proposed. Obviously that was not caused by a bill that was just a gleam in its Daddy's eyes when we had $4 gasoline. 2. They interview "men on the street" who express great concern about a tax increase on fuels. These people seem not to care about the size of any tax increase and do not seem to have any knowledge about any effects of any tax beyond themselves. 3. API clearly is not concerned about any potential environmental impacts of increasing CO2 levels in both the atmosphere and in the earth's water bodies and urges citizens to ignore the evidence pointing to such impacts. I think The API is making an error in their opposition to environmental legislation.
My guess is that your advertising campaign will damage the public perception of the API.