APPEA rebrand confirms spin is all fossil fuels have left

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility​ (ACCR)  is commenting on the Australasian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association’s announced name change and associated rebrand to become Australian Energy Producers.

Commenting on the rebrand, Naomi Hogan, Company Strategy Lead at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) said:

“APPEA’s clunky rebrand to Australian Energy Producers is born from the organisation’s apparent acceptance that the social licence of fossil fuels is nearing its expiration date.

“Spin is all the fossil fuel sector has left.

“The lobby’s most recent financial accounts (published a year late), show it spends big on spin: $2.6M in the 2021/22 financial year alone.

“By adopting a highly generic name, the activities of APPEA’s membership are obscured upon first glance, the effect being to confuse and deflect scrutiny.

“Unfortunately for Australian Energy Producers, there is no getting away from the fact that its member companies “produce around 95 per cent of Australia’s oil and gas”.

“This rebrand follows a long term trend across the oil and gas industry, with Santos, Woodside, Chevron, Shell and BP all describing themselves generically as energy companies, as though oil and gas are dirty words.

“It should come as no surprise that in its submission to the recent Senate inquiry into greenwashing, APPEA pushed back on any suggestion that there should be tighter regulation around greenwashing issues.

“Less than a month after this submission, Ad Standards banned APPEA’s flagship ad campaign for making misleading and unsubstantiated claims about fossil gas.”