I just ran across a news release mass-published to the public media for unrestricted use. The headline cries, “Disturbing Trend Must be Stopped to Preserve Academic Integrity at US Colleges, Consumer Advocates Warn.”

That’s a grabber, particularly since it is backed by an organization nobly titled the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR). It claim’s ConocoPhillips US $6 million gift to the University of Oklahoma School of Geology and Geophysics “is the latest oil giant seeking to buy respectability by capitalizing on the name of a well-known university.”

It adds, “For a paltry $6 million, Conoco gets naming rights to the school and an industry- friendly professor to spout their warped view of the world in an academic environment.”
That’s a far cry from the statement that was acknowledged in the organization’s release.

Actually, school President David Boren said he would recommend renaming the school the ConocoPhillips School of Geology and Geophysics. The outraged organization didn’t mention that $3.5 million of the money would go to scholarships for students, another $2 million would bring in top educators for those students, and only $500,000 would go to the school to upgrade laboratory facilities.

It also didn’t mention Frank Phillips and E.W. Marland, founders of Phillips and Conoco, respectively, were among the first supporters of Oklahoma University. Over the years, donations from both companies have totaled $33 million. That sounds more like continuing support for a worthy cause than a newly devised campaign trying to “buy respectability.”
The organization also blasts two other oil companies, saying “A deal at Stanford University funded by ExxonMobil ($100 million), and another proposed by BP at the University of California Berkeley ($500 million) are already facing criticism as examples of ‘Big Oil U.’”

According to the University of Berkeley, the proposed BP grant is “dedicated to long-term research into the production of alternative fuels, converting fossil fuels to energy with less environmental damage, maximizing oil extraction from existing wells in environmentally sensitive ways, and finding ways to store or sequester carbon so that it does not get into the atmosphere.”

The ExxonMobil grant was similar. It would finance the Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP), led by Stanford University and including world-renowned academic research institutions and global companies, including ExxonMobil, General Electric and Schlumberger.
“We are convinced the Global Climate and Energy Project will make significant academic and private sector contributions to the development of practical technologies to address the potential long-term risk of climate change,” said ExxonMobil Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lee Raymond at the time of the grant.

If the FTCR is trying to get across a message, it’s not clear. Its pronouncement sounds more like a vilification of the oil industry than a campaign that offers any positive conclusion.
Of course, if oil and gas companies stopped their contributions to universities and educational and environmental programs, the FTCR could berate the industry for not doing anything to protect the environment.

Naturally, in that organization’s book of good guys versus bad guys, any internal act by an oil and gas company wouldn’t count; including CO2 sequestration; educational, agricultural and industrial improvement programs in countries in which they work; voluntary cleanup programs by oil industry employees; self-imposed carbon dioxide reduction programs; and grants to local communities for hundreds of charitable reasons. High on that list of reasons is the fact that people who work at oil and gas companies live in local communities and countries, and they care about the futures of those communities and countries.

The FTCR has set up a darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don’t situation in which no good act by an oil and gas company goes unpunished.

It’s a little like an episode on the Jay Leno show on US television. Leno described a situation in which former French film star Maurice Chevalier prepared for a torrid love scene with the leading lady. He told the female star, “Please forgive me if I react like a man.” He turned away, then turned back and added, “And please forgive me if I don’t.” But the FTCR approach isn’t nearly as amusing.

The FTCR approach is more like a scene from the US movie “Independence Day” in which the actor-president of the United States, in an attempt to find a peaceful way to avoid the invasion of earth by technologically superior aliens, asks a captured alien, “What would you like us to do?”

The alien answers, “Die.”

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