Curious about Big Oil’s lobby group the Pathways Alliance? We’re here to give you the 101.
Who is the Pathways Alliance?
The Pathways Alliance is a coalition of the six largest oil companies in Canada. Together, they operate about 95 per cent of Canada’s tar sands production. It includes Canada Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL), Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor.
Four of these companies’ top executives made Environmental Defence’s list of Canada’s Top Ten Climate Villains. For more information on these companies, you can visit the profiles of CNRL’s Executive Chairman Murray Edwards, Cenovus’s Executive Chairman Alex Pourbaix, Imperial Oil’s President and CEO Brad Corson, and Suncor’s CEO Rich Kruger.
These companies make billions of dollars a year for corporate shareholders. For example, in 2023, they had a combined annual profit of $37 billion. Their business investments remain overwhelmingly concentrated on expanding oil and gas, which is not aligned with reaching federal or international climate commitments. Despite this, they’re asking the government for billions of dollars in subsidies.
Why did they form a new lobby group?
The companies of the Pathways Alliance came together in 2021 under the name “Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero” and rebranded as the Pathways Alliance in 2022. Their consortium has focused on rebranding tar sands companies as “climate-friendly” with major ad campaigns, lobbying, the promotion of false solutions and dubious net-zero pledges.
This change in branding occurred after the main Canadian oil and gas lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), was imbued in scandal for secretly pushing the government to weaken environmental protection and create loopholes for oil and gas companies in 2020. CAPP has a long history of opposing climate action and policies to reduce emissions. In this context, the development of the Pathways Alliance can be understood as the oil industry trying a new strategy to regain credibility and a new seat at the table with the government after CAPP’s years of hostility towards the government’s policy agenda.
Pathways Alliance’s rebrand also reflects a wider trend in the fossil fuel industry. As evidence of climate change became undeniable, many oil and gas companies are trying to present themselves as part of the solution. However, this comes despite their continued expansion of fossil fuel production and long histories of undermining climate science and blocking climate action.
What does the Pathways Alliance do?
Lobbying
The Pathways Alliance was the most active fossil fuel lobbyist in 2023. The Pathways Alliance and its member companies together lobbied the government at least 469 times. That’s the equivalent of meeting with government representatives nearly twice per workday!
That’s not all, we also know the government has set up a dedicated working group with the Pathways Alliance, but there’s no transparency on the frequency of these meetings because a government-initiated process like this isn’t required to be recorded in the federal lobby registry.
The Pathways Alliance actively lobbied to weaken the government’s regulation to cap oil and gas pollution – Canada’s biggest source of carbon emissions. The Pathways Alliance also uses its face-time with decision-makers to ask for government subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Greenwashing
In 2022 the Pathways Alliance began pumping out a greenwashing advertisement campaign called “Let’s Clear the Air.” A major component of its rebranding efforts, Pathways spent millions of dollars trying to convince Canadians that the fossil fuel industry is lessening its environmental and climate impacts. This advertising campaign is currently under investigation by the Competition Bureau of Canada for false and misleading claims.
Environmental Defence recently released our own ad, spoofing Pathways Alliance original one, with the intention of setting the record straight. You can watch the ad here.
When the government set out new anti-greenwashing regulations in June of 2024, which required companies to have proof for their environmental claims, the Pathways Alliance and many other oil and gas companies removed content about climate action from their websites and advertisements.
Promoting Carbon Capture and Storage
The Pathways Alliance’s climate-friendly self-promotion hinges on their proposal to build a massive carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. The idea is to build hundreds of kilometers of potentially dangerous CO2 pipelines across Alberta, connecting tar sands production sites to a massive underground carbon deposit area near Cold Lake.
We know that carbon capture is not a climate solution. Most projects never make it off the ground. Where CCS projects have been built, they underperform. CCS is a false solution, not real climate action.
The Pathways’ CCS hub has an estimated $16.5 –$24.1 billion price tag, and they’re counting on huge taxpayer handouts to pay for it. The alliance’s website claims companies have spent CAD $1.8 billion on phase one, but this spending amounts to less than 4 per cent of the combined profits of five of six Pathways Alliance members. The investments of the Pathways Alliance members remain almost entirely concentrated on oil and gas. Despite this and their immense corporate profits, they continue to ask for public subsidies to cover 50-70 per cent of their costs.
What’s next?
We’re fighting against the Pathways Alliance’s CCS and oil expansion agenda, their demands for more subsidies, and their greenwashing – and we could use your help! Now that you’re familiar with the Pathways Alliance be on the lookout for their greenwashing and sign up to help stop Big Oil.
