One group’s campaign to keep oil and gas alive in Colorado
Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development has spent over $23k in the past month on Facebook ads
Colorado has historically been a massive producer of fossil fuel energy, and still is today as the fifth-largest crude-oil producing state and the seventh-largest natural gas producing state in the country. One group, the Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development (CRED), has spent over $23,000 in the past month on Facebook and Instagram ads to try and keep it that way.
CRED was launched in 2014 and has been largely funded by two Texas oil companies to sway voters against ballot measures that would have restricted fracking in Colorado. A lot’s changed since then, but CRED’s Facebook ads push familiar arguments to keep Coloradans on the side of oil and gas despite recent political headwings against it.
Messaging:
The most recent ads from CRED try to highlight the benefits that an active oil and gas industry provides to the Coloradan public, like school funding through taxes and, of course, energy production.
The majority of their recent Facebook ads take pains to highlight how beneficial Colorado’s “strict oil and gas regulations” are for the purpose of ensuring that the fossil fuel energy “is responsibly produced and there for us when we need it most.” In one ad from April, CRED claims that, “Just in the last decade, Colorado’s oil and natural gas industry has worked with communities on over a dozen regulations.”
Typically, when an industry group comes out so strongly in favor of regulations like this, it’s because they want to avoid further regulation. We think this also applies here; almost all of CRED’s ads heavily target Coloradans under 45, which is also the age group that is most concerned about the consequences of climate change.
In May, CRED used another familiar tactic to keep the oil and gas industry on the right side of voters’ opinions: positioning the industry as advocates for the environment and public lands. Here too, they cited Colorado’s fossil fuel regulations and highlighted how they support public lands by “providing critical funding through tax revenue.”
CRED has been the largest spender on Facebook and Instagram ads targeting Colorado among polluters, but they are not advertising in a vacuum. The NRDC Action Fund has spent $38,841 in the past month on ads highlighting how the American Jobs Plan will benefit Coloradans.
Also advertising in the state is Colorado Rising for Communities, which has spent just over $6,000 in the past month on ads like the ones below. The target demographic for their ads seems to largely be women in Colorado aged 25 - 34.