The green mission statements made by the US energy firm amount to nothing when it dirties its hands with tar sands and campaigns against Obama's climate bill

ConocoPhillips, America's third largest energy company, has contrived to present an unusually environmentally friendly face to the world. I know. For several years I have helped judge the Conoco-funded St Andrews prize for the environment - a prestigious award for innovative environmental activities given out every year at the ancient Scottish university. But being a green-minded oil company was never going to be easy. You can hear the contradictions as Conoco declares in its mission statement that the company's purpose is to "use our pioneering spirit to responsibly deliver energy to the world."

And if there was a battle going on within the company for its soul, it looks like that battle has been won and lost. This summer, as the company has campaigned to block the US climate bill, has been the watershed.

It could have been so different. In 2007, ConocoPhillips was the first US oil company to join the climate action partnership, a group of US companies that called time on George W Bush's denial of climate realities and told him he should impose limits on US carbon emissions. That year, the chief executive and chairman, James Mulva, told the US Chamber of Commerce: "We can no longer ignore rising concern over the impact of fossil-fuel use. We must show leadership that inspires the rest of the world to join us. We need to reduce our carbon footprint."

Earlier this year, the Conoco-backed climate action partnership declared its support for cuts in US emissions of 14-20% between 2005 and 2020. That would still not get the US to the 1990 benchmark for cuts adopted by most other industrialised countries. But it would be a start. And the statements suggested there would be corporate backing from companies like Conoco for Barack Obama's plan to cap emissions.

Conoco has shown willing in other ways. For instance, by joining the carbon disclosure project, under which companies declare their carbon dioxide emissions and what they are doing to cut them. Last month, the project released a report arguing that the world's 100 largest companies, which include Conoco, need to double the pace of CO2 reductions to avoid dangerous climate change.

But that new-found greenness at Conoco is silent about how to meet that challenge. Very silent. While the company's website lists 11 statements it made on the environment in 2007, that number dwindled to three last year and none so far this year.

Instead, Conoco's "pioneering spirit" has taken it to the tar sands of Alberta in Canada. There the company has established a giant operation at Fort McMurray, the old fur trading base for European colonists, to extract what environmentalists are calling "the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive oil on Earth".

Last month the US state department approved a multi-billion dollar pipeline to take that oil to the American midwest. About 1.8m barrels of it every day by 2015. How is this consistent with reducing US carbon dioxide emissions by 14-20% by 2020 or Conoco's own promise to deliver energy responsibly?

And I have left the worst until last. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has, as you may have spotted, recently been masterminding a "citizens' campaign" against the Obama-backed climate bill currently before the US senate. The hysteria and the methods of the campaign's manufacture look startlingly similar to the health insurance industry's current "citizens' campaign" against healthcare reform. Marketing people call them both "Astroturf" campaigns - the creation of an artificial grassroots movement.

And despite Conoco's green words, it is in the forefront of the API action. It is even using its website to encourage its employees and others to attend the rallies and stoke up pressure on senators to scotch the bill. It expresses its opposition in terms of the bill being a faulty bill, and suggests that Conoco might support a better one. But the bottom line for the company is that the bill will "increase energy costs" and "drive American jobs overseas".

The company says: "We urge you to voice your opinions on this important issue". So I will. I say the company's opposition to the climate bill is devious and dishonest, and an abdication of any attempt at leadership on climate change.

(By Fred Pearce, Guardian.co.uk, 24/09/2009)