A recent public relations study found that some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have stopped portraying themselves as partners in the energy transition, instead shifting their advertising to emphasize continued dependence on fossil fuels.

The pivot from making net-zero pledges to stoking fears of instability followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted global energy markets in 2022, write the report authors at Clean Creatives. That same year, oil and gas companies reaped windfall profits from soaring fuel prices.

The New York-based climate advocacy group analyzed 1,859 publicly available campaign materials from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The dataset included YouTube videos, social media posts, executive letters, media releases, and television ads between 2020 and 2024. The narrative shift—what the group calls a move from greenwashing and pledges to gaslighting and warnings—was most pronounced in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“The ad and PR industry’s relationship with oil majors is helping them present fossil fuels as the only solution for energy security and economic stability,” the group writes. “They are campaigning to make us dependent on fossil fuels for decades to come.”

By promoting “false solutions” like carbon capture and storage and direct lithium extraction, the group argues, oil majors are slowing the adoption of renewable technologies, “which has made it inevitable that we will overshoot the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming target.”

Campaigns like Shell’s “energy pragmatism” that frame the energy transition as a slow process, ExxonMobil’s messaging around “energy leadership and patriotism,” and Chevron’s emphasis on oil as a pillar of global stability all serve to undermine public understanding of the risks posed by continued fossil fuel use and the urgent need to phase it out, Clean Creatives writes.

BP’s shift from branding itself as a “green” company to a merely “greening” one has similarly served to imply that the world has all the time in the world to complete the transition off carbon.

But the oil majors themselves don’t believe their own spin, Clean Creatives’ analysis suggests.

In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underpinned the industry’s “energy security” narrative, then 2023 saw companies employ a “both/and” narrative amid a surging renewables market. The turn to asserting fossil dominance in 2024 appears disconnected from anything beyond the balance sheet.

The absence of leadership to address the issue puts oil majors “on a path of mutual destruction,” Clean Creatives adds. “Oil and gas companies aren’t interested in transitioning; they’re prioritizing short-term returns and doubling down on fossil fuels.”

Watch a video tracking Big Oil’s ads over time and read the full Clean Creatives report here.