American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2017 - 87

Pork producers' successful campaign to
promote pork as "the other white meat"
focused entirely on their product, recounts
SM Energy President and Chief Executive
Officer Javan "Jay" Ottoson. With that in
mind, he urged producers to promote
and provide content for "lookbeyond.org,"
a platform with educational content that
informs its audience about the beneﬁts
of petroleum-based products.

material, which he said purposely had no
copyrights;
* Encouraging their employees to push
the positive messaging from the website
to various channels on the Web; and
* Contributing fresh material to the
site.
"Think of this as an open-source software effort in communication," Ottoson
urged. "We created this infrastructure
and need to fill it with content. We have
been doing that, and you will be surprised
how cheap it is to build some things. Ask
your millennial employees to participate."
Correcting The Narrative
NMOGA's Flynn considered how industry advocates had done well in defending
oil and gas activity to policymakers, but
indicated such political support was eroding
in conjuction with public perceptions. He
offered the example of his state, where he
estimated that three years ago, a strong
majority of New Mexicans supported hydraulic fracturing. Today, he contrasted,
NMOGA's research found that a theoretical
statewide referendum on fracturing would
ban the process.
Moreover, he assessed, industry opponents' misinformation has taken such deep
root that many New Mexicans consider
themselves well-informed on fracturing.
"Eighty-one percent of people say they
understand the process and that they know
it contaminates water," Flynn detailed.
"Once people make up their minds, it is
very difficult to convince them otherwise."
He pointed to ways in which industry
advocates could correct the narrative, and

cited the example of the industry's extensive water stewardship. In arid New
Mexico, he noted, water is a tremendously
important commodity, and opportunists
often score cheap political points by
scapegoating the industry.
"We started pushing back," Flynn recounted. "New Mexico's oil and gas industry accounts for less than 1 percent
of water consumption each year. Yet as
an industry, we invest hundreds of millions of dollars in figuring out how to
recycle, reuse and conserve water. We
have a great story to tell: We are using
less than just about anyone, but we are
doing so much more to conserve that
water. When we engaged, we made a
huge amount of progress."
Permian Outreach
Later, Chairman Walker noted that
PBPA was striving to do its part to
spread the group's message on subjects
that included fracturing, endangered
species and community disturbance.
"Yet, no one really seems to understand
the benefits of what we do and the products we make," he mused.
Therefore, he said, PBPA's Board of
Directors has approved a strategic plan.
"We are going to get into the local communities," Walker reported. "The oil field
is in Midland/Odessa, but it is a different
world in places such as Pecos, Tx. They
have a different set of concerns there and
we have to get our message to the people
living there."
The industry will fail without a unified
effort, he warned. "This organization's
members do not pay for redundancy. You
pay for effectiveness," Walker reflected.
"Joining in coalitions with other organizations is going to be a new direction for
PBPA, but we think that is going to be
most effective."
Nevertheless, he closed, "We are going
to focus on the Permian Basin. If-as was
the case with the lesser prairie chicken-
we affect things on a national level, so
be it, but we are going to take care of our
own home. That is the focus."
r

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pattern recognition and multivariate
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2017

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