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As charted in Deny, Deceive, Delay: Demystified, ExxonMobil and a handful of other Big Oil companies have spent millions each year across Facebook and other Big Tech advertising every year, and 2025 is no exception. Today we’re looking at some examples from those “other Big Tech” platforms.
First up: TikTok, where BP has sponsored a series of influencer posts to promote their gas station coffee (and, conveniently, distract from decades of greenwashing - like focusing on your own individual carbon footprint instead of their planet scale one).
The trio of influencers suggests BP is using TikTok to expand beyond Big Oil’s traditional white,petromasculine base. And sure, 80% of major US anti-trans groups have gotten funding from fossil fueled fortunes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not also targeting other demographics.
Exhibit A: Least obvious and most annoying to sit through is one white woman’s :36 second bit about “that one friend before Vs after” getting BP’s gas station coffee. Before she says things like “I can’t stand you any more” and then after offers to take you to the “south of France.” Because it’s funny to have a nasty friend who’s addicted to a mood altering chemical but then takes you on vacations after getting her fix! This oh-so-adorable dead-horse-beating version of a coffee cup with “don’t talk to me before my first cup of coffee” on it has apparently been seen by 2.1 million unique users since being uploaded October 23, 2025, according to TikTok’s ad library as of Nov 17.
Exhibit B: Next on the pandering parade is a 32 second clip of a Black man who “might be a little delulu,” wondering “did he just glance at me?” and when grazing the BP gas station clerk’s hand and thought it “might be the start of love.” Target audience size? Around 25 million. Actual unique users seen since it started Oct 24? Just 4k since first shown on Oct 24, as of Nov 17th 2025. Not exactly doing numbers, at least not yet. Big oil is patient, and has been working this angle for a while!
Exhibit C: Finally, achieving a perfect Pandering 10 out of 10 score, is a :46 second ad where a man sneakily follows his “I’m just going out” boyfriend to find out the secret affair is actually a trip to get some of BP’s gas station coffee. As of Nov 17th, this faux-dramatic clip of stalking ones’ partner out of a lack of trust in them and it turns out they’re not cheating but instead just hiding their affair with gas station coffee has some 1.6 million unique views since being posted October 2, 2025 according to TikTok’s ad library.
Meanwhile the effort to co-opt women, BIPOC and low-income communities into supporting fossil fuels despite the whole unpleasantness about polluting exactly those communities, and climate change hitting them hardest, is also afoot on LinkedIn, where a decidedly US-focused effort is underway.
Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, the methane gas front group aimed at convincing those who aren’t deniers in Democratic-controlled states to still support fossil fuels anyway, has been covered in past CAAD COP content and other reports. Now, they have a LinkedIn ad about “energy justice” featuring Black people in the ads and citing a report from the deceptively named and Exxon-funded “Progressive Policy Institute" claiming “over 40% of Black households cut grocery bills to pay energy costs– twice the rate of White households.” (“White” capitalized in the original…)
What’s the angle here? Attempting to grow support among the people they most heavily pollute? A word in one of their other ads hints at it, blaming “restrictions” for increasing costs and reducing access to energy.
Other players are even less subtle. While some U.S. Democratic party darlings are pushing to reform permitting policies like the US’s National Environmental Policy Act, (one of the few tools frontline communities have to challenge polluters) billionaires and fossil fuel advertisers are also pushing the exact same line. What a wacky coincidence!
Energy Citizens, a Big Oil advertising front group profiled in peer-reviewed papers and CAAD reports alike, has this LinkedIn ad copy: “Energy projects can get caught up in the courtroom for years. Permitting reform will help power our energy future.” (No telling how long until the American Petroleum Institute gets Billy Bob Thorton to say as much in Landman…)
Big Oil’s lobby groups are singing the same tune, with the American Exploration & Production Council claiming in a LinkedIn ad that “permitting reform unleashes American-made energy.” And the CEOs themselves are in on it, with methane giant Williams’ (see past CLL for more) CEO Chad Zamarin making it clear that they want to gut NEPA, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling and positioning methane gas as the “solution.”
So if you hear people - especially people who aren’t your usual climate deniers - arguing that we need to scrap the last remaining protections frontline communities have, supposedly to speed up renewables, ask them why they’re doing the fossil fuel industry’s advertising for them.
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