Louisiana's flagship university is allowing an oil company to participate in faculty research activities for five million dollars. Or, for $100,000, a company can participate in an investigation, with "robust" review powers and access to any resulting intellectual property.
Those are the terms laid out in a standard document that Louisiana State University's fundraising arm distributed to oil companies and chemical companies affiliated with the Louisiana Chemical Association, an industry lobbying group, according to emails released in response to a public records request from the Lens.
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Records show that after Shell donated $25 million to LSU in 2022 to create the Institute for Energy Innovation, the university licensed the fossil fuel company to influence research and courses for the university's new concentration on area of carbon capture, use and storage.
Then, LSU's fundraising entity, the LSU Foundation, used this partnership as a model to look around at Louisiana Chemical Association members such as ExxonMobil, Air Products and CF Industries, which have proposed carbon capture projects in Louisiana.
For $2 million, Exxon became the institute's first "strategic partner level donor," a position that came with robust evaluation of academic research results and the ability to focus research activities. Another eight companies have discussed similar deals with LSU, according to a partnership update LSU sent to Shell last summer.
Some students, academics and experts said such relationships raise questions about academic freedom and public trust.
Asked for comment, Institute for Energy Innovation director Brad Ives defended the partnerships, as did the oil giants. Since then, two more companies have entered into partnerships with the Institute for Energy Innovation, Ives said. But Shell is the only company to have donated at the level that gave the company a seat on the advisory board that chooses the institute's research. The head of the Louisiana Chemical Association and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association also sit on the advisory board, which can vote to prevent a research project from moving forward.
Ives said being able to work with oil and gas companies is "really a key to advancing energy innovation."
A Shell spokesperson said: "We are proud to be working with LSU to contribute to the growing compendium of peer-reviewed climate science and to advance efforts to identify multiple pathways that could lead to more energy with fewer emissions. "
An ExxonMobil spokesperson said: "Our collaboration with LSU and the Institute for Energy Innovation includes an allocation for research into the use and storage of carbon capture, as well as advanced recycling studies."
LSU has long had close ties to oil giants, whose names hang on buildings and equipment at the university. Nearly 40% of LSU funding comes from the state, which until the 1980s received much of its revenue from oil and gas operations. In recent years, oil and gas revenues have made up less than 10% of the state budget.
But the new, highly visible partnership with Shell went one step further, promising that companies would have the right to vote on the Institute for Energy Innovation's research activities in return for their investments.
"I find it difficult to see how a faculty member engaged in legitimate research would want an oil company or a chemical company representative to vote on his or her research agenda," said Robert Mann, political commentator and former LSU journalism professor . "That is a blatant violation of academic freedom.
"You don't expect it to be written like that," Mann said, after Lens asked him to review the standard document outlining what companies can expect in return for their donations to LSU's Institute for Energy Innovation. It is not appropriate, Mann said, for faculty research to be guided by the decisions of a university's dean, let alone an outside representative. "If you are a faculty member of that unit, you should know that the university has no problem auctioning off your academic freedom," he said. "That's what they do."
LSU's Ives said the Institute for Energy Innovation is no different from similar institutes in the U.S., including the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, which conducts research supported by corporate donors. "I think for researchers to say that somehow having corporate funding for research damages the integrity of that research is a little bit of a stretch," Ives said.
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Research conducted at the institute is subject to individual faculty ethics training and subject to peer review, he said. "A donor who has provided money that goes to the institute will in no way be able to influence the outcome of that research."
When asked about the relationship with the institution and industry, Karsten Thompson, the interim dean of LSU's College of Engineering, said: "To me it's not a conflict at all. It is a partnership because they are the ones who will have the biggest initial impact on reducing carbon emissions 2 emissions."
Some observers, noting that fossil fuel companies have previously shown a vested interest in obscuring scientific conclusions, question the reliability of academic studies sponsored by fossil fuel companies. Exxon, for example, denied the risk of man-made climate change for decades, noted Jane Patton, an LSU alumna and campaign director for the U.S. fossil economy for the Center for International Environmental Law.
After the Lens asked her to review LSU communications on the issue, Patton said she suspected fossil fuel companies have had a say in what is and isn't studied regarding high-risk ventures such as carbon capture, which involves stripping carbon. CO2 from industrial emissions and transporting this underground. For her, the LSU documents essentially proved her fears. "This is the first time I've actually seen evidence of it," Patton said. "This is a gross abuse of the public trust."
According to Patton, the perceived blurring of academic objectivity in Louisiana couldn't come at a worse time, as the climate crisis makes the state less habitable and housing more expensive. "It's just discouraging," she said. "To discover that the state's flagship institute is letting industry set the research agenda. No wonder it's so hard to find peer-reviewed research on how bad this is."
Records show that Shell helped tailor what LSU students would learn in the six courses offered under the institute's carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) concentration, which debuted a few years ago. LSU alumnus Lee Stockwell, Shell's general manager of CCUS, served on the search committee for the Energy Institute's executive director, served on the petroleum engineering advisory board and was deeply involved in shaping the carbon capture curriculum.
Stockwell asked LSU questions about Shell's collaboration with the university.
Stockwell wasn't the only oil representative who helped design the curriculum. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil also had representatives on the ad hoc advisory committee that designed courses on carbon capture within the petroleum engineering department, according to a July 2022 email from Thompson. At least one cohort of students took two electives at LSU designed by the oil companies, and another ten students were expected to be fully concentrated from 2022.
LSU is not alone in this practice, Thompson said. In most engineering departments across the country, an active Industrial Advisory Committee (IAC) weighs in on curricula, ensuring degrees evolve as technology changes and helping students find internships and jobs.
LSU faculty are not involved in the same way with renewable energy companies because oil and gas companies now have the resources to address the climate crisis - and are not dependent on future technology, Thompson said. "Renewable energy is much more abstract," he said. "So I think that's the difference. It's not that we don't care that much."
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Fossil fuel companies have been finding their way into classrooms for decades, in part to help the industry maintain a positive public image in the face of a warming planet.
Some students disagree with the university's partnerships with fossil fuel companies, or financial ties with them.
For a decade, students across the country have filed complaints demanding fossil fuel divestment, and hundreds of institutions agree. Locally, the LSU Climate Pelicans, an interdisciplinary group of students, have called on the university to divest endowment funds from the fossil fuel industry.
Inspired by the Climate Pelicans' work on divestment, LSU student Alicia Cerquone, who serves on the LSU Student Senate, sponsored a divestment resolution. According to LSU's student newspaper, the measure passed 37-2 last year. Although investments in fossil fuels amount to only 2 to 3% of capital, it is an important philosophical step, Cerquone said.
Cerquone also worries about the industry's influence on the Institute for Energy Innovation and fears that other companies could control the curricula of other departments. "These entities will have a say in what we pay to learn here," she said.
The fossil fuel industry has made forays into academia beyond Louisiana. ExxonMobil and Shell have both helped fund a similar energy initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where top donors can have an office on MIT's campus, according to Inside Climate News. In 2021, Exxon, together with MIT researchers, funded and wrote a research paper with conclusions supporting the argument for federal subsidies for carbon capture and use.
