Oil companies spent over $2 million on Meta ads in the lead-up to the midterms – Yale Climate Connections

Yale Climate ConnectionsClimate change was conspicuously absent from the campaign trail this year as Democratic candidates largely kept quiet on the issue. But one group didn’t stay silent during the lead-up to the November 3 U.S. elections: big oil companies.  Together, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron spent $2.1 million on “social issue” ads on Facebook and Instagram between late July and late October 2026. In the same period, three of the top climate and environmental groups – the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace – spent just over $846,000, less than half the amount spent by oil companies. We can’t do this work without you! About 83% of every dollar you donate goes directly to paying our team of reporters, editors, meteorologists, and radio producers. The other 17% pays for this website, laptops, a payroll system, and similar expenses necessary for our work.Both the oil companies and the environmental groups directed much of their spending toward states with competitive Senate races, plus California. In all but two states – Ohio and New Hampshire – the oil companies outspent the environmental organizations. It’s unclear how much advertising influenced the outcome, if at all. Many of the ads sponsored by oil companies didn’t mention the elections, though Exxon ran three ads encouraging people in New Mexico to register to vote. Shell took a different tack and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting videos about shifts in the company’s brand aesthetic over the last century. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates across the country won their elections in a landslide. The party gained at least seven Senate seats, 28 House seats, and several governorships and statehouses. A Democrat even won a seat on the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. Exxon put the largest share of its Meta ad spend into Texas.In Colorado, the state that got the third-highest amount of the Chevron Advocacy Network’s ad money, voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have protected a right to buy and sell natural gas, which is composed largely of methane, a potent climate-warming gas. Votes from California, the state where the oil companies as a group spent the largest share of their social issues ad budget, are still rolling in. But a proposition that could create loopholes for building pipelines, data centers, and more is currently losing.Voters also passed 33 ballot measures to restrict the building of data centers. Data center buildout is deeply tied to oil and gas interests, as the buildings require enormous energy resources.Read more: How bad is AI for the environment? In polling, most Americans continue to say they are worried about climate change and want their elected leaders to take climate action. It remains to be seen if the candidates silent on climate on the campaign trail will start acting on it once in office. “They could decide that confronting a crisis of this magnitude requires saying ‘climate change’ a lot – and convincing voters that ambitious legislation is good and necessary,” climate journalist Sammy Roth wrote. “Even if we won’t have a president willing to sign it until at least 2029.”Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is one of two major players in online advertising – Google being the other. About 26.8% of global digital ad spending and 70% of total social advertising dollars go to Meta. A look at Meta’s social issues advertising database shows that Shell, Exxon, and Chevron have long outspent the three environmental groups. Since 2019, the oil companies have spent $11.3 million more than the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. The spending discrepancy may be even more uneven than it appears. Meta provides public reporting only for ads that fall into its social issues, elections, or politics category. Advertisements in this category are subject to more restrictions than other kinds of ads. And ads sponsored by environmental groups and those that mention climate change – including those from Yale Climate Connections – are almost always tagged as social issues. In contrast, a 2021 analysis by Influence Map, a climate and sustainability nonprofit, found several examples in which pro-fossil-fuel advertisements were not tagged as social issues. The group noted that in July 2021, Chevron was running ads promoting the company’s investment in “renewable diesel.” “None of these ads have disclaimers on them, and once expired, will not be stored in the ad library,” Influence Map reported.A few years later, Media Matters found an ad from the Ohio Propane Gas Association that referred to propane buses as “clean, quiet, and safe.” The ad was originally labeled as a social issues ad when it first ran in November 2023, but not when it ran in March 2024. Bottom line: The oil and gas industry could be spending lots of money on ads without leaving a digital trail. Ad spending on Meta can give a glimpse into the decades-long advertising push to advance fossil fuels, but it’s not the whole picture. Oil companies have also spent billions on TV advertisements, donations to the arts, lobbying elected officials, and contributing to political action committees that fund election campaigns. Read: The fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to elect the new U.S. governmentThe world’s five biggest oil companies spent over $3.6 billion in advertisements alone between 1986 and 2015, according to researchers at Brown University. This spending rose during times of controversy – like the BP oil spill – and also when climate legislation was in progress. For example, spending spiked when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was being written and in 2010 when Congress was considering a national cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions, according to analysis by Grist. “The rise and fall of oil spending on promotional ads over the last three decades roughly tracks the federal government’s interest in taking climate action,” Grist reporter Katie Yoder wrote.Though big oil, gas and coal companies, and fossil fuel trade organizations have spent billions to influence public opinion, surveys consistently show that Americans are worried about climate change and want climate action.Fifty-eight percent of registered voters say they would prefer to vote for a political candidate who supports action on global warming, while only 14% would prefer to vote for a candidate who opposes climate action, according to a 2026 survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this website. Regardless of the outcome of this particular election, people everywhere continue to experience extreme weather and economic shocks supercharged by climate change. If opinion data is anything to go by, they want elected officials and corporations to act. Republish This StoryRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.We love it when others republish our articles. Most of our content – other than images – is available to republish for free under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Here’s what to do:by Samantha Harrington, Yale Climate Connections November 5, 2026 Samantha Harrington, director of audience experience for Yale Climate Connections, is a journalist, graphic designer, and UX designer with a background in digital media and entrepreneurship. Sam has reported… More by Samantha Harrington ACCESSIBILITY AT YALE Our journalists are determined to share the facts about climate change. Your support keeps our work going. Will you donate today? Link Copy link source