Misleading Saudi Aramco ads in the Financial Times reported to ad watchdogs
Last month saw joint advertising complaints lodged with the British and Dutch advertising regulators over a series of allegedly misleading ads by Saudi Aramco. The ads focus on ‘advanced’ and ‘low carbon fuels’ in Formula 1 and the wider transport sector.
The Financial Times’ partnered content with Saudi Aramco
The complaints, submitted by the New Weather Institute in the UK and Fossil Free Football and Reclame Fossielvrij in the Netherlands, take aim at the oil giant’s confusing use of terminology, its misleading environmental claims and the omission of information regarding its core business operations: fossil fuels.
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, has a high-profile partnership with Formula 1 (F1) and the Aston Martin F1 team. F1 has an audience of 1.56 billion fans worldwide. Adverts by the oil giant, hosted on the Financial Times website as part of the paper’s commercial partnership series, have recently been criticised for using the F1’s enormous global reach to platform misleading and confusing messages to consumers over the role that new fuel technologies will play in the energy transition.
Despite the claims made throughout the adverts, so-called ‘sustainable’ fuels are not a real, scalable solution to decarbonising road transport due to the vast amount of energy required to produce them, say scientists and experts. The leading international scientific climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consistently highlights the superior energy efficiency of electric vehicles and does not include e-fuels or synthetic fuels among the range of solutions available to decarbonise road transportation.
Others have stressed that ‘advanced’ and ‘low carbon fuels’ can actually worsen environmental problems. Air pollution alone from the burning of fossil fuels is estimated to kill between 5.1 million and 8.7 million people annually.
Saudi Aramco is the largest oil producer on earth, responsible for 10% of the oil consumed by humanity each day. This fact was omitted from the adverts in question.
The full complaint to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) can be read in full here.
On submitting the complaint, Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute and who lodged the UK advertising complaint, noted that “F1 is renowned for speed, but allowing Saudi Aramco to pull a fast one on sports fans by using their brand to spread misleading information will only put the brakes on the transition to clean energy and clean air.”
Simms added that “Saudi Aramco repeatedly acts to keep the world locked in a fossil fuel trap raising roadblocks to climate progress. In the final lap of the fight against climate breakdown, we need a red light to stop these corporations from confusing, misleading and ultimately delaying the climate action we need to accelerate.”