Confronting CERAWeek: Community Activists Protest Exclusive Fossil Fuel Industry Conference

Gulf South community members on the frontlines of fossil fuel pollution say they have been “locked out” of industry event.

Environmental justice advocate Yvette Arellano (far right) marches towards the CERAWeek conference center in downtown Houston on March 10, 2025. Credit: Armon Alex

As a major fossil fuel energy industry conference kicked off Monday in Houston, Texas, environmental and community activists on the frontlines of the industry’s polluting operations rallied in opposition outside the conference venue, calling out the conference’s exclusivity and demanding an end to fossil fuel and petrochemical expansion.

“We are here because our backs are against the wall,” Yvette Arellano, founder and executive director of Houston-based environmental justice organization Fenceline Watch, said during a press conference held at a nearby park. “The CERAWeek conference is taking place behind closed doors and has shut out civil society from entering and understanding the projects that are coming to harm our communities.”

CERAWeek is the annual industry conference that marks one of the largest gatherings of fossil fuel executives and their political allies on the planet. It is considered the “Super Bowl” of energy industry events, held in the US city most synonymous with Big Oil, and features – as Axios describes it – “concentric circles of exclusivity.” Tickets are $10,000. But even paying the high entry fee apparently does not guarantee access. Arellano was kicked out of last year’s conference even with a valid ticket.

“We have been locked out. Even after people purchased the $10,000 ticket to go to the conference, so we can at least listen and learn about what they’re planning for our communities, once they were recognized by name and who they are in their relationship to community organizing, they were given back their money and denied entry last year,” Dominic Chacón, Houston Regional Coordinator at Texas Campaign for the Environment, told me in an interview.

“That’s one of the reasons we decided to go harder [demonstrating] on the outside this year, because we’ve been literally locked out of even engaging.”

Texas Campaign for the Environment and other partner organizations organized a “March for Future Generations” action on Monday to confront the CERAWeek conference and protest against the industry executives who, activists say, are poisoning their communities.

“I grew up in Corpus Christi, and I learned from a very young age about the rampant pollution that we face from the fossil fuel industry,” Jake Hernandez, Coastal Bend field organizer for Texas Campaign for the Environment, said at Monday’s press conference. “They intentionally and maliciously poison our low-income communities for their never-ending quest for wealth and greed.”

Following the press conference, activists – including youth, community leaders, and faith leaders – marched to the convention center where the conference is taking place and demonstrated outside. Eight people were arrested after they were confronted by police on horseback, Chacón said. Overall, about 200 people turned out for the action.

The demonstrators said their demands include an end to fossil fuel and petrochemical industry expansion, transparency not only around the conference but around the industry projects planned for their communities, and a halt to the roughly $20 billion a year the fossil fuel industry gets in public subsidies.

Oil and gas executives, Chacón said, “want to take public dollars, but they don’t want to get public input.” He said the utter exclusivity of the CERAWeek conference that shuts out environmental justice organizations and community activists shows “just how scared they are of community [organizing]. It’s a reminder that they do not value any community input, and really don’t see any value in having community at the table.”

My own reporting backs up that statement. In 2023 I wrote a piece for DeSmog about how industry developers for controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, which critics argue are mere extensions of fossil fuel operations, fail to meaningfully engage with the communities where the projects are planned. “When residents express adamant opposition to these projects, developers continue to push their plans forward, in some cases resorting to legal action to counter public resistance,” I reported in that piece.

Community and civil society activists are not the only ones excluded from CERAWeek. Independent journalists and media outlets that tend to cover the fossil fuel industry more critically are also denied access. When I tried to register for a press pass to the conference some years ago, and disclosed that I was affiliated with DeSmog (press registration requires stating which outlet you are with), I was rejected by the conference organizers.

The CERAWeek conference agenda, at least, is made public, as is the roster of speakers. And the roster is a who’s who of Big Oil CEOs and representatives for many of the carbon major entities that generate the majority of industrial CO2 emissions causing climate breakdown. According to Oil Change International, this year’s conference includes executives of every oil and gas company that is a defendant in California’s climate liability lawsuit against Big Oil. It also includes six CEOs who attended the infamous Mar-a-Lago dinner last year during Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he reportedly asked the industry to give him a billion dollars and in return he would eliminate climate policies and environmental regulations.

“Want to know who’s to blame for the climate crisis? Look at the list of fossil fuel CEOs and their political enablers speaking at CERAWeek. With Trump back in the White House, the consequences of the fossil fuel industry’s hold over our democracy grow clearer each day,” Allie Rosenbluth, US campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement.

Trump’s handpicked leader for the US Department of Energy, Chris Wright, is the former CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy. During his opening plenary address at CERAWeek on Monday, Wright downplayed the threat of climate change and claimed that humanity needs more fossil fuels. Former President Joe Biden’s “quasi-religious” climate policies, Wright said, “imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”

Environmental justice organizers say the opposite is true, that it is the fossil fuel industry, not climate policies, that treat communities of color and low-income, marginalized communities as sacrificial and disposable.

“It’s unfortunate to hear that the current Secretary is saying that, but honestly it’s really nothing new especially in Texas,” Chacón told me. Folks in the Gulf South have been living under state governments imposing “Trump-like bigotry” on them for years, he said.

“The things the rest of the nation is experiencing with the outright fascism and undemocratic practices, have already been happening in Texas and other conservative states for quite awhile,” Chacón added. “We’re trying to offer that hope, that there are folks who have been resisting in Texas and Louisiana for years, and we can actually model what it looks like for other places that are experiencing it for the first time.”