American Gas Association

The American Gas Association (AGA) was founded in 1918 as a nationwide trade organization to represent local and regional natural gas providers. It acts as a lobbying group at the legislative level and to a lesser extent makes public outreach efforts, boosting the reputation and image of natural gas and defending controversial practices like hydrofracking, which utilizes a slick-water mixture to fracture shale rock and release gas deposits. Based on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., it represents 200 such energy companies. Over 90 percent of residential, commercial, and industrial natural gas customers receive their gas from AGA members.

Full membership in the AGA is limited to American natural gas distribution companies. Associate members include Canadian and Mexican natural gas distribution companies, as well as brokers and distributors, operators of natural gas storage facilities, marketers working for the industry, and operators of natural gas pipelines throughout North America. International memberships are available to companies outside of North America that play a role in the communication and negotiations between the natural gas industry and national governments.

In the first quarter of 2011, the AGA spent $290,000 lobbying Congress, a slight bump over its per-quarter expenditures the previous year. Lobbying efforts focused on clean energy proposals, natural gas drilling regulations, promoting state-level regulation (typically weaker when it comes to hydrofracking) instead of federal oversight, expanding the use of natural gas, and pipeline safety regulations. The increase in spending followed Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood's national pipeline safety initiative, which was prompted by growing public concern over hydrofracking as well as accidents resulting in multiple deaths. The AGA aims to increase the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel, which dovetails with the federal government's inclusion of natural gas as a clean energy source in tracking its clean energy goals.

The AGA is also a supporter of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a political advocacy organization consisting of private-sector policy advocates, working together to shape public policy. About 80 percent of ALEC's funding comes from its 300 corporate partners. ALEC was founded in 1973 and currently has eight task forces that work to craft bills related to its area of focus. Approximately 800 such bills, based on ALEC model legislation, are introduced in state legislatures every year; about 15–20 percent of them become laws. Tom Moskitis, the AGA's director of external affairs, chairs ALEC's energy, environment, and agriculture task force. ALEC's task force has produced legislation aimed at reducing or defanging the EPA's emissions and greenhouse gas regulations, opposing cap-and-trade systems, and deregulating the energy industry. ALEC has been criticized for essentially behaving as a lobbyist group while escaping the technical status of such, and thus avoiding the need to register or disclose as one.

The AGA also operates the National Gas Roundtable, a nonprofit group that hosts discussions relevant to the industry. The group also publishes American Gas magazine, as well as the blog True Blue Natural Gas, and maintains [Page 47]a social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.