Britain's advertising watchdog has banned US oil company ExxonMobil from running a TV advertisement saying that liquefied natural gas is one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
The Advertising Standards Authority said on Wednesday that four viewers had challenged the ad, which ran over the summer, saying it falsely implied that LNG was environmentally friendly.
"We concluded that the ad misleadingly implied that natural gas was one of the cleanest sources of energy and that liquefied natural gas was environmentally friendly," ASA said in a statement.
"The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form," it added.
The ASA rejected Exxon's defense that it had only said that LNG was one of the cleanest fossil fuels, a factually correct statement.
The agency said that the structure of the advertisement could lead viewers to see the claim not just as a comparison with fossil fuels, but as a comparison with all the sources of energy listed, which included oil, gas, coal, nuclear, wind and solar.
"The claim was not true when natural gas was compared to all the sources of energy listed," it said.
