gave a speech in which he claimed to be Rene Oswin, a fictitious "assistant under-secretary" at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In his speech he claimed that HUD would reopen public housing facilities that had been closed since Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. He announced this false claim because HUD had recently decided to only rebuild a third of the subsidized housing stock after Hurricane Katrina, and made plans to demolish four of New Orleans’ ten public housing developments, leaving thousands of New Orleans residents without homes. This decision was contested locally, nationally, and internationally. So, the Yes Men proclaimed that HUD had changed its mind about tearing down the undamaged housing units, and would not tear down the housing projects, as they had planned to do in order to replace them with mixed-income developments. HUD called this prank, which was intended to bring attention to the lack of affordable housing, a "cruel hoax". A former resident of the community was quoted by Bichlbaum as saying, "do whatever's most effective, do it, don't worry about how it affects us," however. HUD spokeswoman Donna White said no one named "Rene Oswin" works for the department. White commented, "I'm like, who the heck is that?" The fictitious Oswin also announced that the big oil companies would contribute some of their record profits to rebuild the wetlands destroyed by the construction of oil tanker canals to prevent the city from being inundated by future hurricanes. ExxonMobil On June 14, 2007, the Yes Men acted during Canada's largest oil conference in Calgary, Alberta, posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives. In front of more than 300 oilmen, the NPC was expected to deliver the long-awaited conclusions of a study commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. The NPC is headed by former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, who is also the chair of the study. When the Yes Men arrived at the conference they said that Lee Raymond (the promised speaker) was unable to make it due to a pressing situation with the president. The Yes Men then went on to give a presentation in place of Lee Raymond. In the actual speech, the "NPC rep" announced that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive processing of Alberta's oil sands, and the development of liquid coal) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities.