Many had yet to carve their Halloween jack-o-lanterns when environmental militants unleashed their latest witch hunt and accused ExxonMobil Corp. of denying global climate change for decades while suppressing its own research on it.
Nearly 50 people from organizations ranging from the National Audubon Society to the Foundation of Women in Hip-Hop signed an Oct. 30 letter to Atty. Gen. Loretta E. Lynch calling for a US Department of Justice investigation into ExxonMobil's alleged duplicity.
"Anyone who's lived through 25 years of phony climate debate, or who's seen the toll climate change is already taking on the most vulnerable communities, has been seething at these revelations," said 350.org cofounder Bill McKibben.
McKibben said Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders also have called on DOJ to investigate. Four US Senate Democrats from New England, meanwhile, sent a letter on Oct. 29 to ExxonMobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson demanding to know if the company quit funding organizations overtly skeptical of what used to be called global warming, and starting channeling money to them through other groups serving as fronts.
All of this ignores basic facts about modern multinational oil companies in general and ExxonMobil in particular.
Start with their economics departments, which provide the backbone of their strategic planning. These divisions normally are more independent than others within a large publicly traded resource company because they examine wider trends that could affect its long-term survival.
These aren't company "yes-men" (or, increasingly, women). Chief executives pay attention to what they say before approving distribution and presentations of their annual forecasts.
ExxonMobil views evolved
The Center for Strategic and International Studies normally hosts such presentations in Washington, DC. Anyone who has attended ExxonMobil's for more than a few years knows that its climate change views have evolved from simply calling for more research to asserting that governments should find a way to put a price on carbon emissions to address the problem.
Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil's vice-president for government and public affairs, devoted four consecutive perspectives at the company's web site to rebutting the latest charges.
"First, our company continues to recognize that climate risks are real and responsible actions are warranted," he said on Oct. 26. "In view of the monumental scale of the world's need for energy, solutions are not easy-they will require time, huge investments, and thoughtful policies."
Cohen said the company's continuous research and discussions of climate change risks, carbon life cycle analysis, and emissions reductions has produced hundreds of publicly available documents, including more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, and nearly 300 patents for cutting-edge emissions reduction and other technological advances. This sounds more like engagement than evasion.
About the Author
Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.