America’s Top Two Oil Companies Reject Climate Change Measures

Posted by Jeff on May 30, 2015 @ 4:09 am in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: May 29, 2015

Shareholders of ExxonMobil and Chevron — the United States’ top two oil companies — voted down proposals aimed at getting the companies to focus a little more on climate change this week.

One of the proposals would have added an independent director with experience in climate change to the boards of both companies. That proposal got about 20 percent of the shareholders’ votes at both companies.

A few other climate-related proposals were also voted down by shareholders. One that would have prompted the companies to develop a report on the effects of fracking operations got a 27 percent vote at Chevron and a 25 percent vote at Exxon. Another would have prompted Exxon to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That proposal got less than 10 percent of the shareholders’ votes.

The American oil companies’ shareholder decisions on the climate change measures put them at odds with some European oil companies, which adopted measures on climate change earlier this year. Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Watson spoke about his unwillingness to join the European companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. “We don’t intend to participate in that coalition,” Watson said. “We think we can make our statements, and our statements speak for themselves.”

Exxon Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson also voiced his disapproval of Exxon engaging in climate-friendly efforts similar to BP and Shell’s. “No, thank you, that would not be us,” Tillerson said. “We’re not going to be disingenuous about it. We’re not going to fake it. We’re going to express a view that we have been very thoughtful about. We’re going to express solutions and policy ideas that we think have merit…speaking out to be speaking out about it doesn’t seem particularly helpful to me.”

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