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Wednesday, January 3, 2018
In an attempt to appease shareholders, US supermajor ExxonMobil now plans to publish new details on how climate change may affect its business. The company had faced a shareholder resolution calling for ExxonMobil to issue a ‘climate impact report’.
The shareholder resolution was withdrawn once the company agreed to conduct the analysis. Last year ExxonMobil had opposed a similar resolution by a New York state retirement fund which was supported by holders of 62% of company shares.
ExxonMobil, in a filing to the SEC, said that its board agreed to provide shareholders with information on “energy demand sensitivities, implications of two-degree Celsius scenarios, and positioning for a lower-carbon future.”
While the company is basically being forced to come clean on the impact of climate change on the business, this will not be the only time it has issued statements on the subject. As a matter of fact, you can find quite a few statements on the company website that may not directly involve climate change, but do skirt around the topic. The website contains its statement from COP 21 and a whole section on climate including “ExxonMobil’s Perspective on climate change” where the company clearly states that while fossil fuels are needed to improve living standards and support economic growth the expansion of energy supplies must be done in a way that is “environmentally responsible”. This is what the company says is the dual challenge faced by the industry. “One of the most critical parts of meeting this dual challenge….is to understand and address the risks posed by climate change,” it states on the website.
With the ‘climate impact report’ ExxonMobil will become one of the last “big boys” to release its position. While it and other US majors had opposed such a move, other western oil and gas majors such as Shell, BP and Total have already done so. Even larger independent firms such as Marathon Petroleum Corp. have released reports on climate-related risks in the industry.
ExxonMobil did not provide details to the SEC about what would be included in the report, but it did say that additional information would be released “in the near future”.
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