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Boulder Sues Exxon Over Climate Change: Wildfires, Droughts And Water Are A Few Reasons Why

In Boulder, Colorado, climate change means extreme weather and wildfires. It means worrying about water security for people and farms, and about heat waves and mosquito-borne diseases. These aren't just future risks—they're problems the city and its surrounding county are facing now. On Tuesday, the city and Boulder County joined San Miguel County, home to the ski slopes of Telluride, in suing two fossil fuel companies—ExxonMobil and Suncor—over the costs of dealing with climate change. Their lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions by communities that are attempting to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the problems climate change creates. Until now, the plaintiffs had been coastal cities and counties worried primarily about sea level rise.

Judge Rejects Exxon’s Attempt to Stop Climate Fraud Investigations

With a sharp rebuke, a federal judge on Thursday rejected Exxon's attempt to shut down two state investigations into whether the oil giant misled investors for years about the risks of climate change. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed Exxon's complaint with prejudice, meaning the company can't refile it. In the first line of her ruling, the judge describe Exxon's actions as "running roughshod over the adage that the best defense is a good offense."

Exxon Mobil’s About-Face On Climate Disclosure: Is It Enough?

Scores of investor-activists have sought to force Exxon—along with the entire global industry—to change its ways for nearly three decades. They welcomed the news regarding Exxon Mobil's upcoming climate change risk report. But this change of course did not surprise all of them because it occurred three days before the deadline for shareholders to submit resolutions to be voted on at its 2018 annual meeting. Exxon Mobil's latest move may prevent another episode like what happened in May, when some 62 percent of the company's shareholders—including the massive Vanguard mutual fund company—voted in favor of a resolution demanding that it publicly state how climate change is affecting its operations and bottom line.

Exxon To Disclose Climate Risks Under Pressure From Investors

Under pressure from investors, prosecutors and global regulators, ExxonMobil Corp. agreed on Monday to strengthen its analysis and disclosure of the risks its core oil business faces from climate change and from government efforts to rein in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. That will require Exxon to face squarely the implications of reduced oil demand if the world makes good on the pledges of the Paris climate agreement to cut carbon emissions practically to zero fast enough to avoid the worst effects of global warming. In a one-paragraph filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the oil giant said it would stop resisting motions filed by dissident shareholders seeking this kind of risk disclosure.

Exxon Loses Bid To Keep Auditor Files Secret In Investigation

By David Hasemyer for Inside Climate News - Brushing aside objections by ExxonMobil, New York's highest court has opened the door for state officials to demand that the oil giant's outside auditor immediately turn over records as part of a fraud investigation into the company's positions on climate change. In a one-sentence rebuff, the court refused to hear arguments by Exxon that the advice of the firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), was protected by an auditor-client privilege. The documents in question could provide a candid, and potentially damaging, glimpse into Exxon's private calculations of the business risks posed by climate change and whether its auditors had any concerns about how it disclosed those risks to investors. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has been investigating the company for more than two years, said the ruling affirms his position that Exxon and PwC have an obligation to produce the documents subpoenaed last year. "As we've said from the start, Exxon had no legal basis to interfere with PwC's production" of those documents, Schneiderman said in a prepared statement. A lower court had ruled against Exxon, which then appealed. "Our fraud investigation continues to move full speed ahead, despite Exxon's continued strategy of delay," Schneiderman said.

I Was An Exxon-Funded Climate Scientist

By Katharine Hayhoe for Counter Punch - ExxonMobil’s deliberate attempts to sow doubt on the reality and urgency of climate change and their donations to front groups to disseminate false information about climate change have been public knowledge for a long time, now. Investigative reports in 2015 revealed that Exxon had its own scientists doing its own climate modeling as far back as the 1970s: science and modeling that was not only accurate, but that was being used to plan for the company’s future. Now, a peer-reviewed study published August 23 has confirmed that what Exxon was saying internally about climate change was quantitatively very different from their public statements. Specifically, researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes found that at least 80 percent of the internal documents and peer-reviewed publications they studied from between 1977 and 2014 were consistent with the state of the science – acknowledging that climate change is real and caused by humans, and identifying “reasonable uncertainties” that any climate scientist would agree with at the time. Yet over 80 percent of Exxon’s editorial-style paid advertisements over the same period specifically focused on uncertainty and doubt, the study found.

Climate Criminals Like ExxonMobil Should Pay For Hurricane Destruction

By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams - According to a "landmark" study published in the journal Climatic Change on Thursday, the answer is clear: Big Oil. "We know that the costs of both hurricanes will be enormous and that climate change will have made them far larger than they would have been otherwise," write Peter Frumhoff and Myles Allen, two of the study's co-authors, in a piece for the Guardian. The research also shows, they note, that massive oil companies have disproportionately contributed to rising sea levels and soaring levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide while deceiving the public about the costs of their business practices. "Strikingly, nearly 30 percent of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers," their study found. "More than six percent of the rise in global sea level resulted from emissions traced to ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP, the three largest contributors." The study also found that "the 90 largest carbon producers contributed approximately 57 percent of the observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, nearly 50 percent of the rise in global average temperature."

Court Lets Exxon Off Hook For Pipeline Spill In Arkansas Neighborhood

By Georgina Gustin for Inside Climate News - A federal appeals court has let ExxonMobil largely off the hook for a 2013 pipeline spill that deluged a neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas, with more than 200,000 gallons of heavy tar sands crude oil, sickening residents and forcing them from their homes. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday overturned federal findings of violations and the better part of a $2.6 million fine imposed on Exxon's pipeline unit in 2015 by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The regulator had accused the company of failing to maintain the decades-old Pegasus Pipeline and to prioritize testing of a segment of older, high-risk pipe where a 22-foot gash eventually opened along a metal seam. Exxon challenged the violation and fine, arguing there was no proof its actions contributed to the spill and saying it had conducted adequate testing of the pipeline as required by law. The appeals court agreed, saying the company met its legal obligation when it "conducted a lengthy, repeated and in-depth analysis" of the pipeline and its risks.

US Occupation Has Already Begun And Is Being Conducted By ExxonMobil

By Staff of Mission Verdad - According to Gulf Oil & Gas, Dutch oil holding company SBM Offshore NV has been granted a contract awarded by ExxonMobil, a U.S. company that owns 45 percent of the Stabroek Block located on the Atlantic front of the Essequibo through its subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited Atlantic, where the rich deposits of Liza-1 and Liza-2 were found. The CEO of the Dutch holding company Bruno Chabas commented on the contract, "We are proud that ExxonMobil has awarded the Liza contracts to SBM Offshore. Liza, the offshore field in Guyana, is one of the major oil discoveries in the industry over the past decade." However, this contract is not the first by ExxonMobil to accelerate its plans for oil and gas extraction in the territory claimed by Venezuela. In May, a subsidiary of the Italian oil company ENI named Saipem, took over the rights to carry out "the engineering, acquisition, construction, installation of associated bands, structures and bridges" to Liza-1, according to the World Oil website. Recently teleSUR, citing the U.S. Geological Survey, informed that the area concentrated in the "Liza Project" is the second largest untapped oil fields in the world. With this latest contract awarded, ExxonMobil seeks to produce 120,000 barrels of oil and 170 million cubic feet of natural gas, with a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil.

Exxon May Have Erased 7 Years of Tillerson’s ‘Wayne Tracker’ Emails

By David Hasemyer for Inside Climate News - Up to seven years of emails that former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillersonwrote under the alias "Wayne Tracker" may have been erased, a company witness has told investigators for the New York attorney general. The gap is far longer than the three months Exxon initially reported. The disclosure came from Connie Feinstein, Exxon's information technology security and consulting manager, who was questioned about Tillerson's secret email alias, created in 2007 under the pseudonym "Wayne Tracker." During a daylong question-and-answer session related to the attorney general's investigation into whether Exxon mislead investors about climate change, Feinstein explained under oath both how a computer program allowed for the scrubbing of Tillerson's Wayne Tracker emails and the considerable effort the company put in trying to recover them. A 301-page transcript of the April interview became public last week as part of a batch of documents released by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. He lodged them in a state court in support of his claim that Exxon's climate accounting was a "sham" under Tillerson, who is now the U.S. secretary of state.

Exxon Fights Back Against Legal Actions On Climate

By David Hasemyer for Inside Climate News - Ted Wells, one of the nation's most prominent litigators for big corporations, was about to win again as he sat with his team in a Dallas courtroom last fall, representing ExxonMobil. U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade looked their way and joked, "Y'all have 300 lawyers on your side." Wells, 66, had come before Kinkeade to thwart fraud investigations launched by the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, who are looking into whether the mammoth oil company has misled investors and the public for years about the dangers of climate change. Kinkeade, with his folksy joshing and pointed comments, made little secret of his sympathies. He kidded that his horse was tied up outside and he might need an interpreter to pierce the Boston accent of the Massachusetts counsel. He wondered aloud if those Northern officials would be as worried about the climate if their states had as much oil as his native Texas. "I'm just saying, think about it." A little more than three weeks later, he handed Exxon a major victory, ruling that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey may have acted in "bad faith."

Exxon Shareholders Approve Climate Resolution

By Marianne Lavelle for Inside Climate Change - ExxonMobil shareholders voted Wednesday to require the world's largest oil and gas company to report on the impacts of climate change to its business—defying management, and marking a milestone in a 28-year effort by activist investors. Sixty-two percent of shareholders voted for Exxon to begin producing an annual report that explains how the company will be affected by global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate agreement. The analysis should address the financial risks the company faces as nations slash fossil fuel use in an effort to prevent worldwide temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Last year, 38 percent of Exxon shareholders supported essentially the same measure, which at the time was a record. The vote at Exxon shows the rapid erosion of support for the company's defiant stance on climate disclosure, and it caps a shareholder meeting season that saw unprecedented support for greater corporate disclosure on climate change. In recent weeks, shareholders voted in favor of climate risk analysis at two other major energy companies, Occidental Petroleum and PPL, Pennsylvania's largest utility.

Tillerson Present For Major Exxon Deal With Saudi Arabia

By Steve Horn for Desmog - During his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump announced an array of economic agreements between the U.S.and the Middle Eastern kingdom, saying it would usher in “jobs, jobs, jobs” for both oil-producing powerhouses. While the $350 billion, 10-year arms deal garnered most headlines, a lesser-noticed agreement was also signed between ExxonMobil and the state-owned Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) to study a proposed co-owned natural gas refinery in the Gulf of Mexico. Under the deal, signed at the Saudi-U.S. CEO Forum, the two companies would “conduct a detailed study of the proposed Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project in Texas and begin planning for front-end engineering and design work” for the 1,300-acre, $10 billion plant set to be located near Corpus Christi, Texas, according to an ExxonMobil press release. In addition, ExxonMobil's press release for the agreement mentions that Darren Woods, the company's CEO, was in the room for the signing of the pact alongside ExxonMobil Saudi Arabia CEO Philippe Ducom and SABIC executives. Missing from that release: After the forum ended, Woods went to the Al-Yamamah Palace for an agreement-signing ceremony attended by both President Trump and recently retired ExxonMobil CEO and current U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

Exxon & Chevron Face Shareholder Challenges On Climate Change

By Staff of PR Newswire - DALLAS, May 30, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ExxonMobil and Chevron will host simultaneous annual meetings on Wednesday, May 31 in Dallas and Midland, TX respectively, and face shareholders who want the oil giants to start dealing with the realities of life in a carbon-constrained world. At Chevron (proposal #8), a first-time resolution filed jointly by Arjuna Capital and As You Sow, with co-filer Baldwin Brothers Inc., asks for a detailed report assessing how the company can respond to climate change and the resultant transition to a low-carbon economy. The proposal asks Chevron to evaluate the feasibility of altering the company's energy mix, separating or selling its highest carbon-risk assets, divisions, and subsidiaries, and/or buying or merging with companies with outstanding assets or technologies in low carbon or renewable energy.

Exxon Climate Fraud Investigation Widens Over Missing ‘Wayne Tracker’ Emails

By David Hasemyer for Inside Climate News - The probe of ExxonMobil by the New York Attorney General's Office is widening. Investigators have taken depositions of company executives and issued additional subpoenas to determine whether the company may have destroyed evidence connected to an alias email used by former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. The disclosure was made Friday in arguments filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in a Manhattan federal court. He is seeking dismissal of a request by Exxon for an injunction that would halt his investigation into the oil giant involving whether it misled shareholders and the public about the risks of climate change. Attorneys for Schneiderman did not elaborate in the 25-page document on the scope of the expanded investigation other than to suggest that it involved the recent disclosure that Tillerson, now U.S. secretary of state, used an email alias when discussing issues including climate change and the risk that it posed to the company. New York and Massachusetts investigators denounced the company's attempt in federal court to derail their parallel inquiries as a vexatious legal tactic that has no chance of succeeding.

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