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Exxon lobbyist questions urgency of climate’s catastrophic risks

Speaking on panel, ExxonMobil lobbyist highlights carbon capture’s potential and says of global warming: ‘Is it catastrophic inevitable risk? Not in my mind.’

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6 min

Erik Oswald, a vice president and registered lobbyist for Exxon, emphasized the profit opportunity in addressing global warming during a panel in Santa Fe, N.M.

By Desmond Butler

November 24, 2021|Updated November 24, 2021 at 9:43 a.m. EST

Just last month, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods assured lawmakers his company neither disputed the scientific consensus on climate change nor lobbied against efforts to cut carbon pollution. But a lobbyist for the oil giant struck a different tone less than two weeks later, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post, suggesting global warming might not be so dire.

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https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/583061-exxon-lobbyist-suggests-climate-change-not-catastrophic-inevitable

lobbyist for Exxon expressed doubt that climate change carries “catastrophic, inevitable risk” in remarks made earlier this month, which were obtained by the watchdog group Documented.

In the Nov. 9 remarks to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, lobbyist Erik Oswald states, “The way I look at it as a scientist is, all's I need to think about is, is there, is there a risk? Yes, there's risk. Is it catastrophic, inevitable risk? Not in my mind. But there's risk.”

“And so if we're going to work on this, you know, as a, as a society, if we're going to work on this risk, then my only ask is, let's do it as efficiently as possible,” Oswald continues in the recording.“Findme the cheapest way to put the most CO2 in the ground,” he says in reference to carbon-capture technology. “And that's what I'm willing to engage in a conversation on.”

In the recording, first reported by The Washington Post, Oswald says the company thinks of such technology “not as the crusaders who are going to be the climate fix” but rather “looking at markets,” comparing the business opportunities of a "green premium” to consumers’ willingness to buy sugar-free foods.

"The statements lack appropriate context and are not representative of the company’s positions on important issues, including climate change and carbon capture," Casey Norton, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, said in a statement to The Hill. "ExxonMobil has long acknowledged that climate change is real and poses serious risks. In addition to our substantial investments in next generation technologies, ExxonMobil also advocates for responsible climate-related policies."

• [Climate change poses threat to Winter Olympics: study
• Equilibrium/Sustainability — Climate change may threaten Winter...]

Exxon leaders have said they acknowledge the reality of climate change and fossil fuels’ contribution to it, and that they take the threat seriously. In October testimony before the House Oversight Committee, CEO Darren Woods testified that the energy company “does not ask people to lobby anything different than our publicly supported position.”

The testimony came months after the release of another recording, in which Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy told an undercover Greenpeace activist that the company “[fought] against some of the science” and has only expressed support for carbon pricing as a “talking point.” The company has disavowed his comments.

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More on climate change

After two weeks of talks in Glasgow, diplomats from almost 200 countries reached an agreement to ramp up their carbon-cutting commitments, phase down fossil fuels and increase aid to poor countries on the front lines of climate change. Read the full text of the agreement here, with annotations.

More reporting from COP26: Five big takeaways from COP26 | Countries’ climate pledges built on flawed data, Post investigation finds | Nations reach agreement to speed climate action, but world remains off target

More on the causes and effects climate change: How we know global warming is real | How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive | The undeniable link between weather disasters and climate change

More on climate change solutions: Tracking Biden’s environmental actions | The world’s biggest plant to capture CO2 from the air just opened in Iceland | Toronto is home to the world’s largest lake-powered cooling system. Here’s how it works. | Harnessing the energy of the ocean to power homes, planes and whisky distilleries

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...it did so through a concerted strategic communications and lobbying push, which provided fringe scientists who denied climate science with funding and a platform, via Exxon-placed op-eds, advertisements, and political briefings.

Exxon also helped to found and lead a powerful cross-industry group, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning against a binding global climate agreement ahead of the 1997 UN climate summit in Kyoto.

The organisation spent $13 million dollars on one advertising campaign alone, aiming to weaken US support for an agreement in Kyoto.

The efforts were successful: the US Congress refused to ratify Kyoto and Exxon later lobbied the Bush administration to pull out of the protocol altogether. This left global efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions in tatters.

Fighting science

Exxon continues to deny having misled the public on climate change, and no serving Exxon executive has ever admitted that the company fought climate science to protect the company’s financial interests – until now.

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/06/30/exxon-climate-change-undercover/

no lnx vid

ExxonMobil continues to fight efforts to tackle climate change in the United States, despite publicly claiming to support the Paris climate agreement, an undercover investigation by Unearthed has found.

A senior lobbyist for Exxon told an undercover reporter that the company had been working to weaken key aspects of President Joe Biden’s flagship initiative on climate change, the American Jobs Plan.

Did we aggressively fight against some of the science?

Yes.

– Keith McCoy, Exxon lobbyist

He described Biden’s new plan to slash US greenhouse gas emissions as “insane” and admitted that the company had aggressively fought early climate science through “shadow groups” to protect its investments.

Keith McCoy – a senior director in Exxon’s Washington DC government affairs team – told the undercover reporter that he is speaking to the office of influential Democratic senator Joe Manchin every week, with the aim of drastically reducing the scope of Biden’s climate plan so that “negative stuff”, such as rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions and taxes on oil companies, are removed.

Last week – after weeks of bipartisan talks – President Biden conditionally endorsed a scaled-back version of his infrastructure plan, which eliminates hundreds of billions of dollars of proposed support for climate initiatives.

During the undercover meeting, which took place via Zoom in May,McCoy suggested that Exxon’s public support for a carbon tax as its principal climate policy is an “advocacy tool” and “great talking point” that will never actually happen.

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” McCoy said.

A second Exxon lobbyist, Dan Easley – who left the company in January after working as its chief White House lobbyist throughout the Trump administration – laughed when asked by an undercover reporter if the company had achieved many policy wins under Trump, before outlining victories on fossil fuel permitting and the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade agreement.

“The wins are such that it would be difficult to categorise them all,” he said, adding that the biggest victory was Trump’s reduction in the corporate tax rate, which was “probably worth billions to Exxon”.

Unearthed reporters posed as recruitment consultants looking to hire a Washington DC lobbyist for a major client and approached McCoy and Easley for meetings over Zoom. During the meetings, the undercover reporter asked about Exxon’s current and historical lobbying on environmental issues.

It is important to note that neither McCoy nor Easley were necessarily seeking a new job, but each was willing to talk and provide information to the purported recruiters.

[Over the coming days, Unearthed, will also reveal:

Claims that Exxon covertly fought to prevent a ban on toxic chemicals

How Exxon is using its playbook on climate change to head-off regulations on plastic]

California Congressman, Rep. Ro Khanna, told Unearthed: “For decades, fossil fuel companies have lied to the public, to regulators, and to Congress about the true danger posed by their products. Today’s tape only proves our knowledge that the industry’s disinformation campaign is alive and well. In the coming months, I plan to ask the CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, and other fossil fuel companies to come testify before my Environment subcommittee. We can no longer allow Exxon, or any other companies, to prevent our collective action on the climate crisis.”

A spokesman for ExxonMobil said that the allegations put to them: “contained a number of important factual misstatements that are starkly at odds with our positions on a variety of issues, including climate policy and our firm commitment to carbon pricing.”

Denial and delay

Exxon claims to support global effort to tackle climate change, but it hasn’t always. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the company orchestrated a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign that manufactured doubt regarding the link between global warming and the burning of fossil fuels.

[Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts on climate?

Yes.

– Keith McCoy, Exxon lobbyist]

It did so through a concerted strategic communications and lobbying push, which provided fringe scientists who denied climate science with funding and a platform, via Exxon-placed op-eds, advertisements, and political briefings.

Exxon also helped to found and lead a powerful cross-industry group, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning against a binding global climate agreement ahead of the 1997 UN climate summit in Kyoto.

The organisation spent $13 million dollars on one advertising campaign alone, aiming to weaken US support for an agreement in Kyoto.

The efforts were successful: the US Congress refused to ratify Kyoto and Exxon later lobbied the Bush administration to pull out of the protocol altogether. This left global efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions in tatters.

Fighting science

Exxon continues to deny having misled the public on climate change, and no serving Exxon executive has ever admitted that the company fought climate science to protect the company’s financial interests – until now.

McCoy told an undercover Unearthed reporter that although he didn’t believe Exxon had buried its own science, the company had cast doubt on the scientific consensus: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science, absolutely not. Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. You know, we were looking out for our investments, we were looking out for our shareholders.”

The reference to “shadow groups” is likely to relate to a powerful network of think tanks and pressure groups through which Exxon fought both the science and political action on climate change. Between 1998 and 2014, the company spent at least $30 million funding climate denial groups, such as the Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Foundation.

This network played a critical role in shifting the Republican Party from a position of support for action to cut emissions in the 1980s to its near-total opposition to tackling climate change from the mid-1990s to today.

Geoffrey Supran, a researcher at Harvard University who has written a number of scientific papers on Exxon’s efforts to mislead the public on climate change, told Unearthed: “I don’t believe the company has ever publicly acknowledged its role in climate denial… to have active employees of the company acknowledge its past behaviour is significant and certainly relevant to ongoing litigation and investigations against the company.”

Supran continued: “The company has thrown up the straw man argument that they never hid or ‘covered up’ the science, but that’s never actually been our point. The point is that they misled the public about climate change by contributing quietly to climate science but loudly to promoting doubt about it, so what this person said seems exactly consistent with that.”

A new playbook

By the start of the Obama administration in January 2009, it had become untenable for ExxonMobil to continue to publicly cast doubt on climate science.

Instead, ahead of Obama’s inauguration, and in an apparent break with Exxon’s long opposition to what it called “near-term policies” on climate change, the company’s then-CEO Rex Tillerson publicly backed a carbon tax.

The proposal sought to spread the cost of tackling climate change beyond the fossil fuel sector, taxing businesses in every sector of the economy for each tonne of carbon emitted – either by them directly or embedded in products they sell to consumers. The cost of this would then be passed on to the public.

In making the announcement, Tillerson sketched the outlines of a new ExxonMobil playbook on climate change – one that accepts the science but nevertheless seeks to delay rapid emissions cuts.

Instead of subsidising renewables, governments should prioritise research and development to discover a “breakthrough” technology. In the meantime, Exxon would remain “fundamentally an oil and gas company because we think that’s what society needs and will have to have for the next 50 years”, Tillerson said.

[Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans…

A carbon tax is not going to happen.

– Keith McCoy, Exxon lobbyist]

Crucially, Tillerson explicitly framed the company’s support for a carbon tax in opposition to the incoming Obama administration’s plan to introduce a more stringent cap and trade system. Essentially, Exxon backed a carbon tax as part of its strategy to oppose cap and trade.

In 2013 – after the cap and trade bill had been defeated – Tillerson backtracked: “As to our advocacy around a carbon tax—I would not support putting a carbon tax in place today because I think we still have a lot of gains to be made through technology and other less intrusive policies.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21122015/exxon-mobil-carbon-tax-rhetoric-or-reality-climate-change-rex-tillerson/

Geoffrey Supran explained how this new playbook is a “classic shift from denialism to delayism”.

“Sure, over the last decades the company has necessarily shifted its rhetoric, but the end goal remains the same and that’s inaction on climate change. This is just a continuation of their 30-year track record of acting in bad faith on climate change,” Supran continued.

Taxing carbon

Exxon rejects claims that its support for a carbon tax is not genuine, but Unearthed can reveal that one of its most senior lobbyists believes the company knows the policy has no chance of being enacted but nevertheless uses it as an “advocacy tool.”

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” McCoy said.

When asked by the reporter, “So it’s basically never going to happen right, is the calculation?”, McCoy replied: “Yeah. No it’s not, it’s not. Carbon tax is not going to happen”.

He added that other members of the oil industry that have recently announced their support for a carbon tax – such as the American Petroleum Institute (API), an influential lobby group – did so because “they’ve got nothing else, so it’s an easy talking point to say, look I’m for a carbon tax”.

McCoy continued: “So that’s the talking point, that is in my mind an effective advocacy tool. Many members of Congress can say, well we don’t believe you, and we’ll say well yeah, we’ve been saying this for over a decade and we’re not new to this. API is new to this, some of these other companies are new to this, but at ExxonMobil we’ve been saying this for a decade.

“I think the carbon tax is an effective way of saying to them [members of Congress]: put up or shut up.”

McCoy was asked whether Exxon’s support for the “talking point” of a carbon tax makes it easier for the company to oppose more punitive climate regulations, “whilst still having this kind of bold proposal that makes sure you are still for something, not just against it?”

He nodded and replied: “Well that’s the danger right, so they realised that they can’t get the sort of large bill put forth so what ends up happening is it’s death by 1,000 cuts right.”

McCoy continued: “They just go through the regulatory process and they put a moratorium on federal leasing, they’ll do something on pipelines you know, they’ll look at offshore drilling, they’re looking at the royalty rates now for onshore drilling so there’s going to be each step of the way they’re going to try to cripple the oil and gas sector.”

An Exxon spokesman said: “We have been clear in supporting an efficient, economy-wide price on carbon as the best way to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. While there is not broad support for a tax, we are actively and publicly discussing other options, including lower-carbon fuels and other sector-based approaches that would place a uniform, predictable cost on carbon.”

A spokeswoman for the API said: “We’ve endorsed a host of climate actions and are advocating for a carbon price policy as the most impactful way to spur innovation and reduce emissions across all economic sectors. We’ll continue to advance technology innovation, policy solutions and industry actions to help shape a lower-carbon future.”

[More from our reporters

Exxon and BP among worst for flaring in US oil fields despite green pledges

BP lobbied Trump to weaken climate safeguards on new oil and gas projects

Revealed: BP and gambling interests fund secretive free market think tank]

Infrastructure plan

One of the threats facing Exxon, according to McCoy, is President Biden’s proposal to pour billions of dollars into renewable energy and electric vehicles through the $2 trillion American jobs plan, his flagship initiative to tackle climate change.

Unearthed can reveal that Exxon has been working hard behind the scenes to eliminate the proposed funding.

As alluded to by McCoy, in the absence of major legislation limiting US emissions – such as the cap-and-trade system proposed during the Obama administration – Biden has moved to accelerate the transition to clean energy and transport through government spending.

The proposals, the most ambitious clean energy legislation ever put forward by a US President, included more than $100 billion in subsidies for electric vehicles alone and would have been paid for by higher taxes on corporations like Exxon.

But last week Biden endorsed an alternative plan, which eliminates the vast majority of spending on climate change after being forced into a compromise by “moderate” Democratic senators, including Joe Manchin, senator for West Virginia.

Now, Unearthed can reveal that – according to one of its most senior lobbyists – ExxonMobil targeted a number of these moderate senators, with the aim of scaling back the plan’s ambition by scrapping the tax hikes that would pay for it.

Speaking in early May, McCoy said: “We’re playing defence, because President Biden is talking about this big infrastructure package and he’s going to pay for it by increasing corporate taxes. So it’s a delicate balance we’re asking for help with taxes over here [lobbying for subsidies for a carbon capture project] and we’re saying, don’t increase our taxes over here.”

He explained that if the plan stuck to “roads and bridges”, the budget could be reduced from $2 trillion to $800 billion, limiting the need for tax rises: “The international tax piece is for, for ExxonMobil is close to a billion dollars.”

This would mean “the negative stuff starts to come out, because there’s a germaneness right… that doesn’t make any sense for a highway bill. Why would you put in something on emissions reductions, on climate change to oil refineries in a highway bill?”

Targeting senators

When asked which senators Exxon is lobbying on these specific points, McCoy said: “Senator [Shelley Moore] Capito [Republican senator for West Virginia]… who’s the ranking member of environment and public works. Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week, he is the kingmaker on this because he’s a Democrat from West Virginia which is [a] very conservative state, so he is, and he’s not shy about sort of staking his claim early and completely changing the debate.”

“On the Democrat side we look for the moderates on these issues”,McCoy continued, highlighting figures including Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema; John Tester, senator for Montana; and Chris Coons, senator for Delaware, President Biden’s home state.

“Senator Coons… has a very close relationship with Senator [President] Biden, so we’ve been working with his office – as a matter of fact our CEO is talking to him next Tuesday and having those conversations and just teeing it up, and then that way I can start working with his staff to let them know where we are on some of these issues,” McCoy said.

He added that he targets senators like Mark Kelly, Democrat senator from Arizona, New Hampshire Democrat senator Maggie Hassan, and Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio, who are up for reelection in 2022. “I can’t worry about the 2027 class because they’re not focused on re-election. The 2022 [class] is focused on re-election so I know I have them… you can have those conversations with them because they’re a captive audience, they know they need you and I need them,” McCoy said.

With the vast majority of the clean energy and transport spending now stripped from the proposed bipartisan legislation, Biden has signalled that he will attempt to address climate change through a separate budget reconciliation bill, which can be passed with a simple majority vote.

But the President faces the same challenge of convincing Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema – and the other senators targeted by Exxon – to support the tax increases necessary to fund the transformation in energy and transport that he originally envisaged.

An Exxon spokesman said: Our discussions on the current infrastructure bill are not accurately portrayed. Our lobbying efforts are related to a tax burden that could disadvantage U.S. businesses, and we have made that position known publicly. ExxonMobil stands by our position that increased taxes on American businesses make the U.S. less competitive.

“The comments describing interactions with government officials and non-governmental organizations are entirely inconsistent with the way we expect our people to engage. The individuals interviewed were not involved in developing the company’s policy positions on the issues,” he continued.

Clean energy

Unearthed can further reveal that Exxon’s new strategy for delaying action on climate change goes beyond opposition to specific pieces of legislation.

[On something like climate change, there’s the forest fires, there’s an increase of, you know, .001 Celsius… that doesn’t affect people’s everyday lives.

– Keith McCoy, Exxon lobbyist]

A core objective for Exxon on Capitol Hill is undermining confidence that a transition to clean energy and transport is possible over the next decade, according to McCoy.

“You’re not going to be able to just switch to battery operated vehicles or land for your electricity and it’s having that conversation around why that’s not possible in the next 10 years is critically important to the work that we do… and that’s at every phase: that’s in the Senate, that’s in the House, that’s with the Administration,” he said.

McCoy went on to describe President Biden’s new targets to cut US greenhouse gas emissions as “insane”, before suggesting that ambitious action on climate change is unlikely to succeed, because it isn’t an existential threat like the pandemic.

“Outside like, of something like Covid where there’s this existential crisis and people rally to support each other. On something like climate change there’s the forest fires, there’s an increase [of] .001 Celsius, that doesn’t affect people’s everyday lives,” he said.

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‘A lot of wins’

The investigation also revealed one former Exxon lobbyist’s disbelief at the scale of influence the company had during the Trump administration.

Dan Easley, who was a senior director for federal relations at Exxon until February 2021, when he joined a clean technologies firm, laughed when asked by an undercover reporter if the company had achieved many big policy wins under Trump, before outlining victories on fossil fuel permitting and the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade agreement.

“You should Google ‘ExxonMobil announcement’ and ‘Donald Trump’. So he live-Facebooked from the West Wing our big drill in the Gulf project, he mentioned us in two States of the Union, we were able to get investor state dispute settlement protection in NAFTA, we were able to rationalise the permit environment and you know, get tonnes of permits out.”

“The wins are such that it would be difficult to, to categorise them all. I mean, tax has to be the biggest one right, the reduction of the corporate rate was, you know, it’s probably worth billions to Exxon, so yeah there were a lot of wins,” Easley continued.

ExxonMobil’s full statement is available here. Dan Easley did not respond to requests for comment.

ref rex 180

as Congress was gearing up to vote on major U.S. climate legislation, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson spoke up in favor of a carbon tax in a January 2009 speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

“As a businessman it is hard to speak favorably about any new tax,” Tillerson said in a four-paragraph passage on page six of a seven-page speech. “But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach” than the complex cap-and-trade bill that Congress was considering.

Exxon now says that speech was the beginning of its consistent stance in favor of a tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels. Leading up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris this month, the company again said that if carbon regulations ever became necessary, a carbon tax would be the best approach, a position in line with that of mainstream economists.

But Exxon has never put its political muscle behind a carbon tax. It has not stepped up campaign contributions to lawmakers because they favor one. Nor has it lobbied for carbon tax bills in Congress, mounted any advertising campaigns in favor of the idea, or funded organizations that push for such laws at the federal or state level.

Exxon also refused to sign on to a letter from other international oil giants, including Royal Dutch Shell and BP, that strongly urged the Paris climate negotiators to push for a global price on carbon. The conference led to a treaty urging the phasing out of net carbon emissions from fossil fuels within the next several decades.

Instead, Exxon has channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the American Legislative Exchange Council in recent years and sits on its corporate board. ALEC adopted a resolution in 2013 opposing “all federal and state efforts to establish a carbon tax on fuels for electricity and transportation.”

In June 2013, four years after his favorable comments on carbon taxes, Tillerson waffled.

“As to our advocacy around a carbon tax—I would not support putting a carbon tax in place today because I think we still have a lot of gains to be made through technology and other less intrusive policies on the economy which are showing results,” he said in a speech before The City Club of Cleveland.

[vid]

yet in a blog post written on Dec. 2, “ExxonMobil and the carbon tax,” company spokesman Ken Cohen wrote that company executives have echoed Tillerson’s 2009 message “in countless private briefings with members of congress on carbon tax policy options.”

In one meeting a few months ago with Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, Exxon officials voiced their support for “a price on carbon,” Lieu said in an interview. When Lieu asked what they would do if he drafted a carbon tax bill, the Exxon representatives said “they would take a look at it,” he told InsideClimate News.

“They didn’t say they wouldn’t support it, and they didn’t say they would,” said Lieu, who has called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Exxon for possible climate deception. “It’s clear that they are not going around championing their position. If they actually believe this internally, then they ought to do so in a much louder way than just quietly sticking it on a website.”

In a 2012 Fox News interview, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said he met with Exxon officials and told them carbon taxes were a bad idea and were going nowhere in Congress.

“It’s not going to come from the Republicans,” Upton. “We’re going to do our very best to make sure this is not a mole that pops up again.” Upton also said he didn’t think Exxon’s support of a carbon tax was “a very serious effort on their part.”

“I would give them the benefit of the doubt for sincerity,” said Steve Valk, director of communications for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an organization that marshals grassroots support for political climate policy. “From the company’s perspective, a carbon tax is the policy that gives them the most certainty in terms of future business decisions. They know something must be done and they consider the carbon tax the best and fairest option.”

Exxon declined a request by InsideClimate News to discuss its position.

“Based on past reporting by InsideClimate News, we do not believe our comments will be treated fairly and therefore have no response to your questions,” Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said in an email.

A day later, Cohen put up his blog post on the carbon tax. In it, he wrote that Exxon has “repeated our support for this policy option” with members of Congress, socially responsible investors and outside experts.

Greg Dotson, vice president for energy policy at the Center for American Progress, a public policy organization supporting a list of progressive issues, urges a close study of what Exxon is saying. The company isn’t explicitly saying it wants a carbon tax, but is saying it prefers a carbon tax to other options in the face of regulatory intervention.

“Are they saying this is the best of bad options, or are they saying we support a carbon tax?” Dotson said. “The full understanding of what they support has not come to light.”

Exxon’s renewed emphasis on its carbon tax posture comes in response to an investigation of its evolving climate policy positions by InsideClimate News, as well as by other news organizations. The investigation found that Exxon occupied a position at the forefront of climate science decades ago, until it pivoted toward emphasizing scientific uncertainty to forestall strong policy action to slow climate change.

Since the early 1990s, the idea of taxing energy to limit emissions has been at the center of a lively debate, including President Clinton’s failed attempt to impose a BTU tax.

The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, so many economists advocate an excise tax that puts a price on the carbon content of those fuels.

Carbon taxes wouldn’t set limits on emissions as other carbon pricing concepts do.

Rather, a carbon tax on fossil fuels discourages their use by making them more expensive and encourages the adoption of cleaner alternatives.

Since 2009, when Exxon said it began supporting the idea of a carbon tax, more than a dozen pieces of legislation have been proposed to institute various forms of a tax. Each proposal carried different provisions addressing the initial price on carbon, how quickly the tax would increase, and what the revenue would be used for.

Earlier this year, for example, Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced legislation that would tax carbon at an initial $42 a ton, rising every year by 2 percent more than the inflation rate. The revenue would be designated for a variety of goals, such as a corporate tax reduction, deficit reduction, payroll tax refunds and Social Security and disability programs.

Other legislation included a 2013 proposal by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, now running for president as a Democrat, and Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, that would have imposed a $20-a-ton carbon pollution fee at first, with increases of 5.6 percent a year over 10 years. Sixty percent of revenue would have gone back to consumers through a rebate, and the rest would have been invested in renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal.

A 2009 proposal by Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), would have established a $10-a-metric ton tax with a $10-a-year increase. The revenue would have been used to assist industries affected by the tax; to fill the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund; and to give taxpayers a payroll tax credit.

Exxon hasn’t issued a detailed policy position addressing these proposals or outlining how high such a tax should be to slow or halt global warming, how the tax should be structured, or what the revenue would be used for. The company has said only that it favors a revenue-neutral tax, meaning revenue from the tax would be returned to the public or businesses through tax cuts or some sort of rebate.

The company does make clear that a carbon tax should supplant many kinds of emission controls. Exxon describes a carbon tax as “a more effective policy option than cap-and-trade schemes, regulations, mandates, or standards.”

In his blog post, Cohen wrote that Exxon “has included a proxy price on carbon in our business planning since 2007” to “analyze the impact of a price on carbon.” The “proxy cost” approaches $80 a ton in some regions and is intended to reflect “all types of actions and policies that governments may take.”

However, Exxon says this “proxy” cost is not a recommendation.

“It is simply our effort to quantify what we believe government policies…could cost to our investment opportunities,” the company says.

Kert Davies, founder of the Virginia-based Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy organization, says he is skeptical of Exxon’s carbon tax position.

“It seems like Exxon favors a carbon tax when and if their arms are twisted behind their backs, but until that time, they only like the theory of a carbon tax when it gives them something to be ‘for,'” he said. “When Tillerson blurted out his personal predisposition against a carbon tax in 2013, it was probably a clue to the real conversation going on inside the company.”

At the time Tillerson made his comment in support of a carbon tax back in 2009, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill posed a potential threat to Exxon’s business. The measure was laden with loopholes and subsidies that would have kept coal competitive with lower-carbon natural gas, one of Exxon’s biggest products. The legislation passed the House by a vote of 219-212 but was never taken up by the Senate.

In a potent bit of rhetoric, opponents of that bill often re-labeled it “cap and tax,” asserting that it was essentially the same thing as a carbon tax.

Bringing up a carbon tax as an alternative to cap-and-trade made sense for Exxon, business and political analysts wrote at the time. For one thing, each time the carbon tax idea has come up in Congress, it has been met with resistance by large numbers of lawmakers, as well as much of the domestic fossil fuel industry—especially the coal business—and politically influential organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute.

Exxon’s business would benefit from a carbon tax, said Bob Inglis, who introduced a bill in 2008 proposing a carbon tax while he was a Republican U.S. representative from South Carolina. Inglis said it would shrink the market for high-carbon fuels, especially coal, and increase demand for cleaner-burning fuels including natural gas. Because of this, the European energy giants wanted Paris negotiators to consider a price on carbon.

“Anybody who sells natural gas would do better if CO2 were taxed,” Inglis said. “Natural gas beats coal in the amount of CO2 emissions. So if you make the dirtier burning fuels accountable for their emissions, it makes natural gas more attractive.” Inglis, who lost his seat in 2010 to a Tea Party-backed challenger largely because of his climate views, is now executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a Virginia-based conservative think tank that addresses energy and climate issues.

Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a self-described libertarian think tank, said Exxon may be embracing strategic reasons for supporting a carbon tax without pressing for one.

“Lobbying for a carbon tax may not be the best way the company sees of spending its political capital,” he said. Exxon may prefer to use its influence to advance oil and gas exploration on federal lands or to help lift the ban on exporting U.S. oil, which passed Congress last week, he said. Also, voicing support for a carbon tax is relatively safe because it isn’t likely to become a reality soon, Taylor said.

omfg

msnbc? calls it rommney exxon bill, not the bipart infra

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/senior-exxonmobil-lobbyist/

raw story

Channel 4 in the U.K. published a startling expose on ExxonMobil's lobbyists who revealed the top most important U.S. Senators who are the ones behind any legislation that might hurt the oil industry.

While many oil companies are diversifying with natural gas, it appears ExxonMobil is going all-in battling to keep "big oil" alive and well.

"Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the U.S. Congress for the last eight years," explained the report.

"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not," said McCoy on camera. "Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing, there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."

McCoy compared his work with elected officials to fishing with ExxonMobil who supplies the "bait" before it "reels in" the official on issues like a carbon tax, electric cars, taxation and infrastructure.

"When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: 'Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'" McCoy continued. "And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax.You know, it's all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in."

"I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They're a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them," McCoy also said.

He went on to explain that lobbyists aim to have close relationships with officials.

"You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we've asked for everything," he said.

But it was the shocking revelation that he has 11 U.S. Senators on the hook.

"Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio," were all cited.

He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.

"We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress," McCoy confessed.

"There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?" he asked.

See the video below and read the full story at Channel 4:

exxon guy busted

https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation

explosive footage was obtained byUnearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform,who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists.

The recordings appear to reveal the secretive behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist for a company that claims in public to support action on climate change, while fighting against legislative attempts to tackle it.

ExxonMobil say they “have supported climate science for decades” and accuse Greenpeace of “waging a multi-decade campaign” against their company and industry.

They insist their “lobbying fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis.”

‘Shadow groups’

Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hilland has represented the company in its liaison with the US Congress for the last eight years.

Greenpeace UK’s Unearthed platform posed as head-hunters looking to hire a Washington D.C. lobbyist for a major client. They approached Mr McCoy, who agreed to speak over Zoom.

During the covert recordings, which have been passed to Channel 4 News, Mr McCoy claims:

• thecompany secretly fought against legislative action on climate change using third-party organisations
• he lobbied key senators to remove and/or diminish climate change measures from President Biden’s US $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill as it proceeds through the legislative process
• he regards trade bodies like theAmerican Petroleum Institute as “whipping boys” in order to avoid public scrutiny on Capitol Hill
• BUFFER

During the virtual meeting held on 7 May, the investigators asked Mr McCoy questions about ExxonMobil’s current and historical lobbying on environmental issues.

In the excerpts from the footage to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil has aggressively fought science to deny climate change in order to maximise profit and shareholder return. He alleges that ExxonMobil joined “shadow groups” to pursue climate change denial.

Mr McCoy said: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science?  Yes. Did we hide our science?  Absolutely not.  Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that.

“We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”

ExxonMobil told Channel 4 News that they “have supported climate science for decades.”

‘It’s like fishing’

Mr McCoy likens the approach to lobbying congressmen to the way fishermen target fish, claiming that ExxonMobil puts out “bait” and then “reels in” congressmen on issues like carbon tax, electric vehicles, chemicals, taxation and infrastructure.

Mr McCoy said: “When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: ‘Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah.’

“And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programmes, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it’s all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in.”

He added: “I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They’re a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them.”

He says lobbyists aim to have a direct relationship with a member of congress, adding: “You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we’ve asked for everything.”

‘The Kingmaker’

Mr McCoy names 11 senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator KyrstenSinema,Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, dem Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio

We gave all these senators a chance to respond. All the senators declined to comment. There is no suggestion of illegality.

Channel 4 News has established, through Federal Election Commission (FEC) data, that all except two of these senators (Senators Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly) have received financial contributions from ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil insists “our lobbying efforts fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis”.

Mr McCoy described Senator Joe Manchin as “the Kingmaker” in the Senate and he says he spoke to his office on a weekly basis.

The FEC data shows Senator Manchin has received at least $12,500 from the ExxonMobil Political Action Committee in declared disbursements since the beginning of the 2011-12 election cycle.

Mr McCoy described how a “big piece of [his] job is education and advocacy” and says that in his work on behalf of ExxonMobil he argues that US government programmes to roll outelectric vehicles are unrealistic. [INVENTED PRIUS AND BATT THEN BAILLED]

He said: “The research and development conversation has taken us a long way because of climate change. And there is a struggle to find solutions and to get the reductions that they’re looking for. And you’re not going to be able to just switch to battery operated vehicles or wind for your electricity. And just having that conversation around why that’s not possible in the next 10 years is critically important to the work that we do.”

‘Whipping boy’

Mr McCoy described a lobbying strategy in which he claims ExxonMobil uses third parties to mask its interests from public view and accountability.

He said: “We don’t want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It’s getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress.”

He added: “There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?”

Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil lobbied Congress to dilute the climate provisions of President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill.

He said: “That’s a completely different conversation when you start to stick to roads and bridges.And instead of a $2 trillion bill, it’s an $800 billion dollar bill. If you lower that threshold, you stick to highways and bridges then a lot of the negative stuff starts to come out.”

“Why would you put in something on emissions reductions on climate change to oil refineries in a highway bill? So, people say yeah that doesn’t make any sense, so then you get to the germane of saying that shouldn’t be in this bill.”

ExxonMobil said: “Our discussion on the bill are not accurately portrayed. Our lobbying efforts are related to a tax burden that could disadvantage us businesses.”

Carbon tax

Mr McCoy appears to suggest that ExxonMobil’s public support for a carbon tax is underpinned by the conviction it will never happen, allowing the company to “support” it in order to appear green.

He said: “I will tell you there is not an appetite for a carbon tax. It is a non-starter. Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans. And the cynical side of me says yeah we kind of know that. But it gives us a talking point. We can say well what is ExxonMobil for? Well we’re for a carbon tax.

“Carbon tax is not gonna happen. I have always said, and I’ve worked on climate change issues for twenty years. There’s a lot of talk around it and the bottom line is it’s going to take political courage, political will in order to get something done. And that just doesn’t exist in politics. It just doesn’t.

Purporting to speak on behalf of ExxonMobil, Mr McCoy also expressed a corporate view that, contrary to science,natural gas is a clean energy source.

He said: “On a clean electricity standard, we think natural gas will play a key role in anything. And not just as a bridge fuel. We think it is a low emission energy source and should be part of a clean electricity standard.”

ExxonMobil statement

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil told Channel 4 News:  “Greenpeace has waged a multi-decade campaign against our company and industry, which has included false claims and unlawful actions at our facilities as well as those of other companies around the world.

“Our lobbying efforts are related to a tax burden that could disadvantage U.S. businesses, and we have made that position known publicly. ExxonMobil stands by our position thatincreased taxes on American businesses make the U.S. less competitive.

“We have been clear in supporting an efficient, economy-wide price on carbon as the best way to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.While there is not broad support for a tax, we are actively and publicly discussing other options, including lower-carbon fuels and other sector-based approaches that would place a uniform, predictable cost on carbon.

“We have supported climate science for decades.Greenpeace and others have distorted our position on climate science and our support for effective policy solutions.

”ExxonMobil transparently engages with a variety of trade associations, think tanks and coalitions in order to promote informed dialogue and sound public policy in areas pertinent to the Corporation’s interests.

“ExxonMobil exercises its right to engage in lobbying in the United States at both the Federal and State levels to advocate our positions on issues that affect our Corporation and the energy industry.

“We have a responsibility to our customers, employees, communities and shareholders to represent their interests in public policy discussions that impact our business.

“Our lobbying efforts fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed on a quarterly basis, including the issues we discuss.”

no lnx docs see bomb train

https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/09/exxon-tapes-american-petroleum-institutes-lobbying-oil-trains/

Senior ExxonMobil lobbyists were recently exposed by undercover reporting from UnEarthed, an investigative journalism project of Greenpeace, which captured footage of the employees explaining how the oil giant influences policy makers using trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute (API).

The undercover footage revealed Exxon lobbyists boasting about wins for the company under the Trump administration and admitting to continued efforts to sow doubt about climate change and undermine action to tackle the crisis.

The recordings also confirmed the findings of years of DeSmog research on API’s lobbying tactics. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” Keith McCoy, a senior director in ExxonMobil’s Washington, D.C. government affairs team, told the undercover reporter Lawrence Carter. “Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. You know, we were looking out for our investments; we were looking out for our shareholders.”

These revelations exposed by UnEarthed and first published by Channel 4 News help shed light on API’s lobbying strategies, particularly when it comes to transporting oil by rail. The rise of fracking in 2009 created a transportation problem in U.S. regions like North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, which lacked sufficient pipelines and other infrastructure to move the sudden glut of oil. In response, the oil industry started ramping up transport of its products by train around 2012, but several high-profile fires and explosions of these oil trains also followed, starting in July 2013.

DeSmog’s coverage of the years-long process of creating new oil train regulations in the wake of 2013’s deadly Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, oil train disaster documented the tactics described byExxon lobbyist Keith McCoy — and revealed just how effective the company is at watering down efforts by regulatory agencies to protect the public and environment. [twt pix]

after years of covering the regulatory process governing oil trains, one fact stood out: API was almost always leading the process. Even though the process was supposed to be about improving rail safety, the oil industry played the dominant role. Exxon representatives were rarely seen in the many public Congressional or regulatory agency hearings and did not take a public role in fighting the regulations. However, as DeSmog reported, Exxon was meeting in private with federal regulators and arguing against stronger regulations on oil trains.

Much of my book Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk highlights how API successfully uses “The Hill” — i.e. Congress —  to stop regulation and describes the central role the organization plays, as noted in this passage in which National Transportation Safety Board Chair Deborah Hersman asks API representative Lee Johnson when safer rail tank cars could be expected:

In Congressional hearings, at rail industry conferences, and in funding supposedly independent studies of the issue, it was always API dictating what happened on “The Hill.”

As revealed by UnEarthed, Exxon lobbyist McCoy spelled out how it works in the recently released recordings:

“So you start to build out a coalition of associations. Now, companies feed into that privately where we have meetings, but the public face of it are the associations: they go to the Hill, they have these conversations.”

Exxon was rarely mentioned in the oil-by-rail regulatory process even though API was omnipresent. However, as McCoy noted, Exxon is directing API. On the tapes, he described how it worked, saying, “And so the API staff person who worked on that issue, We’d say, you know, ‘Hey Tom, you need to go to The Hill and you need to have a conversation with the committee.’”

This is similar to what Scott Sheffield, CEO of U.S. oil company Pioneer Resources, said in 2020 when he told CNBC that it was Exxon leading discussions on a possible industry bailout and that Exxon “controls the API.”

Exxon’s Slide from a 2014 presentation to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Arguing Against Thicker Tank Shells for Oil Tank Cars

On the tapes released by UnEarthed, McCoy also mentioned another tactic, in this instance regarding the “forever chemicals” PFAS, that trade groups like API also employed to fight oil-by-rail safety regulations and even have repealed the regulations that the Department of Transportation approved in 2015. As UnEarthed reported:

“McCoy claimed that an Exxon-instigated advocacy push had delayed tighter regulations on PFAS by successfully lobbying for a government study of the chemicals.”

These studies are often commissioned by Congress, take years to complete, and then often are used to prevent or repeal regulations.

The reason oil-by-rail needed new regulations is because oil trains kept blowing up when they derailed — with five oil train derailments resulting in large fires by the time API representative Lee Johnson began downplaying the risks of these trains in the 2014 hearings on new regulations In the idyllic town of Lac-Mégantic, that disaster resulted in the death of 47 people. Those people died because the Bakken oil being transported by rail is highly volatile and flammable. The science is very clear on this.

This week was the 8th anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic disaster. Yet today, that highly volatile and flammable oil is still being moved by rail, in part because API fought regulations and won. How? By pushing for more studies of the issue as a delay tactic.

A year after the 2013 accident, oil industry associations funded two studies which were held up as evidence by API CEO Jack Gerard that the volatile Bakken oil shouldn’t be regulated to reduce the risk of explosions and fires in derailments.

“It is essential to separate fact from fiction as we work to enhance the safe transportation of crude oil,” API CEO Jack Gerard said in 2014, “Multiple studies have now debunked the idea that Bakken crude is meaningfully different than other crudes.”

This statement has no basis in science. But it worked to stop proposed regulation and it was helped by a study requested by Congress that was released in mid-2105. The study was immediately touted by API as more proof that Bakken oil should not be regulated.

The API press release at the time stated: “The Department of Energy found no data showing correlation between crude oil properties and the likelihood or severity of a fire caused by a derailment.”

This video shows two members of Congress reading prepared statements in a hearing that used API’s language about that study’s conclusion, word for word [vid hardy]

it should be no surprise that these tactics, first employed by the tobacco industry, were also adopted by other lobbyists, including oil and rail industry lobbyists.

As DeSmog reported, in 2017 the rail industry was able to get regulations requiring modern braking systems for trains repealed based on another congressionally requested study. This government-funded study, however, did not accurately reflect the science on the issue. In this case, the rail industry had even touted the known science for years before reversing course and insisting to the public and lawmakers that it was not valid.

In 2016, Suzanne Lemieux, a representative of the American Petroleum Institute, spoke at an energy-by-rail conference. She argued against the idea that the volatile oil being transported by rail needed to be regulated in a presentation titled, “Crude Oil Volatility: Myth vs. Fact.”

Her message was quite clear.

“I would say that all of these conversations about [how] Bakken is inherently more dangerous, it’s more volatile, etcetera, etcetera, those things from a chemical properties perspective just aren’t true. And so we in the oil and gas industry see this as a very dangerous conversation.”

Forty seven people died because of the oil industry’s dangerous product. However, API took the position that even discussing how to avoid a repeat of the oil train explosion at Lac-Megantic was too dangerous of a conversation to have.

And it worked.

DeSmog contacted Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute inquiring if the two coordinated efforts to influence oil-by-rail regulations.

“As a member-driven organization, we collaborate across our membership on a wide range of policy issues, from advancing smart and effective regulations and strong standards for rail safety to advocating for lower-carbon solutions to tackle climate change,” said API spokeswoman Bethany Aronhalt via email.  “We also continue to advocate for modernized pipeline infrastructure, which is the safest most efficient way to deliver the energy Americans rely on every single day.”

Exxon did not respond other than to ask for specific questions, which were provided, but not answered.

For much greater detail on how the oil-by-rail regulatory process unfolded, read Chapter 4, “Follow the Money,” of my book Bomb Trains, which dives into API’s role in the process.     https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chapter-4-Follow-The-Money.pdf

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exxon-lobbyist-duped-by-greenpeace-says-climate-policy-was-ploy-ceo-condemns-2021-06-30/

wASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - A lobbyist for Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) said the company supports a carbon tax publicly because the plan to curb climate change would never gain enough political support to be adopted, according to an interview aired on Wednesday.

Britain's Channel 4 network aired the interview ofsenior Washington-based lobbyist Keith McCoy it obtained from an investigative arm of environmental campaigner Greenpeace UK, in footage that drew the ire of Exxon's chairman and chief executive.

Greenpeace activists posed as headhunters to conduct separate Zoom interviews with McCoy and a former Washington lobbyist for Exxon, Dan Easley.

"There is not an appetite for a carbon tax. It's a nonstarter," McCoy said to the Greenpeace activists. "And the cynical side of me says, 'Yeah, we kind of know that.' But it gives us a talking point."

McCoy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He said on LinkedIn he was "deeply embarrassed by my comments and that I allowed myself to fall for Greenpeace’s deception." He apologized to colleagues at Exxon in that post.

Darren Woods, Exxon's chairman and chief executive, had sharp words on McCoy's comments. "We condemn the statements and are deeply apologetic for them, including comments regarding interactions with elected officials," Woods said in a release.

"We were shockedby these interviews and stand by our commitments to working on finding solutions to climate change," Woods said.

Asked whether McCoy faces disciplinary action, Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton declined to comment saying it was a private personnel matter.

The footage comes a month after Exxon shareholders, frustrated by weak returns and the U.S. oil company's record on climate change, shook up the company when they elected three of four nominated directors from activist shareholder Engine No. 1 to Exxon's board. read more

ExxonMobil in 2018 touted its investment of $1 million over two years into a carbon tax advocacy campaign in Congress. Its annual lobbying budget is $12 million.

Exxon Director Ursula Burns said at a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas virtual event this month that the company's response to environmental criticisms "has not been well done." read more

McCoy and Easley spoke candidly to the Greenpeace activists on their strategies and positions on a range of issues,including President Joe Biden's initial $2 trillion infrastructure package, which they said they worked on to remove major climate provisions and push back against proposals to raise corporate taxes.

Easley said the Biden infrastructure plan contained clean energy measures that would "accelerate the transition that I think four years from now - it is going to be difficult to unwind them."

Easley, whose LinkedIn page says he started a new job in February, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

not much info, but this is just 2019

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/lobbyists/summary?cycle=2019&id=Y0000045819L

Issues Lobbied by Keith Mccoy, 2019

Showing 1 to 25 of 35 entries

2021

Bills Lobbied by Keith Mccoy, 2019