HOUSTON — Darren W. Woods hardly ever makes headlines regardless that he's the chief govt of Exxon Mobil, the oil firm that some folks contemplate
HOUSTON — Darren W. Woods hardly ever makes headlines regardless that he’s the chief govt of Exxon Mobil, the oil firm that some folks contemplate a high environmental villain and others consider as a significant engine of the U.S. financial system.
Few have taken significantly, and even seen, that he’s starting to make guarantees to reply to local weather change, which is on the very least a rhetorical break from his predecessors if not a substantive one.
“What society calls for, and appropriately so, is reasonably priced, dependable vitality that doesn’t have the emissions related to right now’s vitality programs,” he stated on Tuesday. “We’re engaged on that evolution.”
Whereas which may look like a guarded assertion, Mr. Woods, a soft-spoken electrical engineer from Wichita, Kan., is clearly altering the tone of the corporate, which he took over 4 years in the past. The Texas swagger employed by his predecessors, one among whom brazenly dismissed considerations about local weather change, has changed into one thing vaguely philosophical.
In an interview meant to be a curtain raiser to an annual presentation that executives will supply monetary analysts and traders on Wednesday, Mr. Woods, 56, waxed poetic in regards to the historical past of expertise and the vitality business and even urged there was frequent floor between his plans to scale back emissions and President Biden’s efforts to battle local weather change. He went as far as to vow that Exxon would attempt to set a objective for not emitting extra greenhouse gases than it faraway from the environment, although he stated it was nonetheless troublesome to say when which may occur.
“We’re supportive of that ambition, and our objective is to assist society to realize it,” Mr. Woods stated. “Frankly, the popularity of the problem is constant to develop. It’s an evolving dialog that I discover very useful to suppose by what must occur.”
Below strain from activist traders, Exxon stated this week that it was including two new administrators with no earlier ties to fossil fuels to its board. The corporate not too long ago stated it might create a brand new enterprise that captured carbon dioxide from industrial vegetation and buried it deep within the floor. It additionally not too long ago invested in International Thermostat, an organization that goals to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
In fact, many individuals are deeply skeptical in regards to the firm’s plans and motives. In contrast to executives of European oil corporations, Mr. Woods shouldn’t be slicing investments in oil and gasoline in favor of spending cash on wind and solar energy. He steered away from commenting on BP’s pledge final yr to chop its web emissions to zero by 2050.
“In contrast to their large oil rivals which have begun taking motion on local weather change, Woods and Exxon Mobil proceed to reside in a fairy story world of inaction whereas California burns and Texas freezes,” stated Peter Krull, chief govt of Earth Fairness Advisors, a analysis and funding agency specializing in sustainability.
After spending practically three many years with an organization historically identified for its insularity, inflexible tradition and public indifference to world warming, Mr. Woods urged that he was able to steer it onto a unique course, albeit regularly.
With Exxon’s inventory value nonetheless decrease than it was a decade in the past, many traders have demanded no much less.
“My interplay with traders is a mirrored image of what I’d say are the broader traits of society,” Mr. Woods stated.
Mr. Woods’s 4 years as chief govt have spanned a rocky time for the business. Oil and gasoline costs have bounced up and down a number of occasions lately. And final yr, demand for petroleum merchandise collapsed because the coronavirus pandemic took maintain. Exxon misplaced $22.four billion in 2020, a lot of it from write-downs of belongings the corporate acquired at wealthy costs earlier than Mr. Woods took over.
However in latest weeks, oil and gasoline costs have recovered, and Exxon and its inventory are doing higher. Mr. Woods stated revenues had been flowing once more, permitting the corporate to scale back debt and pay for future initiatives. The corporate’s dividend, which it had raised yearly for practically 4 many years, now seems to be secure from being minimize.
What Exxon isn’t doing is spending a lot of its fortune on companies or concepts designed to sharply cut back emissions. It’s spending simply $Three billion by 2025 on capturing carbon from industrial vegetation — a small faction of the $16 billion to $19 billion it plans to spend on oil exploration and capital initiatives this yr.
Mr. Woods stated he would search extra change by researching breakthrough applied sciences. However a lot of them stay years or many years away from having a big effect on emissions.
“Till we all know the trail and what’s going to be required and what the options are, it’s exhausting to know,” he stated. “What we are able to do is decide to determine that out, and as soon as we discover the solutions you’d see us start to commit and really be on the trail towards web zero.”
Whereas Exxon is investing in vitality effectivity initiatives, biofuels and hydrogen, Mr. Woods expressed explicit enthusiasm for his firm’s 20 carbon seize and storage initiatives. Whereas the expertise has but to change into extensively deployed as a result of it is vitally costly, Mr. Woods and Exxon scientists argue that it might play an essential position in decreasing emissions from cement and metal manufacturing and different industrial processes that can’t simply run on renewable vitality.
“Carbon seize and storage goes to be wanted,” he stated.
He even urged that “there may be actually the potential” that Exxon’s carbon seize and storage program might match neatly with Mr. Biden’s insurance policies and targets.
“Coverage help and the best regulatory framework to help these investments are wanted and are going to be essential,” Mr. Woods stated. “We wish to interact with them in that dialog. You’re going to want allowing for investments. You’re going to want pipeline programs, laws, and regulatory reform and authorized frameworks for storing CO2.”
Mr. Biden has expressed help for carbon seize and sequestration. It’s one environmental coverage that would achieve the backing of congressional Republicans, though many liberal Democrats aren’t eager on it as a result of they see it as prolonging using fossil fuels.
Many local weather scientists are deeply skeptical that the expertise might be deployed on the scale wanted to make a giant dent in emissions. Some vitality executives share that skepticism.
Charif Souki, the chief chairman of Tellurian, a liquefied pure gasoline firm, stated carbon seize was one among many probably promising applied sciences to fight local weather change. However he added, “There isn’t any environment friendly strategy to do it on the size that’s essential to accommodate what we have to do.”
However Mr. Woods stated he was optimistic in regards to the path Exxon had chosen. “It’s very troublesome to foretell when a breakthrough goes to happen,” he stated, “however for those who look again in time, they occur persistently.”