Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
To everyone keeping score at home, you can mark this up as Putin’s payback for election intervention. The nomination of Rex Tillerson has revealed with startling clarity that our government is being set up to support the interests of Big Oil and Putin, not the American people or the planet. Now more than ever, we demand a Separation of Oil and State.
The news from over the weekend that President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of Exxon, the world’s largest private oil company as Secretary of State, is a clear sign that we face an unprecedented battle against the environmental movement in the years to come.
The world’s largest listed oil company, Exxon, announced on Friday it was going to have to cut its reported proved reserves by just under a fifth. It is the biggest reserve revision in the history of the oil industry.
Earlier this week it was announced that we had entered a new era of “climate change reality”, with scientists warning that carbon dioxide has permanently passed the symbolic threshold of 400 ppm.
“The American people will wake up tomorrow morning shaking their heads when they learn that a small group of radical Republican house members is trying to block a serious law enforcement investigation of potential fraud at Exxon.”
The boss of oil giant Exxon, Rex Tillerson, will be an "oil man" until the day he dies. And on yesterday’s performance at the company’s AGM this old oil dinosaur is not going green anytime soon.
The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is that "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Another certainty is that you know that the top executives of controversial companies absolutely hate the one day in the year that they are accountable to their shareholders: the AGM.
For twenty five years there has been one company that beyond all others has tried to undermine the UN Climate talks. For those twenty five years it has obfuscated the truth about climate by pouring millions into the funding of a network of climate sceptic and denial think tanks and politicians.
One of the most detailed studies of climate denial has concluded what many researchers have long known - that funding by the fossil fuel industry created a corrosive “ecosystem of influence” on both the content and language of the climate debate, especially in the US.
To start with one huge, massive, significant step forward. Victories do not come sweeter than this. After years of campaigning by millions of people from grass-roots activists, First Nations, farmers and ranchers to environmental groups such as Oil Change International, Sierra Club, 350.org and many others, President Obama announced on Friday that the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline is dead.
