ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum have put themselves in a bind. They committed to climate policies under the Biden administration that they can no longer sustain under President Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Big Oil has a tough balancing act: Help further President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda and stick to its climate goals at the same time.
The Trump administration has made undoing climate rules a cornerstone of its energy policy. One of its objectives is to bring production costs down and motivate drillers to unleash a torrent of fossil fuels.
Trump ordered that the U.S. withdraw from the Paris climate agreement—the international accord to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius—and gutted much of former President Joe Biden’s signature climate law. His administration is moving to rescind a bedrock climate tool the government has used to curb emissions.
The escalating assault on climate initiatives puts large drillers such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum in an awkward posture. They have pledged to curb their emissions—and unveiled plans to spend billions of dollars on low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels.
Touting their sustainability goals too much risks antagonizing the administration, which is pressuring drillers to pump more. But dialing them back could put them in the crosshairs of a future administration that follows the scientific consensus on climate change, and could ultimately cost them more money.
Some of Trump’s influential allies have been frustrated with oil-and-gas chief executives who have mentioned emissions-reduction efforts in meetings, according to people familiar with the matter. Some Republicans see Big Oil’s investment in low-carbon technologies as a cynical cash-grab.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said that Trump promised to unleash American energy, and that Biden imposed regulations that stifled the oil-and-gas industry.
We can’t say we didn’t warn them. In May 2024, NLPC presented shareholder proposals at ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips urging them to remove emissions reduction goals from their executive compensation formulations, citing the declining feasibility of net zero goals without government subsidies that could soon end under the Trump administration (who led former President Biden in national polls at the time). We were ahead of the curve on both President Trump’s election and climate policy reversal.
Exxon CEO and Chair Darren Woods responded by warning Mr. Trump not to abandon the Paris agreement, even though Exxon seemingly opposes climate regulations. So we called for his resignation, and opposed his reelection to his board seat at Exxon’s 2025 annual meeting. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t learned:
“‘We’re very aggressively pursuing management of those emissions,’ Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in an interview earlier this summer. ‘That doesn’t change with the political party in office.'”
The oil majors will eventually have to abandon their emissions reduction goals. If they don’t, shareholders will not realize the financial benefits from their investments due to these executives’ prioritization of political favoritism over fiduciary wisdom.
