ExxonMobil and its fellow oil giants have spent the last two years telling investors that carbon-capture is their ticket to net-zero, justifying billions of dollars in tax credits via the Inflation Reduction Act. But a new Wall Street Journal deep-dive reveals a rebellion inside the industry itself. Texas shale billionaire Bud “Ben” Brigham and pro-fossil-fuel philosopher Alex Epstein are leading a campaign to kill these generous subsidies, arguing they waste taxpayer money and prop up bad policy.
Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum and other oil giants are expected to receive billions of dollars of incentives to collect and bury carbon emissions. Texas oil billionaire Ben “Bud” Brigham and pro-fossil-fuels activist Alex Epstein want to turn off the tap.
Brigham…is urging President Trump and the Republicans who are considering slashing a host of energy incentives to go further and nix tax credits for carbon capture. He says there is no climate disaster on the horizon, and that funneling public money into a nascent technology is a gift to oil behemoths.
“It’s just taxpayer dollars that are going to virtue-signaling and are not having any meaningful economic impact at all,” Brigham said in an interview.
Policy risk is now bipartisan. If a future GOP-controlled Congress yanks or shrinks carbon capture credits, Exxon’s flagship Houston Hub and Occidental’s Stratos project could lose their primary revenue streams—turning billion-dollar assets into stranded costs.
Executive incentives may be misaligned. Exxon’s current pay plan rewards top brass for cutting the company’s reported greenhouse-gas footprint. Subsidized carbon capture is the easiest way to rack up those “reductions,” whether or not the projects ever make economic sense.
Reputational whiplash. Environmentalists call carbon capture a “license to pollute,” while free-market stalwarts like Brigham and Epstein slam it as corporate welfare. Management is caught in the cross-fire, pleasing no one and risking more political scrutiny.
NLPC warned about this very scenario. At Exxon’s 2024 annual meeting, NLPC presented a “Revisit Executive Pay Incentives for Greenhouse-Gas Emission Reductions” shareholder proposal. We argued that tying bonuses to headline carbon cuts—without requiring a clear return on capital—encourages costly vanity projects and hides true risk from investors. To no surprise, under CEO and Chair Darren Wood‘s leadership, Exxon has supported the climate alarmism that lines his pockets.
The WSJ’s report vindicates our concern. If Capitol Hill reverses course, the same executives will have been paid handsomely for targets achieved with subsidies that may disappear overnight, leaving shareholders to absorb the write-downs. But the executive team will not care; They have already been paid.
The Brigham-Epstein insurgency exposes a flaw in Big Oil’s carbon-capture narrative: When profit depends more on lobbyists than on physics, the rug can be pulled at any time. NLPC will continue to push Exxon to realign executive incentives with genuine, unsubsidized value creation—so investors aren’t left holding the bag if today’s “green” giveaways become tomorrow’s fiscal restraint.
(Top AI image: Darren Woods)
