Another sign that a new era of energy is actually foreseeable came last week, when members of the Rockefeller family took a stand against the long-term business plan of Exxon Mobil.
The oil company has always earned tremendous profits, but never more than now — $21.6 billion just since October. The company’s announced intentions over the coming decades could be interpreted thusly: With this kind of money rolling in, why change?
That’s just the kind of nearsighted business philosophy that will see the company surpassed by competitors in the near future, Peter O’Neill says.
The great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, O’Neil heads the committee that oversees the Rockefeller family’s considerable investments in Exxon Mobil.
John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Trust in 1870. After decades of the company’s monopolizing the U.S. oil business, the federal government in 1904 divided it into 34 separate companies.
Most of the major U.S. oil companies today, including Exxon Mobil, are derivatives of that split-up.
O’Neil and Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, John D.’s great-grandaughter, went public Wednesday with a campaign they’ve been waging internally at Exxon Mobil for the past five years, centered on their conviction that the oil company must begin investing heavily in renewable energy and alternative fuels.
“I have a world of respect for what the company has done well,” O’Neill said. “In fact, if the next 20 years of the energy business were just going to be about oil and gas, we probably wouldn’t be here today.”
O’Neil and his committee, which he said has the support of more than 80 percent of Rockefeller family members over the age of 21, are not alone in pressuring Exxon Mobil to significantly invest in renewable energy.
Connecticut’s state pension fund, for example, has $300 million invested in Exxon Mobil stock. The state’s treasurer, Denise Nappier, expressed concern that the stock could lose value unless the company commits to the energy of the near future. “We are trying to keep a giant — and it truly is a giant in the oil and gas industry — from falling,” she told the Associated Press.
The Rockefeller committee has drafted several resolutions that will be voted on at the company’s May 28 annual meeting. All are directed at positioning the company for the coming energy era, in which there will be increasingly less demand for oil and gas and increasingly more demand for cleaner renewable energies.
We hope Exxon Mobil’s board of directors has as much foresight as the Rockefellers.
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