Exxon CEO tells shareholders it’s a waste of time and money to conduct study on oil spill devastation from Guyana to 12 Caribbean countries

Jul 30, 2023 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

“…creating an additional report as requested by this proposal would place an unnecessary administrative burden on ExxonMobil, be wasteful of the Company’s time and resources, and therefore is not in the best interests of shareholders. For the reasons stated above, the Board recommends a vote against this proposal.”- ExxonMobil CEO

Kaieteur News – The possibility of an oil spill affecting at least 12 Caribbean states as a result of a major incident in Guyana, owing to the production activities by ExxonMobil in the Stabroek Block has been a concern for Shareholders of the company.

CEO, ExxonMobil Corporation, Darren Woods

Following a High Court ruling in May this year, Mercy Investment Services Inc., a Shareholder in the company submitted a proposal seeking support for a thorough assessment to be conducted of the likely impacts to the Caribbean islands.

In their petition for an ‘Additional Report on Worst-case Spill and Response Plans’ Mercy Investment Services, Inc, pointedly noted that “ExxonMobil operates one of the largest oil plays discovered in the past decade, offshore of the South American country Guyana.”

Moreover, it highlighted that after discovering oil in 2015, development proceeded rapidly, with production commencing in 2019, with capacity expected to exceed one million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030.

Of specific concern to Mercy Investment Services Inc. is the fact that production has peaked above the safety threshold. It was keen to note that, “Caribbean countries rely on tourism and fishing industries to support their economies, yet ExxonMobil’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) characterizes residual risk to employment as minor and assumes that a large oil spill is unlikely.”

To this end, the Shareholders requested that the Company issues a report evaluating the economic, human, and environmental impacts of a worst-case oil spill from its operations offshore of Guyana. It noted that the report should be prepared at reasonable expense, omit proprietary or privileged information, and clarify the extent of the Company’s cleanup response commitments given the potential for severe impact on Caribbean economies.

In dismissing the need for such an assessment, ExxonMobil told its Shareholders such a study would be a waste of the company’s time and resources.

During the company’s Annual Shareholder Meeting in May, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Darren Woods told the Shareholders to vote against the proposal.

He pointed out, “Given the comprehensive materials that are publicly available on our website, including our preparedness plan and the EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessments) related to our Guyana operations, creating an additional report as requested by this proposal would place an unnecessary administrative burden on ExxonMobil, be wasteful of the Company’s time and resources, and therefore is not in the best interests of shareholders. For the reasons stated above, the Board recommends a vote against this proposal.”

It must be noted that the petition by Mercy Investment Services Inc. was defeated as majority of the oil giant’s Shareholders voted against the proposal.

A recent Impact Assessment showed that an unmitigated oil spill can reach Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Martinique, and Barbados as well as Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.

The document explained, “An unmitigated oil spill from either of the loss-of-well-control events during both modelled seasons is expected to travel in a west-north-westerly route through the Gulf of Paria and the southern and eastern coasts of Trinidad and Tobago. This scenario would expose the northern coast of South America and the southern Lesser Antilles to the bulk of the exposure to oiling.”