15 descen­dants push for renew­able energy, cuts in warm­ing emissions

MSNBC News Services

NEW YORK — Mem­bers of the Rock­e­feller fam­ily, descended from the founder of what became Exxon Mobil Corp., chal­lenged the oil giant Wednes­day to focus more on renew­able sources of energy.

They also seek to estab­lish a task force study of the con­se­quences of global warm­ing on poor economies, and called on Exxon to reduce green­house gas emis­sion at its own operations.

Exxon is “prof­it­ing in the short term from invest­ments and deci­sions made many years ago by focus­ing on the nar­row path that ignores the rapidly shift­ing energy land­scape around the world, includ­ing devel­op­ing nations,” said Neva Rock­e­feller Good­win, a great grand­daugh­ter of John D. Rockefeller.

The fam­ily mem­bers, who describe them­selves as the company’s longest con­tin­u­ous share­hold­ers, said they are con­cerned that the Irv­ing, Texas-based com­pany is too focused on short-term gains from soar­ing oil prices and should do more to invest in cleaner tech­nol­ogy for the future.

“They are fight­ing the last war and they’re not see­ing they’re fac­ing a new war,” said Peter O’Neill, who heads the Rock­e­feller Fam­ily com­mit­tee deal­ing with Exxon Mobil and is the great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller.

He said he had the sup­port of more than 80 per­cent of fam­ily mem­bers over the age of 21. Fam­ily rep­re­sen­ta­tives said it was a sig­nif­i­cant hold­ing for the Rock­e­fellers but that they were not sure how much of the com­pany they actu­ally own collectively.

Exxon Mobil was formed by the com­bi­na­tion of two off­spring of John D. Rockefeller’s Stan­dard Oil Trust. It is now the world’s largest pub­licly traded oil company.

Mem­bers of the fam­ily said they have spon­sored four proxy res­o­lu­tions this year that raised con­cerns about the company’s lead­er­ship under Chair­man and Chief Exec­u­tive Rex Tiller­son. They also said they have spent years behind the scenes prod­ding the com­pany to change its approach to the oil business.

‘Try­ing to keep a giant ... from falling’
The fam­ily and its allies decided to take their case pub­lic, they said, because they believe future energy will come from sources other than oil and nat­ural gas, and say the com­pany needs to move more quickly into sus­tain­able tech­nol­ogy to secure its long-term viability.

“We all know the say­ing: The big­ger they are, the harder they fall,” said Con­necti­cut State Trea­surer Denise Nap­pier, who over­sees a pen­sion fund that holds $300 mil­lion in Exxon Mobil stock — its largest sin­gle equity invest­ment. She spoke at a press con­fer­ence along­side the Rockefellers.

“We are try­ing to keep a giant — and it truly is a giant in the oil and gas indus­try — from falling,” Nap­pier said.

Good­win called on Exxon to recon­nect with the forward-looking vision of her great grandfather.

“Kerosene was the alter­na­tive energy of its day when he real­ized it could replace whale oil,” she said. “Part of John D. Rockefeller’s genius was in rec­og­niz­ing early the need and oppor­tu­nity for a tran­si­tion to a bet­ter, cheaper and cleaner fuel.”

Huge profit expected
The calls for reform came one day before Exxon Mobil was expected to report first-quarter earn­ings of more than $11 bil­lion, accord­ing to accord­ing to a sur­vey by Thom­son Finan­cial. Thanks to rapidly ris­ing oil prices, that is con­sid­er­ably more than the com­pany earned a year ear­lier, and could even top Exxon Mobil’s own record for the biggest quar­terly profit in U.S. history.

The company’s board is rec­om­mend­ing share­hold­ers vote against a pro­posal to split the role of chair­man and CEO. In a recent proxy state­ment filed with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, the board said “that the most effec­tive lead­er­ship struc­ture for Exxon Mobil Cor­po­ra­tion at the present time is for Mr. Tiller­son to serve as both Chair­man and CEO.”

Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt Wal­ton said the com­pany has met with mem­bers of the Rock­e­feller fam­ily on mul­ti­ple occa­sions and “respects the rights of all share­hold­ers to make their views known,” but that it does not com­ment on details of meet­ings with shareholders.

The stock is up more than 63 per­cent since Tiller­son became CEO on Jan. 1, 2006, com­pared with a gain of 11.4 per­cent for the broad S&P 500 index over the same period.