L. A. Times: As lawsuits over climate change heat up, oil industry steps up spurious attacks on its critics

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig, aflame in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The rig's owner, BP, is one of more than 20 oil companies being sued over their alleged role in climate change. (Gerald Herbert / AP)

by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2019

The oil industry has been depicting itself lately as the target of a conspiracy by scientists, local government officials and climate change activists to make it look bad.

It would be odd to think that a conspiracy is necessary to punch holes in the fossil fuel companies’ public reputation, but here’s the argument presented by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), one of the industry’s leading lobby organizations.

“In a highly-coordinated move,” the IPAA declares on its website, “nearly 30 scientists, government officials and third-party organizations recently joined the fledgling climate litigation campaign.” The IPAA labeled this a “free-for-all” and quoted an industry newsletter calling the campaign “a carefully orchestrated effort by local governments in California and elsewhere to use state law to collect damages from companies producing and marketing fossil fuels.”

If you think this sounds like a Goliath pretending to be a David, you are right. The litigation campaign IPAA refers to is a cluster of lawsuits pioneered in 2017 by the California counties of San Mateo, Imperial Beach, Marin, and Santa Cruz, and the cities of Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco, among other jurisdictions, against more than 20 oil and gas companies.

The plaintiffs assert that the companies freely promoted the use of their products even though they were aware of the products’ effect on global warming — information the industry allegedly suppressed for years. The municipalities are asking that the companies be forced to help pay for the damage wreaked by climate change, including drought, wildfires, sea level rise, and extremes of heat and precipitation. Since the filing of the California cases, similar lawsuits have been filed by Rhode Island, Washington’s King County (that is, Seattle), Baltimore, and New York City.

The oil companies succeeded in transferring the state lawsuits to federal court, where they expect to face less liability under the law. The plaintiffs’ argument that the cases belong back in state court is being heard by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

What has the industry vibrating at the moment is a sheaf of eight friend-of-the-court, or amicus, briefs all filed on January 29, 2019, with the appellate court supporting the transfer back to state court. Among other parties, the briefs were filed by the California Assn. of Counties, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group of six prominent oil company critics, and the National League of Cities.

To the industry, this looks like a cabal. In a blog post, the IPAA found something sinister in “the fact that all eight of the briefs were filed within hours of one another on a random January afternoon (i.e. there wasn’t a court-designated deadline).” Not only was that “reason enough to suspect some level of coordination took place,” the blog post observes, but “signing onto the amicus briefs were many of the activists and politicians who have played key roles in the broader campaign to take down the oil and natural gas industry for years.”

A couple of points are pertinent here. First of all, there was indeed a court-designated deadline for filing the briefs — January 29, the day they were filed. The court’s procedural calendar specifies that amicus briefs must be filed no later than seven days after the main brief of the party they’re supporting. The California plaintiffs filed their brief on January 22, seven days earlier. So much for the “coordination.”

Second, why should it be so odd that the supporters of the cities and counties are drawn from the community of fossil fuel critics? Who else?

Let’s examine some of the industry’s other points. Among the chief targets of its pushback are Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, who filed one of the amicus briefs, in conjunction with four other scholars with interest in climate change science.

Oreskes and Supran were the authors of a 2017 study detailing the industry’s determined, decades-long effort to suppress scientific evidence of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, despite warnings by its own scientific researchers that the phenomenon was genuine, dangerous, and accelerating. 

We reported here on their study, which focused on Exxon Mobil. They compared hundreds of Exxon Mobil's internal reports and peer-reviewed research papers with its advertising — especially paid "advertorials" the company placed in the op-ed section of the New York Times from 1972 through 2001. The authors concluded that Exxon Mobil had systematically "misled non-scientific audiences about climate science."

The IPAA blog post claims that the Oreskes-Supran study has been debunked, but that’s not so. Their statistical method was questioned by another researcher, who was paid by Exxon Mobil. But the core of their findings wasn’t statistical but empirical. They compared internal company documents with the ad campaign and found them wildly divergent.

Oreskes, in an email, labeled the so-called debunking “the sort of expert-for-hire doubt-mongering” engaged in by the tobacco industry when it was fighting medical science over the dangers of smoking. That’s a topic she’s familiar with, having covered it in the 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt,” co-written with Erik M. Conway.

It’s hardly surprising that the oil industry would be uneasy about the “fledgling climate litigation campaign.” The plaintiffs aim to use state laws to fix blame on the fossil fuel companies in ways that can’t be accomplished under federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act.

Indeed, federal law vests the states with primary responsibility for addressing air pollution, according to Victor Sher, the San Francisco attorney representing the counties and cities. “Cases involving false and deceptive marketing, over-promotion of products, campaigns to deceive the public — those are traditional state police power matters that the Clean Air Act doesn’t address at all.”

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco largely agreed last March, when he ordered the lawsuits returned to state court. The oil companies appealed his order, which is why it’s now before the 9th Circuit bench.

The municipalities also are hoping to take advantage of California’s “public nuisance” doctrine, which holds that business can be held responsible for damage done by its products even if their usage was standard practice at the time.

The public nuisance argument was central to a lawsuit brought by California municipalities against lead paint manufacturers that concluded in 2017 with an order that the companies pay to clean up residual lead in dwellings that could pose a health hazard to children in those homes.

There’s no question that the cities and counties face a long and arduous road to saddling the oil industry with the responsibility for climate change and the expense of addressing its impacts. The lead paint lawsuit lasted 17 years before the verdict was made final.

But there’s also no question that the industry did its best to hide what it knew about the prospects of global warming and its products’ role in it. The latest misleading attack on its critics shows, if nothing else, that it still hasn’t learned to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-climate-change-lawsuits-20190212-story.html

Exxon misled the public about climate change, Harvard study shows

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUST 23, 2017

CONTACT:

Kyle Moler

kmoler@mrss.com

O: 202-478-6173

C: 772-321-4301

Exxon misled the public about climate change, Harvard study shows

Cambridge, MA — In the first comprehensive, academically peer-reviewed analysis of ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of climate-change communications, researchers at Harvard University have concluded that the company has misled the public about climate change.

A review of 187 public and internal Exxon documents found that, accounting for reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers authored by Exxon scientists and 80% of the company’s internal communications acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused. In contrast, only 12% of Exxon’s advertorials directed at the public do so, with 81% instead expressing doubt.

“On the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did,” says the academic study published today by Drs. Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in the journal Environmental Research Letters. [Link to paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f or bit.ly/ExxonPaper. Paper published online at this address at 02:00 a.m. ET, August 23, 2017.]

These findings come as the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts and the Securities and Exchange Commission continue to investigate the oil and gas company for potentially misleading investors and the public about the risks of climate change. Exxon employees and shareholders have already filed lawsuits against the company on these grounds.

The year-long study is an expansive, quantitative, independent corroboration of the findings of investigative journalists, who ExxonMobil have accused of using “deliberately cherry-picked statements.” This latest work goes further, showing both that ExxonMobil knew about the basic realities of climate change decades ago and that the company simultaneously communicated positions that were at odds with this knowledge to the general public.

The authors explain that their research was prompted by ExxonMobil’s challenge to the public: “Read all of these documents and make up your own mind.”

“This paper takes up that challenge,” the Harvard authors write.

The researchers used an established social science method called content analysis to characterize 187 of ExxonMobil’s public and private publications about climate change, spanning 1977 to 2014. These included ExxonMobil’s peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed scientific work, internal company memos, and paid, editorial-style advertisements (“advertorials”) in The New York Times. Content analysis allowed Supran and Oreskes to evaluate the number of documents expressing different viewpoints on climate change and thereby to quantify the consistency of ExxonMobil’s climate communications.

The research looks at ExxonMobil’s positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, and at the company’s acknowledgment of the risks of fossil-fuel assets becoming ‘stranded’ by climate policy. In each case, the article concludes, “available documents show a systematic discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public.” The authors found the topic of stranded assets to be “discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials.”

In short, the paper finds, “ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it.” The company’s academic publications had an average readership of tens to hundreds, whereas advertorial readerships were likely in the millions.

The Harvard paper is also explicit about its limitations. “We acknowledge that textual analysis is inherently subjective: words have meaning in context.” Yet, the authors argue, “While one might disagree about the interpretation of specific words, the overall trends between document categories are clear.”

To make these trends fully auditable, the peer-reviewed paper includes 121-pages of “Supplementary Information” [link to be added]. Here, the authors have tabulated all quotations, from all 187 analyzed documents, substantiating their conclusions.

The paper’s acknowledgments state that this research was supported by Harvard University Faculty Development Funds and by the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Other interesting findings of the analysis

• Most of ExxonMobil’s climate science has been spearheaded by one person.

“In 1986, scientist Haroon Kheshgi joined ER&E [Exxon Research and Engineering], and was henceforth ExxonMobil’s principal (and only consistent) academic author, co-authoring 72% (52/72) of all analyzed peer-reviewed work (79% since his hiring). Indeed, the metadata title of the “Exxon Mobil Contributed Publications” file is ‘Haroon’s CV.’ ” (See section 4.1.1 of paper for details.)

• The Harvard study finds that “ExxonMobil’s advertorials included several instances of explicit factual misrepresentation.”

For example, “...an ExxonMobil advertorial in 2000 directly contradicted the IPCC and presented ‘very misleading’ data, according to the scientist who produced the data.” (See section 3.1.5 of paper for details.)

• Advertorials were part of an ExxonMobil climate-change communication plan

“Mobil/ExxonMobil bought AGW advertorials in the NYT specifically to allow ‘the public to know where we stand.’ ” Readerships were likely in the millions. The company took out an advertorial every Thursday between 1972 and 2001. They paid a discounted price of roughly $31,000 (2016 USD) per advertorial and bought one-quarter of all advertorials on the Op-Ed page, ‘towering over the other sponsors’ according to reviews of Mobil’s advertorials by Brown, Waltzer, and Waltzer.” (See section 4 of paper for details.)

• ExxonMobil’s early estimates of the “carbon budget” — which implies risks of stranded fossil fuel assets, many have argued — “are within a factor of two of contemporary estimates.” (See section 3.4.2 of paper for details.)

Graham Readfearn: White House debate on Paris was never about climate change

The wrangling between Trump’s advisors was always about how best to burn more fossil fuels

Supposedly at war over climate change, key advisors Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon watch on as Trump signs orders to green-light the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines (Photo: Office of the President of the United States)

by Graham Readfearn, Climate Change News, June 2, 2017

As United States President Donald Trump was deliberating his country’s future in the Paris climate deal, there were two internal camps marshalling their arguments.

But the wrangling in the White House was not a debate about climate change. It was over how best to burn more fossil fuels.

In one corner were the fossil fuel apologists, the climate science denialists and the network of conservative think tanks that have used conflicted cash to keep their arguments flowing.

For them, leaving the United Nations pact would help the US regain a competitive advantage and put their economic prosperity first. The costs of climate change impacts were never factored, because for them, they do not exist.

In the other corner, there were groups who, on the face of it, seemed unlikely bedfellows.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner – both presidential advisors – recruited of the likes of Hollywood star-turned-climate campaigner Leonardo diCaprio and former Vice-President Al Gore to sit down with the president.

In the uncertain months leading up to this decision, much was made of her influence on her father. But, on this issue at least, that appears to have been overblown.



Rex Tillerson told his senate confirmation hearing that the US should stay in the agreement to protect its own interests (Photo: greatagain.com)

Ivanka was joined by Trump’s secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who oversaw a long-running programme designed to confound climate action as the CEO of Exxon. He was also pushing for the Trump administration to keep a seat at the UN table.

At least two coal companies, Peabody Energy and Cloud Peak, had tried to convince Trump to remain in the Paris deal. Oil and gas giants Exxon and Conoco also voiced support for the Paris deal.

This internal fight represented two different approaches from a fossil fuel industry trying to sustain itself. One approach is to bulldoze and cherry-pick your way through the science of climate change and attack the UN process — all to undermine your opponents’ core arguments.

Another approach is to accept the science but work the system to convince governments that “clean coal” and efficiency gains are the way forward.

The latter was exactly the rationale reportedly deployed by coal firms like Peabody Energy and Cloud Peak.

According to White House officials quoted by Reuters, these firms wanted Trump to stay in the Paris deal because this gave them a better chance of getting support for “low-emission” coal plants.  They might also get some financial help to support the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

When the World Coal Association talks about its role at United Nations climate talks, it too is hopeful that being inside the United Nations tent will give them a chance to justify the future of its industry through less-dirty coal generators and CCS.

During his senate confirmation, Tillerson was asked if the US should maintain leadership on climate issues. He demurred, saying that the US should “maintain its seat at the table”. Earlier he had said he held this view so that the US could understand “what the impacts may be on the American people and American competitiveness.”

It was hardly an endorsement of the aims of the process. Its certainly didn’t convince Trump, of course, as we now know who won.

Celebrating today will be Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, the former boss of the hyper-partisan news outlet Breitbart, and Scott Pruitt, the head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (Bannon once called global warming a manufactured crisis, while Pruitt is unconvinced that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing climate change).

Trump had declared a year ago that, if elected, he would leave the Paris agreement and stop all payments to “UN global warming programs.” On that, he has simply fulfilled a campaign promise.

The “remain” camp was clearly facing an uphill battle.

There’s an awful lot of dust that needs to settle before the implications of Trump’s decision become clear.  Will his decision galvanize others, such as Europe and China, to take a great leadership role?

Will it encourage some eastern European countries already unhappy at the greenhouse gas cuts pledged in Paris, to slow the process further?

For the meantime, we can begin to assess why the climate denial machine that won the day over those trying to subvert the climate process from within.

Social science academics that have studied the “climate change counter movement” say the organisations that proliferate this world view have captured key institutions that grant them outsize power.

Professor Riley Dunlap, a pioneer in the field of environmental sociology, concedes that Trump’s decision is  “a major victory for the denial machine.”

In particular Dunlap, of Oklahoma State University, points to “core elements like the Heritage Foundation” – a think tank that Trump has tapped for several positions in his administration.

“Withdrawal is the logical outcome of their success in getting Trump to appoint hardcore deniers like Scott Pruitt to key cabinet and administrative positions,” says Dunlap.

“This administration is institutionalising climate change denial2 more fully and brazenly than did the George W. Bush administration, which was effective in stalling both national and international policy-making.”

“While efforts to reduce carbon emissions can still be taken at state and local levels, the federal government’s role is critical, especially in international efforts to deal with climate change.”

The only way to change that is through the ballot box, he says.

“We are not going to reduce the influence of the denial interests in the federal government until we see major changes in its composition – a new administration and Republicans losing their grip on Congress.”

Professor Robert Brulle, of Drexel University, has studied the network of think tanks that have been pushing back against climate action – often with debunked arguments about the influence of fossil fuel brining on the climate.

“It is very clear to me that the organisations long-associated with providing climate misinformation played a major role in the announcement by president Trump,” Brulle told Climate Home.

“What is needed is the public exposure of the tactics and strategies of these organisations engaged in misinformation efforts, and how they work with their sponsors to create and promulgate their misinformation campaigns.”

Professor Aaron McCright, of Michigan State University, also researches the political and social dimensions of climate policy.

He says there is a slowly strengthening bloc within the Republican Party that rejects the kind of climate science denial that has become a key element of their party’s identity.

“These science-accepting Republicans must continue to grow in number; they must find public platforms to consistently communicate their messages; and they must do the hard work of convincing their GOP brothers and sisters to accept the science and go about looking for conservative solutions to climate change,” he says.

“This will not be easy.  But, I think this is the only real way to crowd out motivated climate change denial from their party.  The change must come from within.”

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/06/02/white-house-debate-paris-never-climate-change/

Bloomberg: Schneiderman Says Exxon’s Climate Change Proxy Costs May Be a ‘Sham’

by Erik Larson, Bloomberg, June 2, 2017

New York’s top cop told a judge that an investigation into Exxon Mobil Corp.’s public statements about climate change uncovered "significant evidence" the oil giant may have misled investors.

In a court filing Friday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman provided detailed findings from the fraud probe for the first time, saying Exxon may have been using two sets of numbers -- one public and one secret -- to calculate the future impact of the Earth’s warming on its assets.

"That evidence suggests not only that Exxon’s public statements about its risk management practices were false and misleading, but also that Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public," Schneiderman said.

If true, the claims risk inflaming investors who this week backed a non-binding resolution urging the Irving, Texas-based company to consider whether it can prosper under strict greenhouse gas limits. While Exxon opposed the vote, it has accepted climate-change science and doesn’t support President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

Exxon’s public statements have accurately described its use of proxy costs, company spokesman Scott Silvestri said in an email. He said the documents provided by Exxon to Schneiderman during the litigation "make this fact unmistakably clear."

"This investigation is about politics and publicity, not law enforcement," Silvestri said." He called the claims "inaccurate and irresponsible."

Exxon Investors to Company: Make Climate Curb Fallout Public

Exxon has a separate lawsuit against Schneiderman pending in federal court in New York in which the company seeks to force an end to the probe on the grounds that it was started in "bad faith." Republicans in Washington have backed the company, with members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology saying Schneiderman may have improperly coordinated with environmentalists and other state attorneys general before starting the investigation. [How do AGs get information on criminal activity if they don't talk to anyone?]

Schneiderman and his Massachusetts counterpart Maura Healey have been investigating since 2015 whether Exxon misled the public and investors by withholding information about how climate change could impact the company’s finances.

Naomi Ages, who leads Greenpeace’s climate liability project, said in an email that Schneiderman’s disclosures bolster the organization's views that Exxon has misled the public. Exxon is “saying one thing to the public and its shareholders about climate risk while basing its internal decisions on entirely different information," she said.

Schneiderman’s filing focused on Exxon’s claim that it applies so-called proxy costs to greenhouse gas emissions, which the company says "reasonably approximates the range of potential future government actions with respect to climate change." He said Exxon regularly cites the proxy costs to "assure investors that none of Exxon’s projects or assets will be materially affected by future climate change-related regulations."

That claim may be vastly exaggerated, Schneiderman said in his filing in New York state court.

"Exxon has identified only a single, anomalous instance in which a proxy cost was actually applied," the attorney general said. "Exxon’s documents reveal a widespread lack of awareness among employees of the proxy cost policy, or how it should be applied."

The use of proxy costs "may be a sham," Schneiderman alleged. 

Exxon also has "secret internal versions of proxy costs," according to the filing. In one instance, the company told an employee from its majority-owned Imperial Oil Ltd. not to apply it to its Canadian oil sands projects, according to the filing.

Exxon has refused to make the employee available to testify, "contending for the first time that it lacks control over its majority-owned subsidiary from which it has been producing documents for months," he said.

Proxy Costs

The proxy costs match a dollar amount to projected tons of greenhouse gases by a certain future year, according to the filing. In one example outlined in court documents, Exxon told investors it applied proxy costs that reached $60 per ton of greenhouse gases by 2030, and $80 per ton by 2040 for projects in developed countries.

But documents provided by Exxon under a subpoena show that lower dollar amounts were being used internally, according to the filing.

"It appears that this discrepancy was known at Exxon’s highest levels," John Oleske, a senior enforcement lawyer for New York, said in another filing on Friday.

Schneiderman claims an Exxon climate change manager wrote in a 2010 email that publicly disclosed proxy cost figures were "more realistic" than those used internally.

Tillerson wrote in an email in 2011 that he was “happy with the difference” because using a lower proxy cost was “conservative” from the perspective of investing in carbon capture and storage projects, which allows Exxon to claim emissions reduction credits, according to the filing.

Exxon Can’t Find Up to a Year of Tillerson ‘Tracker’ Emails

Schneiderman’s filing also revealed the existence of an alias email account under the name "J.E. Gray" that was created for Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods. Schneiderman, who discovered the account through a court-ordered deposition of an Exxon technology employee, has sought thousands of emails from such accounts during the probe.

"The secondary account was never used, and therefore it contains no email responsive to the subpoena," Silvestri said.

The revelation of the J.E. Gray email account comes months after Schneiderman accused Exxon of failing to disclose the "Wayne Tracker" alias account that belonged to former CEO and now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who used the account to discuss sensitive topics with the board.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-02/n-y-says-exxon-s-climate-change-proxy-costs-may-be-a-sham

Exxon Loses Appeal to Keep PwC Auditor Records Secret in Climate Fraud Investigation

The documents, held by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, could provide a glimpse into the oil giant's calculations of the business risks posed by climate change.

by David Hasemyer, InsideClimate News, May 23, 2017

The New York attorney general is investigating whether oil giant ExxonMobil misled shareholders and the public about the risks of climate change. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images

ExxonMobil lost its appeal on Tuesday to keep records held by its auditors away from the New York attorney general's climate fraud probe.

The documents could afford a candid—and perhaps damaging—glimpse into Exxon's private calculations of the business risks posed by climate change. They could contain anything from a smoking gun email to plodding, yet revealing, discussions related to Exxon's posture on global warming, including whether the company was adequately calculating climate change risks for investors. Exxon still has another opportunity to appeal.

Investigators for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed PricewaterhouseCoopers records pertaining to Exxon's assessment of climate change as part of an investigation into Exxon that was opened in 2015.

Exxon fought to have the subpoena voided, arguing the records were privileged communications with its auditor and should be kept from the eyes of investigators. The oil giant, headquartered in Dallas, based its argument on a Texas law that grants a privilege to auditors and clients much like that between a lawyer and client.

A state court judge agreed with Schneiderman's office that there was no such protection afforded Exxon under New York law and ordered the documents handed over last year. Exxon appealed that decision.

The appeals court, which had been considering the case since a hearing in March, rejected Exxon's argument.

"In light of our conclusion that New York law applies, we need not decide how this issue would be decided under Texas law," the two-page decision said.

Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

Caroline Nolan, a spokeswoman for PwC, said the company had no comment.

The accounting firm, which has expertise in climate-related risks faced by fossil fuel companies, has remained neutral in the legal fight but has honored Exxon's request not to turn over documents pending the outcome of the litigation.

Exxon has been fighting investigations by Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey both in federal court and state courts.

Schneiderman opened his financial fraud investigation of Exxon in November 2015 by subpoenaing decades of records related to Exxon's history of research into and knowledge of climate change. The investigation revolves around whether the company misled shareholders and the public about the risks of climate change.

The attorney general followed up with a subpoena to PwC nine months later seeking documents related to the auditors' work for the oil giant. Records sought under the subpoena include documents about accounting and reporting of oil and gas reserves, evaluation of assets for potential impairment charges or write-downs, energy price projections, and projected cost estimates of complying with carbon regulations.

Attorneys for Exxon argued that the judge's ruling in October to force PwC to surrender documents "eviscerates" the accountant-client privilege afforded by the laws of Texas, where Exxon is headquartered.  

New York investigators disagreed and argued that PwC should feel a moral obligation to cooperate. "As a certified public accountant, PwC 'owes ultimate allegiance to [a] corporation's creditors and stockholders, as well as to the investing public,' " the attorney general's office responded.

Exxon could file additional appeals up to the New York Supreme Court or allow PwC to comply with the subpoena.

While it is unclear what Exxon's next move may be related to the PwC documents, the company is also asking a judge to seal five subpoenas issued by Schneiderman's office in connection with its investigation, which has grown to include missing emails from former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, now U.S. secretary of state.

The attorney general's office disclosed last week that it has expanded its probe to determine whether Exxon may have destroyed emails from Tillerson's "Wayne Tracker" email alias. Investigators are trying to determine why several weeks of emails from that account are now missing. As part of that widening investigation, the attorney general's office revealed that it has subpoenaed a number of Exxon officials.

Exxon offered few clues in its request to the New York judge overseeing the case as to why the documents and the arguments by company lawyers justifying the sealing must remain secret.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052017/exxon-climate-fraud-investigation-new-york-attorney-general-pwc-auditor-appeal

Big Oil’s master class in rigging the system: Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren tell it like it is to Lamar Smith and his idiotic subpoena of state AGs

The logo of ExxonMobil Corp. is shown on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last year. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

by Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren, The Washington Post, August 9, 2016

The writers, both Democrats, represent Rhode Island and Massachusetts, respectively, in the U.S. Senate.

For years, ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no impact on the Earth’s environment. As recently as last year, it continued to fund organizations that play down the risks of carbon pollution. So what did ExxonMobil actually know about climate change? And when did it know it?

Reasonable questions — particularly if ExxonMobil misled its investors about the long-term prospects of its business model or if the company fooled consumers into buying its products based on false claims.

So now the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York are investigating whether ExxonMobil violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders about climate change. Those investigations may be making ExxonMobil executives nervous, and their Republican friends in Congress are riding to the rescue. House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted eight organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller Family Fund and Greenpeace, with similar subpoenas, demanding that they turn over internal communications related to what Smith describes as part of “coordinated efforts” to deprive ExxonMobil of its First Amendment rights.

Take a breath to absorb that: State attorneys general are investigating whether a fraud had been committed — something state AGs do every day. Sometimes AGs uncover fraud and sometimes they don’t, but if the evidence warrants it, the question of fraud will be resolved in open court, with all the evidence on public display. But instead of applauding the AGs for doing their jobs, this particular investigation against this particular oil company has brought down the wrath of congressional Republicans — and a swift effort to shut down the investigation before any evidence becomes public. So far, both AGs and all eight organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.

Let’s call this what it is: a master class in how big corporations rig the system. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Smith has received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry during his career. Now he is using his committee to harass the investigators and bully those who dare bring facts of possible corporate malfeasance to their attention. Undoubtedly, the oil industry wants no further attention, much less court-supervised discovery, into whether it has spent decades deliberately deceiving the public about the harms associated with its product. So here come Smith and his Republican colleagues with threats of legal action designed to sidetrack state investigations and silence groups petitioning the government to address potential wrongdoing.

There’s plenty for the AGs to investigate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, issued a 2015 report, “Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation,” and a 2007 report, “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science.” Both reports document how the industry has protected its bottom line by funding front organizations and scientists to put out junk science contradicting what peer-reviewed scientists, and even the industry’s own experts, were saying about how its products affected the environment. Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell rightly dismissed the committee’s request, saying, “Mr. Smith makes no allegation that UCS violated any laws or regulations, and his claim, that providing information to attorneys general infringes on ExxonMobil’s rights, is nonsense.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are also fighting back. In separate letters, they told Smith that they have no intention of complying with the committee’s request. “The Subpoena brings us one step closer to a protracted, unnecessary legal confrontation which will only distract and detract from the work of our respective offices,” Schneiderman wrote.

Smith is not the first fossil-fuel-backed Republican in Congress to come to the industry’s defense. In May, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), recipient of $1.8 million in oil and gas industry contributions since 1989, called the state AGs’ investigation a “misuse of power” and “politics at its worst.” The greater abuse comes when congressional committees appear to operate at the behest of the industries they are meant to oversee.

Congressional investigations and hearings have a unique ability to focus a nation’s attention and bring facts of public importance to light. As committee chairmen, Smith and Inhofe can direct their committees’ authority as they see fit, but using that power to stifle lawful state investigations doesn’t advance the First Amendment, it tramples on it.

So we have an alternative suggestion. If Chairmen Smith and Inhofe are concerned about the First Amendment rights of ExxonMobil, they should each call a hearing, ask ExxonMobil executives to testify, and give them the opportunity to set the record straight. A committee chairman could do little more to protect any person’s right to speak freely than to give that person the chance to testify before Congress. We would love to hear what they have to say.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-oils-master-class-in-rigging-the-system/2016/08/09/03ea2df6-5e48-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html