Big Oil's Big Day

by Matthew Choi (Politico's Morning Energy) The big cheese of big oil will have their long-awaited hearing Thursday before the House Oversight Committee, which plans to grill the execs on whether their companies disseminated disinformation to water down their roles in causing climate change. Exxon Mobil CEO and Chairman Darren Woods, Chevron CEO Mike Worth, BP America President David Lawler, Shell Oil President Gretchen Watkins, American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark will all testify.

But there’s a catch! The executives will dial into the hearing remotely, as opposed to the in-person questioning Democrats had been pushing for. Republicans on the committee have repeatedly questioned the majority’s preference for an in-person hearing, complaining it was a set-up to try to create a cinematic confrontation.

Another wrinkle in Democrats’ plans: None of the companies that have agreed to testify submitted all the documents that the committee had hoped of them. Oversight Democrats asked for internal correspondence related to “supporting disinformation and misleading the public to prevent action on the climate crisis” in a series of Sept. 16 letters. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: The heads of the country’s biggest oil companies went before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, where Democrats hoped for a made-for-TV confrontation over climate change akin to the 1994 big tobacco hearings. But the latest reconciliation draft stole much of the spotlight Thursday, and the Democrats seem to score few hits during the contentious hearing. Meanwhile, Republicans on the committee used it as a launch pad to levy attacks on Democratic climate priorities as threatening U.S. energy security.

The oil executives — representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — touted their tilt toward cleaner energy alternatives even as the chiefs of Exxon and Chevron acknowledged they planned to increase oil output. Exxon's CEO and Chairman Darren Woods was put in the hot seat over comments by former company head Lee Raymond asserting in the 1990s that climate science wasn't settled despite memos from the company's own scientists describing the phenomena two decades earlier.

“There is a clear conflict with what the Exxon CEO told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately for years,” Chair Carolyn Maloney said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: BIG OIL GETS SUBPOENAED: The House Oversight and Reform Committee issued subpoenas for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, the U.S. operations for BP and Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as part of its probe into big oil and whether it tried to mislead the public about its role in climate change. Chair Carolyn Maloney said last week she’d issue the subpoenas during a committee hearing with the big oil C-suite because the companies hadn’t revealed enough about their operations when the committee asked for internal documents earlier.

Under the subpoena, the companies and trade groups have two weeks to cough up documents on climate science and clean energy policy, as well as any marketing and social media activities related to climate change and clean energy. READ MORE