Exxon, Oil Rivals Shield Their Carbon Forecasts From Investors
Big Oil provides forward guidance on production and earnings, but not on emissions.
Flames come from the flarestack at ExxonMobil’s Mossmorran plant in Cowdenbeath, Scotland on Oct. 4, 2020.
Photographer: Ken Jack/Getty ImagesA giant oil company like Exxon Mobil Corp. will publicly disclose forward-looking numbers on production forecasts, earnings potential and capital expenditures. But the biggest fossil-fuel producers don’t provide short-term guidance to investors on the metric that’s become existentially important: carbon-dioxide emissions.
There’s evidence oil majors do assess the climate consequences of their future plans. Exxon had internal projections, never made public, that showed a 17% rise in carbon-dioxide emissions over the next five years, according to company documents reviewed by Bloomberg. In a statement, Exxon said those projections were “a preliminary, internal assessment of estimated cumulative emission growth through 2025” and that its projections had since changed.