Oil Giants Are Dealt Major Defeats on Climate Change as Pressures Intensify
Texas | May 27, 2021
Exxon XOM 1.17% Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A 0.38% PLC suffered significant defeats Wednesday as environmental groups and activist investors step up pressure on the oil industry to address concerns about climate change.
In a first-of-its-kind ruling, a Dutch court found that Shell is partially responsible for climate change, and ordered the company to sharply reduce its carbon emissions. Hours later in the U.S., an activist investor won at least two seats on Exxon’s board, a historic defeat for the oil giant that will likely require it to alter its fossil-fuel focused strategy.
The back-to-back, watershed decisions demonstrated how dramatically the landscape is shifting for oil-and-gas companies as they face increasing pressure from environmentalists, investors, lenders, politicians and regulators to transition to cleaner forms of energy…
(Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal)