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 Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed the company on
Wednesday evening, demanding extensive financial records, emails and
other documents, a source familiar with the investigation said on
Thursday.
Exxon on Thursday said it was weighing a response to the subpoena.
The company has included information about the business risk of
climate change for many years in its quarterly filings, corporate
citizenship report and in other reports to shareholders, company
spokesman Richard Keil said.
The New York Times first reported the news on Thursday. (http://nyti.ms/1HuEJC8)
The Exxon investigation might expand to other oil companies,
according to the people with knowledge of the case, though no
additional subpoenas have been issued, the newspaper said.
Sources told the New York Times that the attorney general’s
investigation began a year ago and encompasses company filings
dating back to the 1970s.
Last month, a broad array of environmental groups demanded the U.S.
Department of Justice investigate Exxon after reports by Inside
Climate News and the Los Angeles Times said the company's own
scientists raised worries about global warming decades ago only to
see their findings doubted by executives.
However, Ken Cohen, vice president of public and government affairs
at Exxon, has accused environmental groups of deliberately
cherry-picking facts. He said on Thursday that for nearly 40 years
the company has worked with governments and universities to develop
climate science in a transparent way.
Since 2009, the company has supported what it calls a
revenue-neutral carbon tax as the preferred policy for reducing
emissions.
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Coal miner Peabody Energy Corp had been under investigation by the
attorney general for two years over whether it properly disclosed
financial risks related to climate change, but has not resulted in
any charges or other legal action against the company, the NYT
report added.
Only within the last five years has the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission required companies to disclose climate risks to investors
and Exxon has made the appropriate filings.
"It is unfortunate that interest groups can fuel political
expediency to cause investigations to occur where there should be
none," said Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC lawyer and partner at
Shulman Rogers in Washington.
Climate risks for oil companies are normally thought to include,
among other things, a crackdown by governments on carbon emissions
that might hurt oil sales.
(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Sudarshan Varadhan in Bengaluru and
Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Terry Wade and Lisa Shumaker)
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