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8/1/2016 Highlighting the Allure of Synfliels, Exxon Played Down the Climate Risks | InsideClimate News
engagement with the
emerging science of
climate change. The story
spans four decades, and is
based on primary sources
including internal company
files dating back to the late
1970s, interviews with
former company
employees, and other
evidence, much of which is
being published here for
the first time.
In 1980, Exxon acquired the Colony Shale Oil Project in Colorado to
support the production of synfuels. Two years later, Exxon
announced the termination of the project, in part due to low oil
prices. (Credit: U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons)
Early in the 1980s, the lingering fear of oil scarcity
and the emerging threat of climate change were
beginning to intersect. And at that junction stood
Exxon Corp., working out its strategy for survival in
the uncertain 21 s1: century.
At the time, Exxon believed oil supplies could not
keep up with demand, so it put its weight behind a
crusade to develop synthetic fossil fuels as a costly
and carbon intensive, but potentially profitable
alternative. It could liquefy the vast deposits of coal,
oil shale and tar sands that were readily available in
North America. This would be the new black gold,
supplying as much as a third of the energy the
United States would use in the early 21 s1: century,
company executives estimated.
"These resources are adequate to support a 15
million barrel a day industry for 175 years," said
Randall Meyer, a senior vice president, in a 1981
speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
It describes how Exxon
conducted cutting-edge
climate research decades
ago and then, without
revealing all that it had
learned, worked at the
forefront of climate denial,
manufacturing doubt
about the scientific
consensus that its own
scientists had confirmed.
Find the entire project
here.
EiftON Rj-Sl AKCM MO KWOIKEemNO COMPANY .
How We Got
The Exxon Story
- iII
By then, however, researchers at Exxon were well
aware of the looming problem of climate change.
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