Exxon: Profits pump; oil descendants call for green reform (Roundup)

May 1, 2008, 18:19 GMT

Washington - Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday that record crude oil prices boosted the company's net income by 17 per cent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.

Exxon said that it earned 10.9 billion dollars in the first three months of the year. Revenue climbed more than one-third to 116.8 billion dollars, the company reported from Houston, Texas.

The results put a spotlight on the growing debate during the US election campaign over rising fuel prices and, to a lesser extent, global warming.

But global warming was on the mind of Exxon shareholders on Wednesday, the day before it released its quarterly figures, as descendants of John D Rockefeller, founder of Exxon's distant ancestor, Standard Oil Co, put pressure on company management to change its business practices.

Family stockholders publicly pushed management to cut greenhouse- gas emissions and look at whether Exxon should take a more active role in developing sustainable energy technologies, the Wall Street Journal reported.

'There is a need for Exxon to identify energy-related ... strengths and skills in an industry that will soon look very different than it did when ... the current managers joined Exxon,' said Neva Rockefeller Goodwin in remarks broadcast Wednesday.

In a parallel development earlier Thursday that echoed concerns by investors about global warming, an international investors' project released data about how the world's largest corporations are getting their suppliers to monitor, measure and report greenhouse-gas emissions.

The data are part of a survey by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a British-based collaboration of 385 private investment firms including Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley that aims to convince companies that there are ways to profit from reducing emissions.

Exxon's profits fell short of analysts' expectations and also failed to match the final quarter of 2007 when, thanks to swift increases in oil prices, the company reported net earnings of 11.7 billion dollars, the largest quarterly earnings for a US company to date.

But such strong earnings emphasized anew how rising fuel prices have upset consumers. Truckers, who transport goods across the US and whose livelihoods are tied to the price of diesel fuel, drove to Washington Monday, with horns blaring to rally against the prices and urge politicians to take action.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain have both advocated a temporary waiver of the federal sales tax on petrol.

Clinton has proposed making up the difference by taxing some of the high earnings of the oil companies, such as those reported Thursday by Exxon.