Whitehouse Blasts Exxon for What It Knew 40 Years Ago, Senator Owned Its Stock for Years
GoLocalProv News Team
Whitehouse Blasts Exxon for What It Knew 40 Years Ago, Senator Owned Its Stock for Years
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse PHOTO: GoLocalUnited States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to Twitter to criticize ExxonMobile for the company's knowledge and lack of action about the dangers of using carbon-producing fossil fuels would have on the planet, according to multiple reports.
“ExxonMobil knew just how much the continuing use of carbon-producing fossil fuels was likely to heat up the planet at the same time it was funding a comprehensive public relations campaign, denying the reality of global warming as well as the role of human activity in spurring it, according to a new study published in the journal Science. Beginning in the late 1970s, the new study finds that ExxonMobil’s own scientists’ internal modeling accurately predicted the level of global temperature increases and that this information was shared with the company’s executives in a series of reports,” writes Democratic consultant and GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™ Rob Horowitz.
Whitehouse Owned Exxon Stock Personally and Via His Trust Fund
According to Whitehouse's Financial Statement forms, he purchased Exxon stock sometime between 1990 and 1992. Exxon stock was not listed on Whitehouse's Rhode Island Ethics Commission’s Financial Disclosure Statement in 1990. However, Exxon was listed in his 1992 Statement.
Whitehouse owned Exxon stock both via a Trust Fund that he was the beneficiary of as well as via personal holdings for decades. In 1990, Exxon stock sold for a little under $5 a share, and when Whitehouse sold much of the stock, it closed at about $104 a share -- a 2,000% increase in value.
Exxon’s environmental reputation by 1990 was one of the worst in corporate America.
Whitehouse's Tweet January 27, 2023The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in the Prince William Sound in Alaska on March 24, 1989. The Exxon Valdez spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of the volume of oil released.
Whitehouse Tweeted on Friday, “Now, more than 40 years after those [Exxon] studies began, there should be consequences, whether civil or criminal. The House must empower a committee to investigate this deceit and the harm it caused.”
Whitehouse's office had previously claimed he has divested from his Exxon stock ownership, but refused to disclose when the Senator had sold all of his stock holdings.
Whitehouse’s United State Senate Financial Disclosure Report for 2012 (filed in 2013) no longer lists Exxon as a stock that he personally owns, but it is unclear if the Helen Chase Rand Residual Trust that the Senator continues to benefit from his Exxon as a holding.
