Exxon: Despite BIGGEST Profit Ever STILL Won’t Pay for Spill

Recent research has shown that “when business executives are in a good mood people who work with them experience “more positive and fewer negative moods.” So one would naturally think that the upper echelons of Exxon Mobil would be absolutely ecstatic after bankrolling the largest profit in the history of the United States ($36.13 Billion).

Perhaps not after the U.S. Justice Department and Alaska called on the recalcitrant company to cough up $92 million to clean up the mess that still exists from their Valdez tanker spill of eleven million gallons of crude oil on 1750 kilometers of coastline that killed 250,000 marine birds, 28,000 sea otters and devastated the local environment and community 17 years ago.

On top of that, the company suffered a humiliating defeat on Wednesday when a shareholder resolution passed its annual meeting with a whopping 52.2% (double digits is considered good) calling for stronger corporate governance measures for electing the board of directors as a result of the CEO’s $400 MILLION departure pay package. Exxon said that this is the first resolution to ever pass over the opposition of management in the history of the company.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE EXXON VALDEZ TANKER SPILL SIGNIFICANCE:

• 1989 (March): Exxon Valdez tanker spill
• 1989 (September): Creation of the Valdez principles, a ten-point code of corporate environmental conduct (Later renamed the CERES Principles after the nonprofit of the same name)
• 1993: The first company endorses the CERES (Coalition on Environmentally Responsible Economies) Principles
• 1997: The CERES principles spawn the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in partnership with the U.N. Environment Program
• 2002: GRI becomes recognized as the gold standard for reporting on economic, social and environmental impacts by institutions and spins off as an independent organization
• 2006: Over 800 companies have issued GRI reports