Exxon climate change suit vexes Rex

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a long-awaited lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Wednesday, claiming the oil giant hid the financial risks of climate change from its investors — and that former Chief Executive Rex Tillerson signed off on the deception.

The civil suit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims the company was “deceiving” investors by essentially using two sets of books to account for the rising costs of environmental regulations around the world.

The 97-page suit makes an explosive claim against Tillerson, who left the com- pany in 2016 to become US secretary of state under President Trump, only to be fired this spring.

“Exxon’s fraud was sanctioned at the highest levels of the company,” Underwood claims in the suit, alleging that Tillerson “knew for years that the company’s representations concerning proxy costs were misleading.”

Exxon likewise had played down the dangers that climate change could have on the company’s existing oil holdings even though internal projections said that its assets could be “stranded,” or valueless, according to the suit.

Exxon shares declined 2.8 percent, to close at $77.62.

“These baseless allegations are a product of closed-door lobbying by special interests, political opportunism and the attorney general’s inability to admit that a three-year investigation has uncovered no wrongdoing,” Scott Silvestri, an Exxon spokesman, said in a statement.

“The company looks forward to refuting these claims as soon as possible and getting this meritless civil lawsuit dismissed.”

The suit comes almost three years to the day after the attorney general’s office, then led by the now-disgraced Eric Schneiderman, launched an investigation into the company.