EXXON CEO SUPPORTIVE OF ZERO-EMISSION GOALS

Woods trying to change attitude of oil company

Darren Woods rarely makes headlines even though he is the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the oil company that some people consider a top environmental villain and others think of as a vital engine of the U.S. economy.

Few have taken seriously or even noticed that he is beginning to make promises to respond to climate change, which is at the very least a rhetorical break from his predecessors.

“What society demands, and appropriately so, is affordable, reliable energy that doesn’t have the emissions associated with today’s energy systems,” he said Tuesday. “We’re working on that evolution.”

Woods, a soft-spoken electrical engineer from Wichita, Kan., is changing the tone of the company, which he took over four years ago. In an interview meant to be a curtain-raiser to an annual presentation that executives will offer financial analysts and investors Wednesday, Woods, 56, went so far as to promise that Exxon would try to set a goal for not emitting more greenhouse gases than it removed from the atmosphere, though he said it was still difficult to say when that might happen.

Under pressure from activist investors, Exxon said this week it was adding two new directors with no previous ties to fossil fuels to its board. The company recently said it would create a new business that captured carbon dioxide from industrial plants and buried it deep in the ground. It also recently invested in Global Thermostat, a company that aims to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.