Former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson took the witness stand Wednesday in the company’s climate fraud trial and gave the clearest defense yet for his former employer.
Tillerson denied that the oil giant misled investors about the risks it faced from future climate change regulations and described a detailed system he had implemented for managing those risks. But he also repeatedly said he was unable to recall key details and events that are central to the case, omissions that a lawyer for New York’s attorney general’s office returned to again and again.
While Tillerson was the most high profile and perhaps most important witness called so far in the state’s case again Exxon, the questions he faced were similar to those that lawyers and witnesses in the trial have been circling for a week now, namely: What were Exxon’s practices for assessing risk, what did it disclose about those practices, and did any of that have an impact on the company’s value.
