- April 14, 2006 • 3:01 pm PDT
- + responses
Remember back in November, when Congress dragged the heads of the major oil companies in to explain themselves after posting record profits in the wake of Katrina? We do. ExxonMobile CEO Lee Raymond made us feel better when he said, "We're all in this together, everywhere in the world." That was sweet. I guess we should all be expecting a check in the mail soon. For his retirement, ExxonMobile just announced it is giving Raymond $400 million. Wow. That is a very good friday for him. Just to put things in perspective, in its appeal to the $4 billion in punitive damages awarded by an Anchorage, Alaska jury after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon argued that anything in excess of $25 million would be "grossly excessive" because the spill was an accident. They still haven't paid a dime in punitive damages in that case and their 17 year old appeal is ongoing in the 9th Circuit Appellate Court. Another way of looking at it: Mr. Raymond, who was president of Exxon at the time, will get about $1,600 in his retirement package for each one of the roughly 250,000 sea birds that were killed by the oil spill.
Here is a great article from Mother Jones about how much money ExxonMobile spends disputing research on global warming.
