Pure transition gold from Exxon. With jewels.

In response to a proxy advisor’s recommendations regarding an upcoming shareholder vote at Exxon, the company went quietly ballistic on the whole transition thing with a SEC filing.

Here are the best bits:

Glass Lewis’ conclusion appears to be that we have already provided so much disclosure that it should be easy for us to provide more. However, this proposal is one of nine active proposals asking for new reports. Requests for ever more reporting ignore the time, additional cost, and resources every report takes for the company to prepare.

In their analysis, Glass Lewis states that AROs could represent a material financial risk to the company. We are unable to understand how they have arrived at this conclusion. In accordance with GAAP, we do not incorporate into our financial statements those types of risks that are as remote as the IEA NZE path.

Glass Lewis apparently believes the likelihood of the IEA NZE scenario is well beyond what the IEA itself contends: that the world is not on the NZE path and that this is a very aggressive scenario.

It is clear that the IEA NZE does not, by the scenario authors’ own assessment, meet the level of likelihood required to be considered in our financial statements. Likewise, it is highly unlikely that society would accept the degradation in global standard of living required to permanently achieve a scenario like the IEA NZE. We ask shareholders therefore to reject the proponent’s conclusion, which was not based on a sound, underlying analysis.