Adding Fire to Fuel : Angry Stockholders Join Oil Cleanup Protest at Exxon Annual Meeting

After an Exxon tanker spilled 240,000 barrels of oil into the Alaskan waterway that provides his living, Robin Dexter took only a couple of days to decide what needed to be done.

The 41-year-old fisherman quickly bought 10 shares of Exxon Corp. stock, and Thursday he got the chance to vent his frustration with the management that now must answer to him.

“Until I get a livelihood again, I’m being forced into the oil industry,” he told company executives and 2,000 shareholders at Exxon’s annual meeting. “Exxon is going to have to earn the restoration of its public image.”

Reeling from its worst disaster ever, the nation’s third-largest corporation watched its annual shareholders gathering Thursday turn into a four-hour, 20-minute public debate with some of its harshest critics.

Outside the Aspen Hotel-Manor 35 miles west of New York City, scores of protesters staged a 1960s-style rally, carrying placards and heckling arriving shareholders.

Butch Burdock of New York held a sign declaring: “Exxon is organized crime.”

“Raise some hell at the meeting,” he exhorted as hundreds of cars streamed into the parking lot, tying up traffic for more than a mile.

Many at the rally wore the tie-dyed clothes and long hair reminiscent of protest movements decades ago, but it was clear that times have changed. The requisite bearded folk singer, for example, was an attorney in a conservative gray suit and tie.

The crowd of perhaps 150, eyed warily by more than 80 police officers on overtime, was much smaller than the 500 that organizers had hoped for. And consumer activist Ralph Nader, whose speech was to have been the highlight of the outdoor demonstration, did not even show up.

Inside, under heavy security, Exxon presented its side of the tragedy in a slick 13-minute videotape. But environmentalists, many of whom attended the meeting holding the proxies of like-minded shareholders, contended that it ignored vast problems that Exxon has yet to solve in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Exxon officials maintain that they will meet their cleanup deadline of Sept. 15--a target their critics said is impossibly optimistic.

“Management is trying to gloss over what was really a Keystone Kops routine with the cleanup,” said Brent Blackwelder, vice president of the Environmental Policy Institute, a Washington lobbying organization. He attended the meeting by virtue of having collected proxies to vote 450,000 shares, including those of Ann Rockefeller Roberts, great-granddaughter of company founder John D. Rockefeller.

Several shareholders called for the resignation of Chairman Lawrence G. Rawl, whom one irate speaker, Casey Kole, denounced as “the Exxon slime ball.” He declined to step down. Others demanded that Exxon set aside $1 billion a year to repair the damage from the spill and assure that it is equipped to deal with future emergencies.

Rawl, fighting a sore throat throughout the lengthy meeting, repeatedly defended the company’s handling of the crisis as the best possible under the circumstances.

“We’ve accepted the responsibility,” Rawl said in his opening remarks. “In time, when the job is done, I’m confident that it will be evident to every fair-minded person that our employees met this major challenge with a high level of determination and professionalism.”

Many in the crowd, particularly longtime shareholders, were sympathetic. “Exxon is a good company,” said Joseph C. Church of Succasunna, N.J. “They’ve got it all well covered.”

John Kenney Sr. of Roselle Park, N.J., a retired Exxon employee, agreed that “they’re doing the job.” But his 18-year-old grandson, John Kenney III, sporting a thin strand of beads and a punk haircut, said he agreed only “slightly” with that assessment.

The rhetoric was often heated, but the meeting remained orderly. Greenpeace USA, known for its disruptive tactics, distributed rags bearing the slogan “Clean Energy Now,” hoping that shareholders would wave them. No one did.

Exxon insists that consumer backlash from the spill has not significantly affected its sales, but it acknowledged that about 18,000 of its 7 million credit card holders have cut their cards in half and mailed them to the company in protest. It has received 20,000 pieces of mail, including several plastic sandwich bags filled with oil.

Rawl said Exxon has spent $115 million on the cleanup. The grounding of the Exxon Valdez has also hit motorists in the pocketbook, having served as a catalyst for a sharp rise in gasoline prices that was reflected in Thursday’s report of a leap in consumer prices.

While the immediate controversy has focused on environmental damage, the disaster has also called into question the role that shareholders, as a company’s owners, should play in forcing corporate executives to act responsibly.

Under pressure from New York City, which has $1 billion of its pension fund invested in Exxon shares, company management agreed last week to add an environmentalist as the 15th member of its board.

But critics said this concession was not enough.

“It’s nonsense to put one environmentalist on there as a token. What we need to do is to take over Exxon,” said Barry Commoner, one of the leaders of the environmental movement. Commoner said he and others plan to pressure pension funds and “right-minded stockholders” to form a coalition powerful enough to reshape Exxon’s corporate policies.

While Dexter’s minuscule stake in the company--Exxon has 1.3 billion shares outstanding--gives him almost no leverage over its direction, he seemed satisfied that his long trip to speak his mind had paid off.

Rawl said he was willing to meet with Dexter and other fishermen on his next trip to Alaska.

After the meeting, Dexter shook the chairman’s hand and accepted congratulations from several shareholders who said they had been moved by his speech.

With his small investment, Dexter said, “I’ll be in a little better position to nudge Exxon along the road to responsibility.”