Exxon’s Environmentalist Director Gets Mixed Review

Exxon Corp. elected a well-regarded marine scientist to its board Wednesday--fulfilling a promise that it would add a director with an environmental background--but the appointment drew mixed reviews from environmental groups who had favored a stronger advocate.

John H. Steele, 62, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and president of its governing body, was elected to a one-year stint on Exxon’s board, bringing its total membership to 15. He also was named to a new public issues committee formed in the wake of the March oil spill in Alaska.

“My job will be to comment and to advise the board on (environmental) issues and on more general aspects,” Steele said in an interview. But he rejected categorization as an environmental advocate: “I think the term environmentalist has too many political implications. . . . I have not been involved in advocacy on either side of these issues.”

Some Groups Object

Some environmental groups objected strongly to Steele’s appointment. “We’re mad as hell,” said Brent Blackwelder, vice president of the Friends of the Earth and Environmental Policy Institute. “It’s an outrage to citizens who had expressed concerns about the Exxon oil spill . . . and it’s not what we understood by the appointment of an environmentalist to the board.”

But Exxon spokesman William D. Smith defended Steele’s appointment and denied the suggestion that Exxon had backed off its earlier promise.

“No one on the board has a particular constituency, and each is expected to bring specific experiences to a breadth of issues brought to the board,” he said.

Others praised the choice. “Dr. Steele is a distinguished professional, a world-class environmentalist, head of an institution with a commanding international reputation. . . . I don’t think anyone can object to this appointment,” said New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin, who represents several city pension funds with heavy investments in Exxon.

Exxon’s choice had been watched closely in part as a harbinger of future corporate appointments. The world’s largest public oil company was fulfilling a promise made at its May shareholders meeting at the urging of Goldin and with the backing of California State Controller Gray Davis, a trustee of two California pension funds with large Exxon holdings.

Goldin and Davis subsequently urged six other major oil companies to add a director with an environmental background and to create public issues committees.

Steele’s appointment came as a surprise to those who had expected the naming of a more prominent environmental advocate. The Woods Hole laboratory is perhaps best known in recent years as the base for researchers who found and explored the sunken wreckage of the Titanic.

In July, Blackwelder, writing on behalf of 14 public interest and environmental groups, had sent a letter to Exxon Chairman Lawrence G. Rawl nominating former Wisconsin governor and one-time Sen. Gaylord Nelson of the Wilderness Society for the slot.

He said the environmental groups, representing more than 500,000 individual Exxon shareholders, would now oppose Steele’s reelection at next year’s shareholders’ meeting and would nominate Nelson instead.

Other names that had emerged as possible board candidates included Jay Hair, president of the National Wildlife Federation; Russell E. Train, chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, and Alice Rivlin, chair of the Wilderness Society.

Background in Mathematics

Other environmentalists were more guarded than Blackwelder about Steele’s appointment, though most expressed disappointment. “We don’t want to prejudge him,” said Sharon Newsome, a vice president of the National Wildlife Federation. “As a director of Woods Hole, he will have an important perspective that will be very useful to the Exxon board. . . . The one question we would have, and our hope, is that he would also be a good advocate on a broader array of environmental issues.”

“I never had a lot of confidence that Exxon would appoint someone to their board who was going to be a burr under their saddle,” added Tim Mahoney, head of the Sierra Club’s Alaska coalition. “Frankly, I’m not sure whether a strong environmental advocate would have been able to do much on the Exxon board, except be a gadfly.”

Steele, who expects to visit the site of the oil spill in two weeks, said his background was in mathematics and that his current expertise was in the dynamics of marine ecosystems. Six months ago, he retired from active administration of the Woods Hole laboratory.

“I think that environmental issues are no longer externalities in the business of a large company like Exxon,” Steele said. “They must be considered as an integral part of doing business.”

In the past, Steele has chaired a committee of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment charged with looking into technical problems of offshore oil drilling, he said.

Exxon, through its educational foundation, has contributed money to Woods Hole research, he said. He declined to discuss figures.

Steele was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he worked for 26 years at the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen, Scotland. He joined Woods Hole in 1977 as director.

He is currently a member of the board of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the Arctic Research Commission and the National Geographic Society’s committee for research and exploration.