Pension Funds Pressure Exxon on Environment : Energy: California managers were among those seeking stronger action. The firm made no promises.

Managers of three major public pension funds demanded stronger action from Exxon Corp. Chairman Lawrence G. Rawl on Wednesday to correct the company’s poor and potentially costly environmental record. But they received no commitments in a meeting with Exxon executives.

The ambiguous response disappointed the managers of funds in California, New York and Massachusetts that together hold about 14 million shares of Exxon stock, a little more than 1% of the total shares outstanding. But they were encouraged by Rawl’s apparent willingness to listen.

“I’m absolutely convinced he was impressed, but he made no specific promises,” said California State Controller Gray Davis, who attended the meeting as a trustee of the $56-billion California Public Employees Retirement System. “The ball’s in his court.”

“There was no commitment by Exxon on any of the issues we raised,” aside from agreeing to respond to specific proposals before the company’s April 25 annual meeting, added New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, who manages five city pension plans that hold more than 6 million Exxon shares. Still, she said, “I think it was useful.”

Rawl, Exxon President Lee R. Raymond and Exxon’s new environmental vice president, Edwin Hess, met with Davis, Holtzman and Paul Quirk, executive director of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, after the managers expressed concern about Exxon’s financial performance in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and a series of other accidents.

After the 1 1/2-hour meeting at Exxon’s New York headquarters, Davis momentarily threatened to put forward a new slate of directors at the annual meeting unless Exxon commits itself to strong action. Later, Davis backed away from the threat, saying only, “Everyone knows we carry a big stick. I don’t think it profits us to rattle our sabers.”

Holtzman said it would be “premature” to consider such action.

CalPERS, which is the largest U.S. pension fund for civil service employees, owns 7.7 million Exxon common shares and is known for its activist stance in corporate governance issues. Gray is one of 13 trustees of the fund.

Last week, CalPERS took a stand against management in the proxy battle between Lockheed Corp. and investor Harold C. Simmons. Earlier this year, the pension fund pressed a shareholders’ rights proposal at Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Neither Rawl nor Raymond was available to comment on the meeting. An Exxon spokeswoman said it was too early for the company to respond to the pension managers’ various demands.

In a statement, the company said it has taken several steps since the Exxon Valdez incident to emphasize environmental and safety issues and argued that its return to shareholders has been excellent in the recent past despite 1989’s events.

Last March, the Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in the nation’s worst oil spill ever. Cleaning up the spill has already cost Exxon more than $2 billion, and analysts predict that the final costs could be more than $4 billion.

Subsequent spills in New York Harbor and a refinery explosion in Louisiana have resulted in further costs and have hurt Exxon’s reputation. As a result of the accidents, Exxon’s stock has languished relative to that of competitors, according to fund managers and analysts.

During Wednesday’s session, Holtzman asked for a future meeting with a special committee of Exxon’s board set up to deal with environmental and safety issues. She also proposed that the company conduct annual environmental audits to identify potential environmental and safety problems and said Exxon should create specially trained response teams to minimize damage from any future oil spills.

Rawl made no commitments on any of the proposals but said he would meet with Holtzman to discuss the results of Exxon’s analysis of recent spills in the Arthur Kill waterway between New York and New Jersey. “He did tell me they had so far identified two problems there and were correcting them,” she said.

For his part, Davis made several proposals, including one that Exxon require every employee to notify Rawl in writing of any safety problems encountered in the course of daily work. Davis said Rawl seemed especially interested in such a program, modeled after one at Unocal Corp. that Davis said has already resulted in a significant decline in accidents.

On Wednesday, Exxon’s stock closed down 62.5 cents at $46.50 per share on the New York Stock Exchange.