Exxon, Shell lauded as ‘standard-bearers’ on safety

Big Oil has absorbed its share of rhetorical blows from Democrats since the BP oil spill, but two industry heavyweights — ExxonMobil and Shell — may get a warmer reception in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and Marvin Odum, who heads Royal Dutch Shell’s U.S. operations, are slated to discuss the industry’s “safety culture” when they appear before the presidential panel that’s investigating the BP oil spill.

William Reilly — the co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling — praised the two companies as leaders on safety.

“Both companies, and their safety and risk management systems, have received extensive examination by the commission’s staff,” Reilly, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the first Bush administration, said Tuesday at the outset of the second day of the panel’s two-day hearing. “They are very impressive.”

Reilly contrasted the two oil giants with BP, Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean and Halliburton, the cement contractor on BP’s ill-fated Macondo well. Representatives from those companies appeared before the panel Monday.

“If yesterday we heard from the laggards, if yesterday we looked back, today we hope to learn from the leaders, to look forward, to look at companies which have learned from their own crises and disasters and rose to become standard-bearers,” Reilly said.

In contrast, several high-profile Capitol Hill Democrats have more broadly attacked the industry in citing the risks of deepwater drilling.