Is he sympathetic to the Greenpeace cause? He smiles enigmatically. "They're a nice bunch of people. It's a lovely day."

Guardian article following Greenpeace's action on Esso's Purfleet distribution plant on 25 July.

Emma Brockes and Julian Borger, The Guardian

Full article

Fifty feet up, the breeze is stiff enough to make occupation of the tiger suit just about bearable. Rachel, 24, a volunteer at Greenpeace, has been wearing it since daybreak when she jammed the head under one arm and climbed to the top of the lighting tower. There she stands, waving to the crowd through the afternoon haze like a greeter at a theme park. "It is getting a little warm," she concedes over her mobile phone, voice raised against the wind. "But I'll do what it takes to make my point."

Rachel's point, and the point of the 52 other protesters who yesterday brought Esso's depot in Purfleet, Essex, to a standstill, is that the company is engaged in a sinister plot to derail international initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You might have seen the adverts. For the past three months, Greenpeace has run a boycott campaign under the catchline "Esso ate my brain", featuring a digitally remastered George Bush with eyes like Esso logos. "Esso is using its power to sabotage international action on global warning," says Greenpeace's climate campaigner, Rob Gueterbock. "It is because of pressure from Esso that George Bush stuck two fingers up at the Kyoto agreement." This, says Esso, is "ridiculous".

Nevertheless, at 5.30am yesterday, 52 volunteers decamped outside the fuel distribution centre and set about holding it to ransom. "We intend to stay here until Esso rethinks its opposition to the Kyoto agreement," says Laura, up in the tower with the tiger. Outside the front gates, two shipping containers were bolted to the tarmac and occupied by volunteers, blocking access to all tanker traffic. At the side gate, protesters chained themselves beneath a van painted with the slogan "global warming villains" and bearing a picture of Bush. Five of the activists wore tiger suits, a take on Esso's mascot, and a public address system was rigged up over which they broadcast the sound of growling. Anything bearing the Esso logo had the prefix "stop" daubed on it in black paint.

Greenpeace is good at this kind of thing, knowing full well that the jollier its antics, the more tight-lipped and unsympathetic - more leg-gnawingly corporate - Esso will appear in comparison. On the Greenpeace website a sketch has been filmed featuring Rachel in her tiger costume and Laura. "What animal should represent Esso?" asks Laura. "A slimy, scum-sucking bottom feeder," Rachel says.

Exxon Mobil, Esso's parent company, certainly presents a large target. It is the most profitable corporate venture in the history of the world. Even as the US economy stagnated this year, its profits marched on to new heights. On Tuesday, the company chairman, Lee Raymond, announced record second quarter earnings of nearly $4.4bn.

At the company headquarters in Irving, Texas, Exxon executives complain that the oil giant is being punished for its success. They talk about having a target arbitrarily painted on their back, and being falsely cast as environmental demons. After all, more than three-quarters of the oil extraction underway in the world is being carried out by state owned enterprises which are assumed to be so impervious to criticism that the greeen lobby does not even bother to attack them.

Frank Sprow, Exxon Mobil's vice president for safety and environmental health, told the Guardian earlier this year that he and his colleagues found the media portrayal "oppressive".

"We do take the potential for human induced climate change very seriously," he said and argued that ExxonMobil was "taking strong, aggressive and prompt actions to address the long-term risk of climate change."

Out of a total of $600m allocated to research and development, the company was spending $12m annually on investigating ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, through fuel cell research, high efficiency engines and examining a variety of ways of filtering carbon dioxide from the output of the energy industry.

In particular, the company points to a joint venture with General Motors and Toyota experimenting with a fuel cell which would run on a modified form of petroleum with radically reduced greenhouse emissions. The engine should be on the market within a decade.

However, unlike most of its rivals in global oil's first division, Exxon Mobil is not putting any research money into renewable fuels. It gave up on solar power years ago, saying there was no future in it. Its fuel cell research is oil-based - essentially a more efficient way of using oil - while its chief US competitor, Texaco, has invested $67m in fuel cell technology based mainly on hydrogen as a fuel, which would produce water as a by-product.

Moreover, for a company making more than $17bn net income a year, a $12m annual investment in a future based on alternative technologies is less than impressive.

But the campaign against Exxon/Esso does not have its roots in the company balance sheet, and the company's claim to have been mugged while quietly going about its business is not entirely accurate.

In fact, Exxon Mobil, more than any other oil company, has fought an aggressive campaign to undermine public confidence in the scientific studies pointing to industry's role in global warming. It has portrayed the United Nations Inter national Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a bureaucratically-driven committee with few scientific underpinnings.

In recent years, the company has bought swathes of space in the US press to promote Lee Raymond's scepticism about global warming science, his adamant opposition to the Kyoto treaty and its mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and his support for voluntary, "market-oriented" targets.

Exxon Mobil has also provided funding for maverick scientists who claim there is insufficient evidence of a human factor in climate change. In 1998 the company donated $10,000 to the science and environmental policy project run by Fred Singer, the most vocal sceptic of global warming. In the same year, it gave $65,000 to the Atlas economic research foundation, which shares the same building as Singer's project and which promotes his work on its website as offering "a wealth of information, credibility and encouragement."

Raymond also helped publicise a petition apparently signed by 17,000 scientists who questioned the evidence for the human role in global warming. It turned out the petition had been circulated by the Oregon institute for science of medicine, an organisation few had heard of, and which no one in the scientific world could remember visiting. This was because the institute was really a large tin shed, used as a laboratory by a handful of local independent thinkers. Among the signatures on the petition (which had been made to look like a publication of the national academy of sciences) were Ginger Spice and the television doctors from MASH.

Exxon's money has without doubt helped delay a consensus on climate change. Steve Kretzmann, a policy analyst at the sustainable energy and economy network, said: "If ExxonMobil said anything remotely close to admitting that something had to be done about global warming, it would have a huge effect on policy."

Yet as one oil company after another has acknowledged industry-induced global warming, Exxon Mobil has held firm. It kept its place in the global climate coalition, an industrial lobby organised to cast doubt on climate change science, long after its fellow energy companies had deserted.

Its relative isolation was ended, however, by George Bush's election victory last year - a triumph to which Exxon Mobil contributed $1.2m. The new president's claim that the scientific work on global warming was still "unsettled" closely echoed Lee Raymond's own stated views. Exxon Mobil applauded Bush's rejection of Kyoto.

Back in Purfleet Rob Gueterbock says: "Esso is happy to see the Earth fry to protect its profits." In shipping container number one, activists Rachel, 28, and Tim, 43, pass the time chatting with police through the hatch and eating their sandwiches. "Are you OK in there?" asks a WPC every 10 minutes. "Can I get you anything?"

"No thanks," says Rachel cheerfully. "We've brought plenty of supplies."

"Oooh," says Laura, up in the lighting tower, "I think the police might be getting ready to bring us down."

But they aren't. Milling around, sheltering from the sun under a corrugated bike shed, the police are taking a relaxed approach. "We've gone for understatement," says Detective Inspector Steven Warwick, not wishing to aggravate a peaceful demonstration. Is he sympathetic to the Greenpeace cause? He smiles enigmatically. "They're a nice bunch of people. It's a lovely day."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

[Previous article: "July 5, 2001 - Body Shop leads Exxon boycott"]
[Next article: "August 29, 2001 - Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's Stance On Global Warming Causes a Stir"]