My name is Chris Matthews. I am the U.S. Energy Editor.

Our colleague, Chris, spends a lot of time covering the oil and gas giant, Exxon Mobile.

They are the biggest western oil company and they are really the face of the industry

in many ways and have been for some time. And I think when a lot of people think of oil

and gas, they think of Exxon.

Over the past few months, Chris and his team have been working on a major investigation

into Exxon. They reviewed internal Exxon documents that have never been made public before.

You know, it was one of those things where I think in all honesty, I probably didn't understand

what we were looking at initially. And the more time I spent with it, the more significant

I realized it was.

And what does your recent reporting uncover about Exxon?

I think what we realized was we were getting a really unvarnished look into the senior

most levels of the company and what they really thought about climate change and what they

were really doing to put their finger on the scale of the conversation about climate change.

And it was clear to us that there was discrepancies between what the company was saying publicly

and what it was saying behind closed doors.

The new reporting outlines Exxon's efforts to diminish people's concerns over climate

change and challenge the scientific consensus on rising global temperatures.

And those efforts went on for longer than we previously knew. The documents cover several

decades.

From the 80s into around 2016, it summarizes emails, board meetings, edits of speeches,

and goes to the very top of the company.

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