A Harvard University professor and environmental law scholar said she has quit the board of ConocoPhillips Co., after coming under scrutiny for her role in the oil and gas major.
“I’ve stepped off the ConocoPhillips board to focus on my research at Harvard and make space for some new opportunities”, Jody Freeman said in a press statement on her personal website.
She did not cite claims that in a potential breach of Harvard policy, she had helped arrange a meeting between the company and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) director. Her purported middleman role was reported by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and The Guardian in April citing email correspondence they had obtained.
“Freeman, who receives more than $350,000 a year from ConocoPhillips as a board member, used her Ivy League connections to vouch for two of the oil firm’s executives and appears to have breached Harvard policy by failing to disclose her role with the company in her email, which she signed off as a Harvard law professor”, said the authors writing for both TBIJ and The Guardian April 6.
The SEC at the time was proposing rules that would require companies to publish their emissions, noted the authors.
“Freeman’s emails – sent in January 2021 and obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request – show she helped set up a meeting where ConocoPhillips executives could set out their position in private before the regulator publicly requested input from investors and companies”, they added. “The company has since sent its official response to the SEC, opposing the rules.”
The supposed meeting was to be between ConocoPhillips executive Dominic Macklon and head of sustainability Lloyd Visser and then-SEC acting director John Coates, the authors said.
A disclosure by the SEC dated May 3, 2021 said Coates and another SEC official had met with representatives of the company including the two. “Among the topics discussed were the March 15, 2021 request for public input related to climate change disclosures”, the SEC memorandum said.
Freeman said the report on the British news organizations was “misleading”.
“John, my Harvard Law School colleague, when he was still at Harvard, asked me to connect him to people at the company as part of his process of gathering information from all stakeholders”, she said in a statement on her online portal April 12, 2023. “I responded to his request and connected him to the company, introducing him to knowledgeable people there, explaining who they were.”
Freeman quoted Coates as saying in a statement, “To be clear: Jody’s board role at Conoco was known to me, I reached out to her first, and she did not request a meeting or ‘lobby’ me or others at the SEC for Conoco”.
“While still at Harvard, preparing to on-board at the SEC, I asked Jody – along with many other people – to connect me to people who had focused on climate disclosure”, Coates’ statement added, as carried by Freeman’s site. “In Jody’s case, I knew she was on the board at ConocoPhillips (which she discloses on her HLS [Harvard Law School] bio and is also a matter of public record), and contacted her in part for that reason, and in part because she is a careful and balanced scholar of environmental law. “
Coates’ statement said the reason for reaching out to ConocoPhillips was “to learn about how climate disclosure was being viewed across a range of viewpoints”.
Last week Freeman said she has resigned from ConocoPhillips to focus on her work at Harvard.
“I want to prioritize our environmental law program’s cross-disciplinary work on methane reduction, net zero pledges, and energy transition planning and concentrate on making the program even stronger by growing staff and capacity”, she said. “I’m also excited about the prospect of writing a book on our environmental challenges and how we can make faster progress.”
“I learned a lot from my decade-long board service, think I made a positive difference, and am glad I did it”, Freeman added referring to her tenure at ConocoPhillips.
“I will continue to engage in work beyond the university to address climate change and promote clean energy”, she concluded.
‘Conflict of Interest’
In March after ConocoPhillips won environmental clearance for the Willow oil drilling project, considered to be near Arctic waters, a Harvard student-faculty campaign group wrote an open letter to Freeman urging her to relinquish her position in the company. “Professor Freeman, you have done important climate work in the course of your career, but it risks being overshadowed by the conflict of interest posed by your simultaneous leadership roles at Harvard and ConocoPhillips”, Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard wrote on the blogging site Medium March 28.
Freeman’s profile on the Harvard website describes her as “the Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a leading scholar of administrative law and environmental law”.
“Freeman served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House in 2009-2010. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations”, Harvard adds. “While in the White House, she was the architect of President Obama’s historic agreement with the U.S. auto industry to double fuel efficiency standards. Freeman worked with the Biden transition team developing the administration’s climate action plan.”
In an article on her site clarifying her company role, written before her resignation, Freeman says her “independent” position on ConocoPhillips’ board was about “helping to advance the transition to a low-carbon economy”.
“In the near term, I believe that the oil and gas industry must be part of the solution to climate change”, she says. “To help drive this change, it is critical that fossil fuel boards include independent directors with a strong and informed climate perspective.”
“From my seat at the board table, I participate candidly and forcefully in discussion, introducing an important perspective that otherwise would be missing”, the article adds. “I press for solutions and progress. No single director can transform any company or industry, but I believe that I make a positive difference, and if I did not, I would not do this work.
“Some people have claimed that my being on the board creates a conflict of interest with my university obligations. My work at Harvard is paramount and always will be. But my role on the board is entirely consistent with the other work I do – teaching, researching, writing, advising, and advocating for climate policy, at Harvard and elsewhere.”
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
