“My personal style is I think a constructive conversation is good, it’s healthy,” said Darren Woods. “I don’t mind being challenged on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.” It is hard to imagine either of Woods’ two predecessors as CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson, enthusing as wholeheartedly about the importance of “engagement, discussion, debates.”

But when Woods became CEO at the start of last year, he took charge of a company in reduced circumstances. Exxon Mobil has more need to explain itself now, and Woods says he is committed to doing that.

“The way you get the most out of people and the way you get to the best solutions and the best ideas is by engaging in constructive debate with a diversity of opinions and ideas,” he told the Financial Times.

“I think that’s certainly something that I owe to particularly my shareholders. If they’ve got legitimate concerns, then I want to give them the legitimate answers.”

The fundamental message has not changed. Exxon Mobil believes oil and gas will be a vital part of the world’s energy mix for decades, and it is planning to be one of the most efficient producers of those resources and the products made from them. But Woods has made a series of changes in his first 18 months that have signaled a profound shift in the way the company communicates.

In Exxon Mobil’s glory days, its leaders could afford to take a high-handed attitude even with governments and their own shareholders. Since Tillerson took over at the beginning of 2006, however, its shares have risen about 38%, greatly underperforming the S&P 500 index, which has more than doubled over the same period.

In 2015, meanwhile, almost every government in the world signed up to the Paris climate agreement, pledging to tackle the threat of global warming with curbs on fossil fuels, along other measures.

Woods said he was committed to making sure that Exxon Mobil responded to the changing world. “We’ve been in business for 135 years. You’re not successful over that kind of timeframe by not paying attention to where society’s evolving to, where demand’s going,” he added.

Darren Woods (Source: Financial Times)

That includes acknowledging the calls from governments, investors and customers to address the threat of climate change. “They want to continue to have energy, but they want to have lower emissions energy,” Woods said. “OK, I understand that.”

His position is broadly the same as that of Tillerson, who accepted the scientific consensus on climate change and swung Exxon Mobil’s support behind the Paris agreement. Woods has gone further, however, in highlighting strategies to address that climate risk, including an initiative launched in May to cut leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from its operations.

Woods has also been doing more to discuss climate risk with investors. Exxon Mobil in February published its first report looking at the possible implications for its business of policies to keep the increase in global temperatures since pre-industrial times to just 2C, after a majority vote in favor of the move at the 2017 annual meeting. Late last year, the company also moved to allow large shareholders to meet board directors, ending restrictions that had been unpopular with investors.

“There had been for a while frustration at that access,” Woods said. “To the extent that people are interested in investing in this company and they want to understand it, I have an obligation to help them do that.”

His openness to engagement, he said, has been “very well received”, by interested parties ranging from large investors such as BlackRock and State Street to the Vatican. He was one of the oil industry leaders who attended the conference on energy and climate hosted by Pope Francis last month.

“For the most part it was a very constructive conversation with the Vatican,” Woods said. “We had a pretty diverse group of folks, a very closed session that talked constructively about the challenge.”

Ideas for a continuing forum for dialogue between the energy industry, investors and the Vatican were “still evolving”, he added. “I think there was a recognition that a lot of parties are working constructively in the areas where they can contribute to address this risk. I know I can speak for our company, we’re certainly doing that.”

In another indication of Exxon Mobil’s shifting position, earlier this month it said it would cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators that works to reduce restrictions on businesses and opposes “impractical visionary goals” for addressing climate change.

Exxon Mobil’s underlying view of the world is not so different from its perspective under Tillerson. In particular, its central expectation is that global demand for oil will keep rising, justifying investment in additional supply. Demand for petrol for light vehicles might peak and eventually decline, Woods accepted, as cars became more efficient and electric vehicles took a growing share of the market. But oil demand for heavy transport and for petrochemicals, he said, was much less easily replaced.

“The reality is today we don’t have an energy-dense fuel required for commercial transportation: aviation, heavy-duty transport, things like that,” he said. “So that’s what’s built into our energy outlook.”

What has changed is that Woods now talks much more openly about the risks around that outlook. If oil demand did start to decline more quickly than Exxon Mobil currently expected, he said, “you better be the most efficient supplier in the market, because there’s still going to be demand for an efficient supplier.”

If there were some unforeseen technological breakthrough in energy, he added, the transition to it becoming the new global standard would take some time, “and that time gives companies like ourselves that are grounded in technology the opportunity to evolve and participate in it.”

Investors have yet to be convinced by Woods’ approach. Since he took over, Exxon Mobil’s shares have dropped about 11%, despite good news about its large oil discovery in Guyana, while those of its U.S. rival Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) are up about 6%. Concerns about Exxon Mobil’s plans for increased capital spending and its flat production in the short term have overshadowed the shares.

Woods suggested, however, that 18 months was much too short a period on which to judge his record. “This is a long-term business: you’ve got to make decisions and drive the business in a way that is structurally and sustainably value added for the long term,” he said. “If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing your job.”

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