Oil giant Exxon was ordered to reinstate 2 employees and pay $800,000 for illegally firing them after suspecting them of leaking information to the media

• Exxon Mobil fired two workers it suspected of leaking information to the WSJ, the DoL said.
• The company has been ordered to reinstate them and pay them $800,000 in back wages and damages.

Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil illegally fired two workers that it suspected of leaking information to The Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Labor said.

The company has been ordered to reinstate the employees and pay them $800,000 in back wages and damages, the DoL said.

The Journal reported in September 2020 that some current and former employees thought that Exxon's huge growth plans related to its investments in the Texas Permian Basin – which were included in SEC filings made by the company – were unrealistic.

The sources also told the publication that there had been disagreements over the present value of the oil and gas in a part of the basin known as the Delaware based on differing beliefs on how fast Exxon could drill.

"The claims made about drilling rates are demonstrably false," an Exxon spokesperson told Insider on Wednesday.

"The speed the employees claimed was impossible, was not only possible, but we achieved that speed three years ahead of the plan they questioned," they continued. "It turns out, the employees were not qualified enough to offer an opinion, let alone a make a credible complaint."

A federal whistleblower investigation by the department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that the company had fired two computational scientists who raised concerns in late 2020 about the company's use of the assumptions.

Exxon said that it terminated one of the scientists for mishandling proprietary company information and the second for having a "negative attitude," job hunting, and losing the confidence of company management.

But one of the scientists who had been fired was a relative of a source quoted by The Journal article and had access to the leaked information, OSHA said. The agency said its investigation determined that the scientists' communications with The Journal were protected by whistleblower laws.

OSHA said that neither of the fired scientists were revealed as sources for the article.

"The Company rejects all claims made by the former employees and will defend itself accordingly," the Exxon spokesperson said. They added that the terminations were unrelated to the concerns the employees had raised and that the company would appeal the DoL's findings.