ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods came out swinging to condemn comments by a government affairs executive caught on video claiming the supermajor backed climate change deniers and that support of a U.S. carbon tax was only a “talking point.”

Two separate videos were recorded by Unearthed, an investigative journalism branch of Greenpeace. One captured comments by ExxonMobil’s Keith McCoy, a Washington, DC-based senior director for the government affairs team. 

McCoy told the reporter, who failed to identify himself as working for Greenpeace, that efforts had been undertaken to “aggressively” fight climate change issues. ExxonMobil also had funded “shadow groups” that denied global warming.

Still, McCoy also appeared to acknowledge that some of the efforts to undermine...