Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village of 400 perched on a barrier island north of the Arctic Circle, is accusing two dozen fuel and utility companies of helping to cause the climate change that it says is accelerating the island's erosion. The village wants the companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell Oil and many others, to pay the costs of relocating to the mainland, which could amount to as much as $400 million. The case is one of three major lawsuits filed by environmental groups, private lawyers and state officials around the United States against big producers of heat-trapping gases. Although the village faces a difficult battle, the cases are gathering steam. In recent months, two U.S. appeals courts reversed decisions by federal district courts to dismiss climate-change lawsuits, allowing the cases to go forward. In Connecticut, environmental lawyers joined forces with attorneys general of eight states and the City of New York seeking a court order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Board of Directors of Exxon Mobil Corp. declared a cash dividend of 42 cents per share on the Common Stock, payable on March 10, 2010 to shareholders of record of Common Stock at the close of business on February 10, 2010. This first quarter dividend is at the same level as the dividend paid in the fourth quarter of 2009.

ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell plc finally signed their contract to expand production at the 8.7-billion-barrel West Qurna-1 supergiant oilfield project from about 279,000 b/d to 2.325 million b/d within seven years. ExxonMobil's and Shell's signing of the giant West Qurna-1 deal means that of the group of supergiant fields Iraq has offered to investors, the development of Rumaila, Zubair, Majnoon, and West Qurna-1 has been secured, with the 12.7-billion barrel West Qurna-2 contract (won by Russia's LUKoil and Norway's Statoil) expected to be sealed later this week. A string of large yet second-tier by Iraqi measures field contracts have also been signed, with a few still outstanding. The Iraqi oil Ministry last week said it expected all the deals from its first and second licensing rounds to be signed by the end of January.