Perhaps this is just my ignorance showing, but wasn't the data that Exxon based its own modelling on more or less publicly available? It can't have been a secre

Perhaps this is just my ignorance showing, but wasn't the data that Exxon based its own modelling on more or less publicly available? It can't have been a secret how many barrels were being pulled out of the ground each year? What am I missing? Far from wanting to defend Exxon, but regardless whether or not they knew; if the narrative is that the "world outside Exxon" didn't know, doesn't that in itself amount to wilful ignorance or negligence at best? What data did they have that the rest of the academic/political world couldn't add up on its own without corporate cooperation?