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Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power Hardcover – May 1, 2012
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An “extraordinary” and “monumental” exposé of Big Oil from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll (The Washington Post)
In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.
Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the “God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.
The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymond’s successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymond’s programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil’s public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story.
The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.
- Print length685 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe Penguin Press
- Publication dateMay 1, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101594203350
- ISBN-13978-1594203350
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A few days before the Exxon Valdez ran onto Bligh Reef, tens of thousands of Hungarians marched through Budapest. The demonstrators turned the commemoration of an 1848 uprising against Austrian rule into a revolt against Soviet-backed communism. “Resign!” they shouted outside downtown buildings housing Communist Party bureaucrats. “Freedom! . . . No more shall we be slaves!” They carried flags from Hungary’s pre-Communist era and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet military forces. “Ivan, Aren’t You Homesick?” and “Legal State, Not a Police State” declared their protest signs.
The defiant march added to the cracks spreading that spring through the structures of global politics. The Berlin Wall fell a few months later, in November. The Soviet Union fissured and then disappeared. Democratic and free-market revolutions and revivals swept through Central Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Ethnic, religious, and territorial conflicts, long subdued by the cold war, erupted one after another. The world was remade, tossed, liberated—and reopened for international business.
The Valdez wreck stunned Exxon and its rising leader, Lee Raymond. The disaster would change the corporation profoundly. Internal reforms imposed by Raymond in response to the accident would turn one of America’s oldest, most rigid corporations into an even harder, leaner place of rule books and fear-inspiring management techniques. At the same time, Raymond and the rest of Exxon’s leaders would gradually pass through the introspection triggered by the Valdez spill and seek out the oil and gas plays that opened so unexpectedly after 1989. An age of empire beckoned America and Exxon alike.
In a bracingly short time, Anglo-American optimism and idealism about free markets, foreign investment, and the rule of law found adherents in the most unlikely world capitals. Brand-new nations brimming with oil and gas and others previously closed to Western corporations hung out FOR LEASE signs to lure geologists from Houston and London: Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Angola, Qatar, and tiny Equatorial Guinea, on the West African coast, soon to market itself through its Washington lobbyists as the “Kuwait of Africa.” These post–cold war opportunities for American, British, French, and Italian oil companies could be ambiguous, risky, and sometimes fleeting. Resentful nationalism and suspicion of the United States and Europe persisted in many capitals of the new oil powers. State-owned petroleum companies from China, India, Brazil, and elsewhere were rising quickly as competitors. Exxon might be America’s largest and most powerful oil corporation, but it would require all the political influence, financial resources, dazzling technology, speed, and stamina that its leaders could muster to seize the lucrative oil deals made possible by communism’s fall and global capitalism’s revival.
The United States now stood unchallenged as a worldwide military power. Exxon’s empire would increasingly overlap with America’s, but the two were hardly contiguous. Pentagon policy, after the Soviet Union’s demise, sought to keep international sea-lanes free; to reduce the global danger of nuclear war, terrorism, and transnational crime; to manage or contain Russia and China; to secure Israel; and to foster, against long odds, a stable Middle East from which oil supplies vital for global economic growth could flow freely. Exxon benefited from the new markets and global commerce that American military hegemony now protected. Yet the corporation’s activity also complicated American foreign policy; Exxon’s far-flung interests were at times distinct from Washington’s. Lee Raymond would manage Exxon’s global position after 1989 as a confident sovereign, a peer of the White House’s rotating occupants. Raymond aligned Exxon with America, but he was not always in sync; he was more akin to the president of France or the chancellor of Germany. He did not manage the corporation as a subordinate instrument of American foreign policy; his was a private empire.
Exxon’s power within the United States derived from an independent, even rebellious lineage. The corporation had been hived off from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly in 1911, after a bruising antitrust campaign led by economic reformers and populist politicians. The visceral hostility toward Washington sometimes eschewed by Exxon executives eight decades later suggested some of them had still not gotten over it.
Exxon’s size and the nature of its business model meant that it functioned as a corporate state within the American state. Like its forebearer, Standard, Exxon proved across decades that it was one of the most powerful businesses ever produced by American capitalism. From the 1950s through the end of the cold war, Exxon ranked year after year as one of the country’s very largest and most profitable corporations, always in the top five of the annual Fortune 500 lists. Its profit performance proved far more consistent and durable than that of other great corporate behemoths of America’s postwar boom, such as General Motors, United States Steel, and I.B.M. In 1959, Exxon ranked as the second-largest American corporation by revenue and profit; four decades later it was third. And more than any of its corporate peers, Exxon’s trajectory now pointed straight up. The corporation’s revenues would grow fourfold during the two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and its profits would smash all American records.
As it expanded, Exxon refined its own foreign, security, and economic policies. In some of the faraway countries where it did business, because of the scale of its investments, Exxon’s sway over local politics and security was greater than that of the United States embassy. In impoverished African countries increasingly important to Exxon’s strategy, such as Chad, the weight of the corporation’s investments and the cash flow it shared with local governments overwhelmed the economy and became the central prize in violent local contests for power. In Moscow and Beijing, Exxon’s independent power and negotiating agenda competed with and sometimes attracted more attention than the démarches issued by American secretaries of state. Yet the corporation could also be insular and even passive in the faraway places where it acquired and produced oil and gas. It fenced off local operations and separated its workforce from upheaval outside its gates. If its oil fl owed and its contract terms remained intact, then Exxon often followed a directive of minimal interference in local politics, especially if those politics were controversial, as in the case of the African dictatorships with which the corporation partnered, or the countries, such as Indonesia and Venezuela, where civil conflict swirled around Exxon properties. In Washington, Exxon was a more confident and explicit political actor. The corporation’s lobbyists bent and shaped American foreign policy, as well as economic, climate, chemical, and environmental regulation. Exxon maintained all-weather alliances with sympathetic American politicians while calling as little attention to its influence as possible.
The cold war’s end signaled a coming era when nongovernmental actors—corporations, philanthropies, terrorist cells, and media networks— all gained relative power. Exxon’s size, insularity, and ideology made its position distinct. Unlike Walmart or Google (to name two other multinational corporations that would rise after 1989 to global influence), the object of Exxon’s business model lay buried beneath the earth. Exxon drilled holes in the ground and then operated its oil and gas wells for many years, and so its business imperatives were linked to the control of physical territory. Increasingly, the oil and gas Exxon produced was located in poor or unstable countries. Its treasure was subject to capture or political theft by coup makers or guerrilla movements, and so the corporation became involved in small wars and kidnapping rackets that many other international companies could gratefully avoid.
The time horizons for Exxon’s investments stretched out longer than those of almost any government it lobbied. “We see governments come and go,” Lee Raymond once remarked, an observation that was particularly true of Washington, with its constitutionally term-limited presidency. Exxon’s investments in a particular oil and gas field could be premised on a production life span of forty or more years. During that time, the United States might change its president and its foreign and energy policies at least half a dozen times. Overseas, a project’s host country might pass through multiple coups and political upheavals during the same four decades. It behooved Exxon to develop influence and lobbying strategies to manage or evade political volatility.
American spies and diplomats who occasionally migrated to work at Exxon discovered a corporate system of secrecy, nondisclosure agreements, and internal security that matched some of the most compartmented black boxes of the world’s intelligence agencies. The corporation’s information control systems guarded proprietary industrial data but also sought to protect its long-term strategic position by minimizing its visibility. Exxon’s executives deflected press coverage; they withheld cooperation from congressional investigators, if the letter of the law allowed; and they typically spoke in public by reading out sanitized, carefully edited speeches or PowerPoint slides. Their strategy worked: Exxon made a fetish of rules, but it rarely had to justify or explain publicly how it operated when the rules were gray.
As the Valdez wreck made obvious, Exxon’s massive daily operations—soon to produce 1.5 billion barrels of oil and gas pumped from the ground each year, and 50 billion gallons of gasoline sold worldwide—posed huge environmental risks. After the Valdez, Exxon would become again, as it had been in the first decades of Standard Oil’s existence, the most hated oil company in America.
When gasoline prices soared, American commuters felt powerless before its influence. In effect, Exxon was America’s energy policy. Certainly there was no governmental policy of comparable coherence. After fitful, failed efforts to wean itself from imported oil during the 1970s, the United States had evolved no effective government-led energy strategy. Its de facto policy was the operation of free markets amid a jumble of patchwork subsidies, contradictory rules, and weak regulatory agencies. The very weakness of policy favored Exxon. As the public’s frustration grew over rising pump prices and dependence on oil imports that transferred billions of dollars to hostile regimes overseas, Exxon became a natural lightning rod. The corporation managed this criticism with the same coolheaded patience and indifference that it employed to endure political risk in tinpot African dictatorships. Compromise was not the Exxon way.
Product details
- Publisher : The Penguin Press; First Edition (May 1, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 685 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1594203350
- ISBN-13 : 978-1594203350
- Item Weight : 2.28 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #330,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #108 in Oil & Energy Industry (Books)
- #586 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- #1,095 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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Steve Coll is a writer for The New Yorker and author of the Pulitzer Prize- winning Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. He is president of the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, D.C. Previously he served, for more than twenty years, as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and ultimately as managing editor of The Washington Post. He is also the author of On the Grand Trunk Road, The Deal of the Century, and The Taking of Getty Oil. Coll received a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding international print reporting and the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best magazine reporting from abroad. Ghost Wars, published in 2004, received the Pulitzer for general nonfiction and the Arthur Ross award for the best book on international affairs.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging and informative. They appreciate the well-researched and balanced information about the company's history. The writing style is praised as clear and easy to understand. Readers describe the pacing as compelling and exciting, not boring. The eye-opening details and insightful perspectives are appreciated.
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Customers find the book engaging and informative. They appreciate the detailed account of what went on behind the scenes at ExxonMobil. The author's ability to distill a complex subject into a cohesive narrative is also appreciated.
"...Mr. Coll has written a highly readable and amazingly detailed account of how ExxonMobil, one of the largest global companies, functions often as..." Read more
"...; I was again impressed by the author's ability to take a very complex subject and distill it into a cohesive and very informative treatment of an..." Read more
"...Recently I found an interesting book, which I recommend you to read, titled "Private Empire" written by Steve Coll...." Read more
"...This is a good read, a view into the highest level of what a very large company does to survive and flourish...." Read more
Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the author's unbiased perspective and thorough research. The book provides clear insights into the complexities of the oil industry, especially dealing with other countries and their rulers. Readers appreciate the detailed context and backstory provided by the author. Overall, the book is an excellent resource for anyone seeking to be informed about the subject.
"...Utilizing over 400 interviews, exhaustive documentary research (including Wikileak telegrams), and personal visits to ExxonMobil facilities around..." Read more
"...a very complex subject and distill it into a cohesive and very informative treatment of an important piece of recent - and ongoing - American..." Read more
"...from roughly 1980 to present, that goes over their outlook, approach to business, and rigorous attention to safety...." Read more
"A great book on several different levels. An in-depth look at a huge energy company that is well-written, interesting, and seems to be a fairly..." Read more
Customers find the book provides a comprehensive history of the company and its recent management actions. They find it objective and easy to read, providing a balanced overview of the corporation, its leadership, and decisions. The book is described as a long business biography of ExxonMobil from the Valdez spill up to today. It tells a tale of corporate governance, mergers, and financial wizardry. Overall, customers describe it as an excellent book on the complete history of the oil giant.
"...In fact, it seems well run and has been highly profitable for decades...." Read more
"...to fill insatiable global demand, and the interplay of business with domestic and international politics - and now of course the backdrop of climate..." Read more
"...As a corporation, they are exceedingly well run, and have delivered exceptional value to shareholders...." Read more
"...Along the way, we are taught that, to be a viable business, to keep the stock value up, an oil/gas company has to constantly look for new places to..." Read more
Customers find the book's writing style engaging and readable. They appreciate the clear explanations of complex topics in an easy-to-understand format. Overall, readers describe the book as providing a comprehensive look into the realities of big oil.
"...Mr. Coll has written a highly readable and amazingly detailed account of how ExxonMobil, one of the largest global companies, functions often as..." Read more
"...Steve Coll is a good writer and this book is well documented...." Read more
"...An in-depth look at a huge energy company that is well-written, interesting, and seems to be a fairly objective narrative about a company that the..." Read more
"...Although it is over 600 pages, Coll's engaging writing style and the wide range of stories and regions he covers makes the pages fly by...." Read more
Customers find the book's pacing compelling and exciting. They describe it as unaffected without being dispassionate. The book covers extensive ground while remaining sympathetic and fair to ExxonMobil.
"...I thought the book was very fair to ExxonMobil, and arguably paints it in a much better light than the other big oil companies he describes...." Read more
"...a chronological order throughout the book, but bounces around the topics from chapter to chapter...." Read more
"...For such a fascinating subject I found the book to be unnecessarily repetitive with the endless comments about "Bookable Reserves" and hints but no..." Read more
"...Unemotional without being dispassionate, Steve Coll invites us to the kind of intrigue and plotting that we may not always realise takes place in..." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and informative. It provides a balanced and fair view of Exxon's activities and leadership. Readers appreciate the author's lucid writing style and clear explanations of complex issues. The book provides a good look at the current and former CEOs.
"...You really get a good look at the current CEO, Rex Tillerson, and the former CEO, Lee (Iron Ass) Raymond, and by gaining a better understanding of..." Read more
"This book is very well researched and it contains a very balanced and fair view of the endeavours of one of the largest companies that has ever been..." Read more
"...It shows the good, the bad and the ugly of the firm and it's leaders against the backdrop of historical events in the (oil) world...." Read more
"A very insightful look at one of the largest and (at times) controversial companies in US history...." Read more
Customers like the value for money. They mention the book provides good economic and political value. The book explains how Exxon-Mobil is well-run and delivers exceptional value to its shareholders. It covers governance, mergers, financial wizardry, lobbying, and a culture that wants free trade, open markets, low taxes, and maximized oil production.
"...He promoted free trade, open markets, low taxes, maximized oil production everywhere, that filled the global pool with as much new oil as possible,..." Read more
"...they are exceedingly well run, and have delivered exceptional value to shareholders...." Read more
"...The book paints him as a true capitalist...." Read more
"...Horizon, he tells a tale of corporate governance, mergers, financial wizardry, lobbying, and a culture that wants to reduce risk to a minuscule level..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's balance. They find it fair and well-researched, providing a balanced view of the inner workings of ExxonMobil.
"This book is very well researched and it contains a very balanced and fair view of the endeavours of one of the largest companies that has ever been..." Read more
"...I found Coll to be unbiased, fair, and quite knowledgeable on a subject that he--and certainly I--was not here-to-fore was not well-informed...." Read more
"...with a rather dire outlook on the future of its operations; but it is a fair and balanced history of one of the most successful--and reviled--..." Read more
"...Coll amazingly maintains political neutrality and balance throughout the whole piece, and provides the reader with enough background to formulate..." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2012Steve Coll, with a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Security and Exchange Commission and another Pulitzer for his book on the CIA in Afghanistan, together with his book THE TAKING OF GETTY OIL, is superbly qualified to peek behind ExxonMobil's curtain of secrecy. He had to crack "a corporate system of secrecy, nondisclosure agreements, and internal security that matched some of the most compartmentalized black boxes of the world's intelligence agencies."
Mr. Coll chose to focus on ExxonMobil in the post-Cold War era. Daniel Yergin's THE PRIZE provides keen insights into the rough-and-tumble global oil industry during the preceding century. Utilizing over 400 interviews, exhaustive documentary research (including Wikileak telegrams), and personal visits to ExxonMobil facilities around the world, Mr. Coll provides a coherent and credible picture of how this ccmpany functioned under CEOs Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond (1993-2005) and Rex Tillerson (2006-). The nature of ExxonMobil was clearly expressed by Raymond: "I'm not a U. S. company and I don't make decisions based on what is good for the U. S." and "Presidents come and go; Exxon doesn't come and go."
Exxon was driven by a long-term necessity to replace and expand its long-term proven oil and gas reserves and to maintain a high return on investments This was becoming increasingly difficult in the post-Cold War world. It triggered the blockbuster acquisitions of Mobil in 1998 and, for its anticipated gas reserves, XTO in 2010.
The search for new reserves rendered ExxonMobil increasingly dependent on volatile and often corrupt areas ranging from Aceh in Indonesia to Chad and Equatorial Guinea in Africa. ExxonMobil maintained a pragmatic position towards 'human rights' and corruption in these areas while often benefiting from U. S. government direct and indirect support. Quite frequently U. S. officials would subsequently become ExxonMobil employees.
ExxonMobil operated at the highest levels, whether in Russia or in Washington. For example, in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill, Raymond, after a chat with President H. W. Bush, swiftly scuppered Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost's urgent demand for an additional 5000 people to clean up the beaches.
ExxonMobil was managed with military discipline. Headquarters controlled both policy and specific details, often with PowerPoint slides. Given Raymond's total rejection of climate change arguments, ExxonMobil Washington lobbyists adhered to this position with lock-step precision. Later, when CEO Tillerson found it necessary to alter this position and even express moderate support for a carbon tax, Exxon's Washington apparatcheks immediately did a 180.
The BP Deepwater Horizon massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 involved, by association, other major oil companies, including ExxonMobil. Though the company had significantly enhanced its safety measures after the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, this was an example of how 'Big Oil' would be blamed, even though the immediate culprit was BP and its service contractors.
Mr. Coll has written a highly readable and amazingly detailed account of how ExxonMobil, one of the largest global companies, functions often as an entity unto itself. I recall various instances when the U. S. government accommodated ExxonMobil's interests. I can not recall an occasion when the opposite occurred. I do not conclude from Mr. Coll's account that ExxonMobil is a 'bad' company. In fact, it seems well run and has been highly profitable for decades. Nonetheless, it is a 800 pound gorilla and is perfectly capable of throwing its weight around, whether in Washington or elsewhere.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2013I picked up the book on the recommendation of a national reviewer and, remembering my reaction to Coll's earlier "Ghost Wars," I was again impressed by the author's ability to take a very complex subject and distill it into a cohesive and very informative treatment of an important piece of recent - and ongoing - American geopolitical and economic history.
Having migrated to the nation's capital to sip idealitic kool-aid a decade earlier, the Exxon Valdez disaster was both a shock and part of a building of cynicism as I recall evening news treatment of corporate culpability as simplistic and pandering (though I eschewed EM gas stations in the ensuing years as a consequence). Finally, Coll's ability to give balanced treatment to the realities of doing business in a publicly held company, the challenges of energy discovery and exploitation to fill insatiable global demand, and the interplay of business with domestic and international politics - and now of course the backdrop of climate change - makes this an epic story suited to a corporation having incredible influence in all facets of daily life. As Coll says, the numbers are truly staggering.
But as I fill my tank will I think about the "upstream" challenges of oil and gas or the seemingly endless stream of record profits in the oil industry? Should I be more impressed by EM's managerial acumen or its totalitarian culture of self-interest? I'm not sure; nor do I know whether having read and enjoyed the book will cause me to change old buying habits... ExxonMobil or Shell or BP... it is ultimately one big bathtub of energy supply. The book certainly adds to the pervasive culture of cynicism but gets high marks for contributing to an informed cynicism.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2012How are you doing? ExxonMobil is going to leave from Japan where they have done business for more than 100 years. Tonengeneral is being pressed to reshape it's organization into the one corresponding to the Japanese market. You have to get through raging waves with collected wisdom of you all, and find a secure position in the Japanese oil business circle. It would be challenging but worthwhile job for the future of the company. Recently I found an interesting book, which I recommend you to read, titled "Private Empire" written by Steve Coll. The ExxonMobil merger of twelve years ago forced the Japanese organization of drastic restructuring, it was a good opportunity for us to consider it's survivability though. Other Japanese companies followed our trails without delay. Like "the Quest by Daniel Yergin," this book also pointed out that the review of operation in Japan triggered the merger. Raymond is said to raise the possibility of a minor deal to combine Exxon and Mobil refinery operations in Japan to Noto who replied with "that and other things." Was it because ROCE of Tonen, each of Exxon and Mobil had 25.5% of it's share, could not attain their expectations of more than 20%. Or they felt an urgent necessity to liquidate internally reserved capitals in the Japanese marketing organization for other projects. The book doesn't disclose the true reason, however. Being placed under Singapore within the Asian pacific block evoked additional difficulty to the Japanese organization when they watched for an opportunity of being a top runner in Japanese oil business world. Coll wrote ExxonMobil enjoyed a top reputation among oil companies in only one country, Singapore. If Japanese government thought about Japanese energy policy seriously and set in advance suitable regulations to self-willed actions by oil companies, the Japanese organization would not be forced to loose their hold on a control stick when they fly high of attaining more than 60% of volume and profit in the Asian pacific region.
The book divides into two part, the first part for Raymond and the second for Tillerson respectively. Featured personnel in this book, in ExxonMobil managerial position, are mostly new to you except Raymond and Tillerson. Coll put spot lights on exploring and lobbying divisions to scoop the core nature of the company. Coll titled this book as "Private Empire" and subtitled as "ExxonMobil and American Power." He tried to depict a private empire like corporation, sometimes competed with, and other times embodied of American power. ExxonMobil's reach and influence continued to exceed those of world's midsize governments in the world economy. Everything they did, the numbers were huge, in making profit, in paying tax. They continued exploration and production in countries where resource nationalism was gaining powers. They boldly challenged to every criticism with every tactics they had to protect shareholders' money. Employees called their head quarter in Irving as the "Death Star." Both Raymond and Tillerson carried out big merger in their tenure. Raymond directed the merger with Mobil, while Tillerson acquired XTO, a leading producer of shale and unconventional gas. It's too early to judge a positive effect of XTO. We are probably safe in thinking ExxonMobil took preparatory steps toward unconventional gas, where they and international competitors had missed the mother-lode lying beneath American soil. Everyday newspapers report indications that shale gas revolution rewrites the world's supply and demand balance. It is worthy of notice whether ExxonMobil is going to shift it's portfolio to gas main business, or not. Randall, who acted middleman with XTO, had a personal tie to Tillerson, they had belonged to the same marching band fraternity at the university of Texas. On the other hand, being a honeymoon relations between the Raymonds and the Cheneys, made ExxonMobil move smoothly within Bush administrations.
When Raymond took over the management of Exxon, he experienced two big incidents, the grounding of Valdez and the kidnapping of Reso, a president of oil and gas exploration and production outside of North America, who was murdered in the end. These disasters turned one of America's oldest, most rigid corporations into an even harder, leaner place of rule books and fear-inspiring management techniques. It led to a creating OIMS/CIMS, strengthening security division and implementing employee ranking system. Raymond integrated the new corporate safety rules into an intensified top-down culture of command management emanating from Exxon headquarters. Employees had to begin with a "safety minutes" as receptive as the routines of commercial flight attendants before takeoff. The ranking system, as you know well of, analogous to natural selection, hardened Exxon's culture and wrote the corporation's DNA. Coll rote ExxonMobil led in its upper management ranks by people who were not only supporters of the OIMS reforms, but true believers. When the merger took place, oil companies were getting hard pressure from the stock market. While the oil price hit the bottom, the declining figures of the booked reserves deteriorated the value of oil companies' stocks. The size of booked reserves only allowed shareholders to estimate future profits with relatively high confidence. The replacement of resource stocks was fundamental to keep the company from sinking. By merger with Mobil, Exxon attained big increase in the booked reserves. Raymond said Qatar alone was probably valuable enough to justify the full Mobil merger price, all its oil and gas fields in Africa, Asia, and Soviet Union were a bonus. However, he also acquired a small war. It was a conflict that Mobil had been struggling with for decades. Noto said his nightmare was to pick up the New York Times and read that both Nigeria and Indonesia were in flames. After the merger Raymond was forced to face directly with the prevailing resource nationalism within these developing countries. Countries offering drilling rights involved various internal conflicts, racial matters, and human right violation problems. ExxonMobil kept pretending indifferent to those issues. The issues of concern to ExxonMobil were largely limited to the production of oil and the sanctity of contracts. If it's oil flowed and it's contract terms remained interacts, then ExxonMobil often followed a directive of minimal interference in local politics. As long as it's property and employees weren't put in danger, they rejected the interference by the American government and ran their business in low profile. ExxonMobil did not demand anything from the American government, but it did not want the government to do anything to the company, either. They withdrew into the hard shell and never disclosed anything related to the company. Coll introduced a episode of the ExxonMobil management who only quoted publicized BP's figures at every outside company events. Raymond's belief seems to be solid at any time. He promoted free trade, open markets, low taxes, maximized oil production everywhere, that filled the global pool with as much new oil as possible, and thus kept global oil prices low, to benefit of American economy. Amusing parts in this book would be ExxonMobil's various activities in Indonesia, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Nigeria, Qatar, Iraq, and Soviet Union, which were not informed to us fully at that time. It would be a good chance for us, who only know domestic activity, to see the other side of the company, including actual performance by the security division.
When Raymond dominated the company, oil companies were compelled to tackle with a global warming issue and a clean energy policy. Doc. Raymond believed fossil fuels would be central to the energy economy for the foreseeable future from the reason alternatives to oil were not economically competitive. He insisted evidence about man-made climate change was an illusion and that a binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was therefore unnecessary. His opinion had borne fruit, the Outlook for Energy : A View to 2030, which you knew well. He opposed every steps by governments to reduce oil consumption as it would curtail economic growth resultantly. Instead he simply predicted an endless rise in the demand for the fossil fuels his company sells, and maintained that there was nothing that could be done to alter that. To decide the successor of Raymond had a rough passage. Raymond told the board that the most important quality his successor would require was toughness-the ability to stand up to governments, pressure groups, environmentalists, and special pleaders of all types. Galante had supporters on the board until the final decision was made. Tillerson basically followed Raymond's footsteps. However, as the American politics shifted to the democrats, the corporation subtly slid into a new positions. Tillerson carefully reset the corporation's profile on climate positions so that it would be more sustainable and less exposed. The corporation acknowledged, for the first time, that it would be sound public policy, nonetheless, to limit man-made greenhouse gas emissions to at least some extent, because of the potential risk that the worst climate change forecast might prove to be correct. ExxonMobil believed the predictability of a progressive carbon tax would encourage new investment in carbon reduction technology, which would protect shareholders' properties eventually. Tillerson was exposed to hard protests than before from consumers who longed for safety and clean environment. Coll took up two cases in this book, a gasoline spill from the underground tank of Jacksonville service station and DINP disputes. DINP, which was used to soften vinyl toys for children, might interfere with the development of reproductive organs if very young children were exposed as their bodies developed. Coll revealed interesting reality among ExxonMobil. One thing is the retail gasoline stations had always been an unglamorous stepchild division within ExxonMobil. And the other is upstream dwarfed chemical, and the latter's executives often labored in the shadows of their oil brethren. The almost all pages of this book was allocated for the upstream activities. The corporation declared to be willing to pay for declining property values and proven medical claims, including documented emotional distress in principal. Nonetheless, once the verdict was in, ExxonMobil rejected the jury's decision and defied it would appeal. They said It's not their money, it's not the company's, it's shareholders'.
There was a rumor Raymond being henpecked husband. The book didn't say anything like that. Raymond and Charlene kept separate bedrooms, in part because he snored, but mainly because he stayed up until about midnight to read and make up his files. His life was the company itself. In the intervals of his business he enjoyed golfing and game hunting. Tillerson experienced a divorce and remarriage during his early career, was fond of the boy scout activity. He frequently cited the Scout Oath and Scout Law in corporate speeches. Was it demands of times, Tillerson who had background of upstream had to struggle with issues of downstream while Raymond who specialized in downstream business spared much his efforts to upstream matters. To evaluate Tillerson's achievement would be too early at this stage. Is ExxonMobil's total portfolio shifting away from oil toward gas. On the other hand, how does Tonengeneral write unique scenario to survive these times. This book would give you some valuable hints. I am expecting you doing your best to grow your company.
Top reviews from other countries
- FernandoReviewed in Brazil on January 11, 2022
2.0 out of 5 stars Ok
Ok
- Luke software developerReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read, factual, fascinating
Great insights into how a large oil company works, how it sees and is responding to climate change.
Reads as a thriller with true, well researched case studies from Africa, South America, Asia, and America.
Their aggressive and pervasive attacks on environmental science and stating that climate change was a 'hoax', appears to be cynical and self serving in the extreme.
- Anuj PeepreReviewed in India on March 24, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative
Very informative
- Danny CoteReviewed in France on July 26, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Power applied to the real world
Why is the US Government friend of monarchies like the Saudi, Kuwait, or the UAE? Private empire helps explain the power of ExxonMobil in shaping US policy around the world. If you do not know about “Chavez cash waterfall” (Don’t mess with Texas), or we’re unaware that Lee Raymond, previous ExxonMobil CEO before Rex Tillerson, retired with 398 M$, this book is an eyes opener!
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RoyReviewed in Italy on February 27, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Intrigante libro sull'industria petrolifera
Un libro che narra le vicende di Exxon prima, ExxonMobil dopo nel periodo post II guerra mondiale.
Gli scenari sono multipli, dalla Nigeria all'Indonesia, fino al Venezuela e a problemi di politiche (e disastri) interni. In generale riflette l'attitudine di questa multinazionale nel risolvere i problemi e allo stesso tempo rimanere al top nel suo settore.
Consigliato.