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04/02/2006:

"Nader: The Corporate Superpower of Superpowers"

An Open Letter to New Exxon/Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson

You have to be feeling pretty good about your new position heading the world's largest oil and gas company. You stand astride the globe where, with few exceptions, the Congress is like putty in your hands, the White House is your House and the consuming public is powerless. Governments in the Third World may huff and puff, but Exxon/Mobil pretty much gets its way in dozens of arrangements completed and about to be concluded.

Seven years ago, your predecessor, Lee Raymond, took over Exxon's main competitor, Mobil Oil Company, through a merger approved by the misnamed Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Really, what is left of antitrust standards when the number one and number two companies in an industry are permitted to marry?

Profits of your company are beyond your dreams of avarice. Over $36 billion last year, after modest taxes, yet you blithely ignored urgent pleas by members of Congress, especially that of the powerful Chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley (Rep. Iowa) to contribute some significant deductible money to charities which help impoverished American families pay the exorbitant prices for heating oil this past winter. Rarely has there been such a demonstration of corporate greed and insensitivity by a company that has received huge government welfare subsidies, de-regulation and tax expenditures over the years at the expense of the smaller taxpayers of America.

...Unchanged is Exxon/Mobil's stubborn refusal to pay the modest $5 billion punitive damage award following the Exxon Valdez oil spill that damaged or put so many small businesses out of business. They are still waiting, according to a recent network television expose. Last year your company made that much post-tax profits in about seven weeks. After the devastating spill in Alaskan waters, your gasoline prices rose sharply in California and you made money there. And your delay for 12 years resisting the court ordered payout by legal maneuvers has returned in interest on that award about that amount. Not that many years ago, a company in your mega-profitable position would have considered the public relations if not the simple justice benefits before dragging on the proceedings. Not so, with the impregnable Exxon/Mobil.
counterpunch.org


A Tangle in Caracas for Exxon
... Few moves can rattle the executive suites of companies here in Houston. But one that did came late this week: a comment from Venezuela's energy minister, Rafael Ramírez, who essentially told Exxon that it was no longer welcome in Venezuela.

"We don't want them to be here, then," Mr. Ramírez said Thursday in a television interview in relation to Exxon's earlier decision to sell its stake in an oil field to Repsol of Spain rather than submit to a venture controlled by Petróleos de Venezuela. Venezuela's Congress approved measures this week that give the government control of 32 privately run oil fields.

If Venezuela needs Exxon, Mr. Ramirez said, "we'll call them."

Still, nothing is simple in the relationship between Venezuela and Exxon, which played a contentious role in the building of the country's oil industry. For all the rising tensions, the relationship between Exxon and Venezuela is more nuanced and intertwined than the harsh statements from Mr. Ramírez might suggest.

Exxon's chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, said this month that he, at least for the moment, would avoid making any major investments in the country. Western oil companies fear a creeping nationalization of petroleum assets in Venezuela under Mr. Chávez's government, which is using its growing wealth from high oil prices to spread its influence around the rest of Latin America.

Those rising revenues from oil exports have also emboldened Mr. Chávez's government in its dealings with foreign energy companies.

Yet for all its difficulties in Venezuela, the placement of Exxon in the government's cross hairs may have more to do with symbolism than substance because of the way the company is perceived as a symbol of American influence in a country where anti-American sentiment is flourishing.

Exxon also stands out because of its signature method of dealing with governments in countries where it operates. Exxon, for example, has publicly criticized Venezuela's moves to increase royalties on projects in the country's Orinoco region, threatening last year to take the issue to international courts.

Venezuela has repeatedly been a challenging operating arena for Exxon, with the company taken off a $3 billion petrochemical project in February and a $5 billion project to export natural gas in 2002.

While Exxon and Venezuela continue to dance around each other, most other foreign oil companies operating there, including some of the largest energy concerns from the United States, Britain and France, have acquiesced to government requests for higher taxes, royalties and even fines.