Private Empire

Exxon leans heavily toward Republicans, but Coll criticizes both parties for pandering to Big Oil. (The company’s political action committee donated a mere 5 percent of its contributions to Democrats in the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, Coll found.) President Obama even posed with Obiang, the West African dictator, at a New York museum. He also lifted a moratorium on offshore drilling, ignoring not just his own campaign promises but also Interior Department studies showing the inherent risks of that particular type of oil exploration. Much like the Bush team in early-2000s, so, too, does the Obama administration have lengthy connections to failed energy policy.

Coll relates an unsuccessful collaboration between Exxon and the World Bank in Chad during the Clinton administration. Then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and one of his top lieutenants, Timothy Geithner, the current treasury secretary, created the campaign. Both political parties have overlooked the tendency of impoverished oil-rich nations to become more violent and corrupt as production increases.

Exxon and other oil companies have doubled down in war-torn lands, in part, due to nationalization in Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries. The Saudi nationalized company, Coll learned, “was so bloated that it employed about three quarters as many people to operate within the kingdom as ExxonMobil did to operate worldwide.” Exxon self-interest makes for the most interesting of political bedfellows. The book outlines extensive interests in Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s country even as Exxon executives fume over George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union declaration that America is “addicted to oil … often imported from unstable parts of the world.”

Surging demand in China, India, and other nations with greater economic power and more cars bodes well for Exxon in the decades ahead. The environment is not so lucky, Coll concludes. Even the increased efficiency of cars and trucks and introduction of hybrids will provide modest benefits domestically.

In recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal reported on a long-awaited agreement between ExxonMobil and Russian oil company Rosneft. The joint venture, aimed at exploring and recovering oil from the arctic waters in Russia, could total $300 billion in combined investment over the next 20 to 30 years. (The company has also made major forays into natural gas harvested through fracking in recent years, a move analysts have begun debating as prices dipped and supplies soared.) Tillerson completed the agreement after direct negotiations with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, yet another sign of the American oil company’s stature on the global stage.

In the final pages of “Private Empire,” Coll notes the irony of Exxon’s anticipated success if it enters Russian territory. Exploring and drilling in the brutal arctic waters has become more plausible in part, he writes, because of a more forgiving climate. The likely cause of that climate change? Global warming fueled by the effects of, yes, oil and carbon fuels.

Erik Spanberg is a regular contributor to the Monitor's Books section.

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