ExxonMobil
Encyclopedia
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational
oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller
's Standard Oil
company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon
and Mobil
. Its headquarters are in Irving
, Texas. It is affiliated with Imperial Oil
which operates in Canada.
ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization in the world, having been ranked either No.1 or No. 2 for the past 5 years. Exxon Mobil's reserves were 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels at the end of 2007 and, at then (2007) rates of production, are expected to last over 14 years. With 37 oil refineries
in 21 countries constituting a combined daily refining capacity of 6.3 Moilbbl, Exxon Mobil is the largest refiner in the world, a title that was also associated with Standard Oil since its incorporation in 1870.
ExxonMobil is the largest of the six oil supermajor
s with daily production of 3.921 million BOE (barrels of oil equivalent). In 2008, this was approximately 3% of world production, which is less than several of the largest state-owned petroleum companies. When ranked by oil and gas reserves it is 14th in the world with less than 1% of the total.
. ExxonMobil markets products around the world under the brands of Exxon
, Mobil
, and Esso
. It also owns hundreds of smaller subsidiaries such as Imperial Oil Limited
(69.6% ownership) in Canada, and SeaRiver Maritime
, a petroleum shipping company.
The upstream division dominates the company's cashflow, accounting for approximately 70% of revenue. The company employs over 82,000 people worldwide, as indicated in ExxonMobil's 2006 Corporate Citizen Report, with approximately 4,000 employees in its Fairfax downstream headquarters and 27,000 people in its Houston upstream headquarters.
Operating divisions by category are as follows:
Exxon Mobil Corporation was formed in 1999 by the merger of two major oil companies, Exxon and Mobil. Both Exxon and Mobil were descendants of the John D. Rockefeller
corporation, Standard Oil
which was established in 1870. The reputation of Standard Oil in the public eye suffered badly after publication of Ida M. Tarbell
's classic exposé The History of the Standard Oil Company
in 1904, leading to a growing outcry for the government to take action against the company.
By 1911, with public outcry
at a climax, the Supreme Court of the United States
ruled that Standard Oil must be dissolved and split into 34 companies. Two of these companies were Jersey Standard ("Standard Oil Company
of New Jersey"), which eventually became Exxon, and Socony ("Standard Oil Company of New York"), which eventually became Mobil.
In the same year, the nation's kerosene
output was eclipsed for the first time by gasoline. The growing automotive
market inspired the product trademark Mobiloil, registered by Socony in 1920.
Over the next few decades, both companies grew significantly. Jersey Standard, led by Walter C. Teagle
, became the largest oil producer in the world. It acquired a 50 percent share in Humble Oil & Refining Co.
, a Texas oil producer. Socony purchased a 45 percent interest in Magnolia Petroleum Co., a major refiner, marketer and pipeline transporter. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co.
, an industry pioneer dating back to 1866 and a growing Standard Oil spin-off in its own right.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey Standard had oil production and refineries in Indonesia
but no marketing network. Socony-Vacuum had Asian marketing outlets supplied remotely from California. In 1933, Jersey Standard and Socony-Vacuum merged their interests in the region into a 50–50 joint venture. Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or "Stanvac," operated in 50 countries, from East Africa to New Zealand, before it was dissolved in 1962.
Mobil Chemical Company
was established in 1950. As of 1999, its principal products included basic olefins and aromatics, ethylene glycol
and polyethylene
. The company produced synthetic lubricant base stocks as well as lubricant additives, propylene
packaging films and catalysts
. Exxon Chemical Company (first named Enjay Chemicals) became a worldwide organization in 1965 and in 1999 was a major producer and marketer of olefins, aromatics, polyethylene and polypropylene
along with speciality lines such as elastomer
s, plasticizer
s, solvent
s, process fluids, oxo alcohol
s and adhesive
resin
s. The company was an industry leader in metallocene catalyst technology to make unique polymers with improved performance.
In 1955, Socony-Vacuum became Socony Mobil Oil Co. and in 1966 simply Mobil Oil Corp. A decade later, the newly incorporated Mobil Corporation absorbed Mobil Oil as a wholly owned subsidiary
. Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972 and established Exxon as a trademark throughout the United States. In other parts of the world, Exxon and its affiliated companies continued to use its Esso trademark.
On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez
oil tanker
struck Bligh Reef
in Prince William Sound
, Alaska
and spilled more than 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³) of crude oil. The Exxon Valdez oil spill
was the second largest in U.S. history, and in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident, the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990
. An initial award of $5 billion USD punitive
was reduced to $507.5 million by the US Supreme Court in June 2008, and distributions of this award have commenced.
In 1998, Exxon and Mobil signed a US$73.7 billion definitive agreement to merge and form a new company called Exxon Mobil Corporation, the largest company on the planet. After shareholder
and regulatory approvals, the merger was completed on November 30, 1999. The merger of Exxon and Mobil was unique in American history
because it reunited the two largest companies of John D. Rockefeller
's Standard Oil
trust, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey/Exxon and Standard Oil Company of New York/Mobil, which had been forcibly separated by government order nearly a century earlier. This reunion resulted in the largest merger in US corporate history.
In 2000, ExxonMobil sold a refinery in Benicia, California
and 340 Exxon-branded stations to Valero Energy Corporation, as part of an FTC
-mandated divestiture of California assets. ExxonMobil continues to supply petroleum product
s to over 700 Mobil-branded retail outlets in California.
In 2005, ExxonMobil's stock price
surged in parallel with rising oil prices, surpassing General Electric
as the largest corporation in the world in terms of market capitalization
. At the end of 2005, it reported record profits of US $36 billion in annual income, up 42% from the previous year (the overall annual income was an all-time record for annual income by any business, and included $10 billion in the third quarter alone, also an all-time record income for a single quarter by any business). The company and the American Petroleum Institute
(the oil and chemical industry's lobbying organization) put these profits in context by comparing oil industry profits to those of other large industries such as pharmaceuticals and banking.
On June 12, 2008, ExxonMobil announced that it was exiting the retail fuel business, citing the increasing difficulty to run gas stations under rising crude oil costs. The multi-year process will gradually phase the corporation out of the direct market, and will affect 820 company-owned stations and approximately 1,400 other stations operated by dealers distributing across the United States. The sale has not resulted in the disappearance of Exxon
and Mobil
branded stations; the new owners will continue to sell ExxonMobil gasoline and license the appropriate names from ExxonMobil, who will in turn be compensated for use of the brands.
In 2010, ExxonMobil bought XTO Energy
, the company focused on development and production of unconventional resources.
In terms of potential future developments, many gas and oil companies are considering the economic and environmental benefits of Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG). This is an innovative technology designed to enable the development of offshore gas resources that would otherwise remain untapped, because environmental or economic factors make it unviable to develop them via a land-based LNG operation. ExxonMobil is waiting for an appropriate project to launch its FLNG development, and the only FLNG facility currently in development is being built by Shell, due for completion in around 2017.
On 30 August 2011, ExxonMobil announced a $3.2 billion joint venture with Russian oil company Rosneft
to develop two offshore oil fields in Russia, the East-Prinovozemelsky field
in the Kara Sea
and the Tuapse field
in the Black Sea
.
. Tillerson assumed the top position on January 1, 2006, on the retirement of long-time chairman and CEO, Lee Raymond
, who received a retirement and severance package
of approximately $400 million USD, of which some were critical.
ExxonMobil, like other oil companies, is struggling to find new sources of oil. According to Wall Street Journal it replaces only 95% by volume of the oil it pumps. This stands in contrast to natural gas, where it replaces 158% by volume through purchases or finds.
ExxonMobil is a signatory participant of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
as the world's largest publicly held corporation when measured by revenue, although Wal-Mart remained the largest by number of employees. ExxonMobil's $340 billion revenues in 2005 were a 25.5 percent increase over their 2004 revenues.
In 2006, Wal-Mart recaptured the lead with revenues of $348.7 billion against ExxonMobil's $335.1. ExxonMobil continued to lead the world in both profits ($39.5 billion in 2006) and market value ($460.43 billion).
In 2007, ExxonMobil had a record net income of $40.61 billion on $404.552 of revenue, an increase largely due to escalating oil prices as their actual oil equivalent production decreased by 1%, in part due to expropriation of their Venezuela
n assets by the Chavez
government.
As of July 1, 2010, ExxonMobil occupied 8 out of 10 slots for Largest Corporate Quarterly Earnings of All Time. Furthermore, it occupies 5 out of 10 slots on Largest Corporate Annual Earnings.
as well as some institutional investors who disagree with its stance on global warming. The Political Economy Research Institute ranks ExxonMobil sixth among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States. The ranking is based on the quantity (15.5 million pounds in 2005) and toxicity of the emissions. In 2005, ExxonMobil had committed less than 1% of their profits towards researching alternative energy, less than other leading oil companies.
resulted in the discharge of approximately 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³) of oil into Prince William Sound
, oiling 1300 miles (2,092.1 km) of the remote Alaskan coastline. The State of Alaska's Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council stated that the spill "is widely considered the number one spill worldwide in terms of damage to the environment", but many larger spills have occurred.
Exxon was widely criticized for its slow response to cleaning up the disaster. John Devens, the Mayor of Valdez, has said his community felt betrayed by Exxon's inadequate response to the crisis. Exxon later removed the name "Exxon" from its tanker shipping subsidiary, which it renamed "SeaRiver Maritime
." The renamed subsidiary, though wholly Exxon-controlled, has a separate corporate charter and board of directors, and the former Exxon Valdez
is now the SeaRiver Mediterranean. The renamed tanker is legally owned by a small, stand-alone company, which would have minimal ability to pay out on claims in the event of a further accident.
After a trial, a jury ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages, though an appeals court reduced that amount by half. Exxon appealed further, and on June 25, 2008, the United States Supreme Court lowered the amount to $500 million.
In 2009, Exxon still uses more single-hull tankers than the rest of the largest ten oil companies combined, including the Valdez's sister ship, the SeaRiver Long Beach.
announced on July 17, 2007 that he had filed suit against the Exxon Mobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company to force cleanup of the oil spill at Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and to restore Newtown Creek
.
A study of the spill released by the US Environmental Protection Agency in September 2007 reported that the spill consists of 17 to 30 US gal (64,352 to 0.11356236 m3) of petroleum products from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. The largest portion of these operations were by ExxonMobil or its predecessors. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was approximately 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³). The study reported that in the early 20th century Standard Oil of New York operated a major refinery in the area where the spill is located. The refinery produced fuel oils, gasoline, kerosene and solvents. Naptha and gas oil, secondary products, were also stored in the refinery area. Standard Oil of New York later became Mobil, a predecessor to Exxon/Mobil.
global warming
(i.e. the belief that an increase in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere is due to the greenhouse effect, caused primarily by increased levels of carbon dioxide released in the burning of coal and petroleum-based fuels).
ExxonMobil has drawn criticism from the environmental lobby for funding organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol
and skeptical of the scientific opinion
that global warming
is caused by the burning of fossil fuel
s. According to Mother Jones Magazine
, the company channeled more than $8 million to forty different organizations that challenged the scientific evidence of global warming and that the company was a member of one of the first such skeptic groups, the Global Climate Coalition
, founded in 1989. According to The Guardian
, ExxonMobil has funded, among other groups skeptical of global warming, the Competitive Enterprise Institute
, George C. Marshall Institute
, Heartland Institute
, Congress on Racial Equality, TechCentralStation.com, and International Policy Network
. ExxonMobil's support for these organizations has drawn criticism from the Royal Society
, the academy of sciences of the United Kingdom
. The Union of Concerned Scientists
released a report in 2007 accusing ExxonMobil of spending $16 million, between 1998 and 2005, towards 43 advocacy organizations which dispute the impact of global warming. The report argued that ExxonMobil used disinformation tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry
in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking, saying that the company used "many of the same organizations and personnel to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change
and delay action on the issue." These charges are consistent with a purported 1998 internal ExxonMobil strategy memo, posted by the environmental group Environmental Defense, stating
ExxonMobil has been reported as having plans to invest up to US$100m over a ten year period in Stanford University
's Global Climate and Energy Project.
In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal revealed that a YouTube video lampooning Al Gore
, titled Al Gore's Penguin Army, appeared to be astroturfing
by DCI Group
, a Washington PR firm with ties to ExxonMobil.
In January 2007, the company appeared to change its position, when vice president for public affairs
Kenneth Cohen said "we know enough now—or, society knows enough now—that the risk is serious and action should be taken." Cohen stated that, as of 2006, ExxonMobil had ceased funding of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
and "'five or six' similar groups".
While the company did not publicly state which the other similar groups were, a May 2007 report by Greenpeace
does list the five groups it stopped funding as well as a list of 41 other climate skeptic groups which are still receiving ExxonMobil funds.
On February 13, 2007, ExxonMobil CEO Rex W. Tillerson acknowledged that the planet was warming while carbon dioxide
levels were increasing, but in the same speech gave an unqualified defense of the oil industry and predicted that hydrocarbons would dominate the world’s transportation as energy demand
grows by an expected 40 percent by 2030. Tillerson stated that there is no significant alternative to oil in coming decades, and that ExxonMobil would continue to make petroleum and natural gas its primary products
, saying: "I'm no expert on biofuel
s. I don't know much about farming and I don't know much about moonshine. ... There is really nothing ExxonMobil can bring to that whole biofuels issue. We don't see a direct role for ourselves with today's technology."
However, recently Exxonmobil has announced that it will plan on spending up to 600 million dollars within the next 10 years to fund biofuels that come from algae. On July 14, 2010 Exxonmobil announced that, a year after teaming with Synthetic Genomics, Inc.
, they had opened a greenhouse to research algae as a possible biofuel
.
A survey carried out by the UK's Royal Society
found that in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society said "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".
On July 1, 2009, The Guardian
newspaper revealed that ExxonMobil has continued to fund organizations including the National Center for Policy Analysis
(NCPA) along with the Heritage Foundation
, despite a public pledge to cut support of lobby groups who deny climate change
.
, who personally authored 67 of them. Idso is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
, an ExxonMobil funded think tank. The second most prolific was Dr Patrick Michaels
, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute
, who receives roughly 40% of his funding from the oil industry. This goes in parallel with the ‘work’ of the Koch industries
; Koch industries is the second largest privately held company in the US, and in the past 50 years, they have invested more than 50.000.000 dollars in spreading awareness of research which discredits global warming, according to Greenpeace
.
in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, was a watershed moment for environmental critics of the oil industry.
by Forbes Magazine raised questions about ExxonMobil's dealings with the leaders of oil-rich nations. ExxonMobil controls concessions covering 11 million acres (44,515.5 km²) off the coast of Angola
that hold an estimated 7.5 Goilbbl of crude.
In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control
reported that ExxonMobil engaged in illegal trade with Sudan
and it, along with dozens of other companies, settled with the United States government for $50,000.
In March 2003, James Giffen
of the Mercator Corporation was indicted, accused of bribing President Nursultan Nazarbayev
of Kazakhstan
with $78 million to help ExxonMobil win a 25 percent share of the Tengiz
oilfield, the third largest in the world. On April 2, 2003, former-Mobil executive J. Bryan Williams was indicted on tax charges relating to this same transaction. The case is the largest under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
. This series of events is depicted in the film Syriana
.
In a U.S. Department of Justice
release dated September 18, 2003, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
announced that J. Bryan Williams, a former senior executive of Mobil Oil Corporation, had been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison on charges of evading income tax
es on more than $7 million in unreported income, "including a $2 million kickback he received in connection with Mobil's oil business in Kazakhstan." According to documents filed with the court, Williams' unreported income included millions of dollars in kickbacks from governments, persons, and other entities with whom Williams conducted business while employed by Mobil. In addition to his sentence, Williams must pay a fine of $25,000 and more than $3.5 million in restitution to the IRS, in addition to penalties and interest.
n territory of Aceh
. In June 2001 a lawsuit against ExxonMobil was filed in the Federal District Court
of the District of Columbia
under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The suit alleges that the ExxonMobil knowingly assisted human rights violations, including torture
, murder and rape, by employing and providing material support to Indonesian military
forces, who committed the alleged offenses during civil unrest
in Aceh. Human rights complaints involving Exxon's (Exxon and Mobil had not yet merged) relationship with the Indonesian military first arose in 1992; the company denies these accusations and filed a motion to dismiss
the suit, which was denied in 2008 by a federal judge, but then dismissed in August 2009 by a different federal judge. The dismissal is currently under appeal.
When Exxon Corporation merged with Mobil Corporation in 1999, the newly merged company ended enrollment in Mobil Corporation's domestic partner benefits for same-sex partners of employees, and it rescinded formal prohibitions against discrimination based on sexual orientation
by removing it from the company's Equal Employment Opportunity policy. In 2010 the Human Rights Campaign
, an LGBT lobbying group and political action committee, gave Exxon Mobil a score of "0" in its Corporate Equality Index
, a scorecard that rated 590 companies on several criteria including diversity training that covers gender identity issues, transgender-inclusive medical coverage including surgical procedures, and "positively engaging the external LGBT community."
On May 26, 2010 ExxonMobil shareholders voted down LGBT benefits for its employees – only 22% of shareholders voted yes for the issue.
.
]
As of January 2010, the company is conducting an internal study regarding possible consolidation of facilities to the northern Houston suburb of Spring
, at the intersection of Interstate 45
and the Hardy Toll Road
. Architectural documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle outline an elaborate corporate campus, including twenty office buildings totaling 3000000 square feet (278,709.1 m²), a wellness center, laboratory, and multiple parking garages. Alan Jeffers, a spokesperson for the company, did not say whether the consolidation study includes the Irving headquarters, but definitely includes the Fairfax headquarters. Chris Wallace, the chief executive of the Greater Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce, said that he believed that it does include the headquarters. In October 2010 the company stated that it would not move its headquarters to Greater Houston
.
Since then, the corporation has acknowledged a move to a suburb between The Woodlands, TX and Spring, TX. This campus will be built to house 8,000 employees, and will be an environment that is suitable for work, play, and life. Beginning early in 2014, and ending some time in 2015, employees will move into the campus and begin work. ExxonMobil hopes to install this as its permanent corporate headquarters.
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
's Standard Oil
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...
company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
and Mobil
Mobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...
. Its headquarters are in Irving
Irving, Texas
Irving is a city located in the U.S. state of Texas within Dallas County. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city population was 216,290. Irving is within the Dallas–Plano–Irving metropolitan division of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, designated...
, Texas. It is affiliated with Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
which operates in Canada.
ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization in the world, having been ranked either No.1 or No. 2 for the past 5 years. Exxon Mobil's reserves were 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels at the end of 2007 and, at then (2007) rates of production, are expected to last over 14 years. With 37 oil refineries
Oil refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...
in 21 countries constituting a combined daily refining capacity of 6.3 Moilbbl, Exxon Mobil is the largest refiner in the world, a title that was also associated with Standard Oil since its incorporation in 1870.
ExxonMobil is the largest of the six oil supermajor
Supermajor
Supermajor is a name commonly used to describe the world's five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies.-Composition:Trading under various names around the world, the supermajors are considered to be:* BP p.l.c...
s with daily production of 3.921 million BOE (barrels of oil equivalent). In 2008, this was approximately 3% of world production, which is less than several of the largest state-owned petroleum companies. When ranked by oil and gas reserves it is 14th in the world with less than 1% of the total.
Organization
The Exxon Mobil Corporation headquarters is located in Irving, TexasIrving, Texas
Irving is a city located in the U.S. state of Texas within Dallas County. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city population was 216,290. Irving is within the Dallas–Plano–Irving metropolitan division of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, designated...
. ExxonMobil markets products around the world under the brands of Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
, Mobil
Mobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...
, and Esso
Esso
Esso is an international trade name for ExxonMobil and its related companies. Pronounced , it is derived from the initials of the pre-1911 Standard Oil, and as such became the focus of much litigation and regulatory restriction in the United States. In 1972, it was largely replaced in the U.S. by...
. It also owns hundreds of smaller subsidiaries such as Imperial Oil Limited
Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
(69.6% ownership) in Canada, and SeaRiver Maritime
SeaRiver Maritime
SeaRiver Maritime is a privately held subsidiary wholly owned by ExxonMobil. The company was formed in the early 1990s by Exxon when it spun off its maritime operations into the new company following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989....
, a petroleum shipping company.
The upstream division dominates the company's cashflow, accounting for approximately 70% of revenue. The company employs over 82,000 people worldwide, as indicated in ExxonMobil's 2006 Corporate Citizen Report, with approximately 4,000 employees in its Fairfax downstream headquarters and 27,000 people in its Houston upstream headquarters.
Operating divisions
ExxonMobil is organized functionally into a number of global operating divisions. These divisions are grouped into three categories for reference purposes, though the company also has several ancillary divisions, such as Coal & Minerals, which are stand alone.- UpstreamUpstream (oil industry)The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three major components: Upstream, midstream and downstream, though midstream operations are usually included in the downstream category....
(oil exploration, extraction, shipping, and wholesale operations) based in Houston, TexasHouston, TexasHouston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ... - DownstreamDownstream (oil industry)The petroleum industry is usually divided into three major components: Upstream, midstream and downstream. Midstream operations are usually included in the downstream category....
(marketing, refining, and retail operations) based in Fairfax, VirginiaFairfax, VirginiaThe City of Fairfax is an independent city forming an enclave within the confines of Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Although politically independent of the surrounding county, the City is nevertheless the county seat.... - Chemical division based in Houston, TexasHouston, TexasHouston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
Operating divisions by category are as follows:
- Upstream
- ExxonMobil Exploration Company
- ExxonMobil Development Company
- ExxonMobil Production Company
- ExxonMobil Gas and Power Marketing Company
- ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company
- ExxonMobil Upstream Ventures
- Downstream
- ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company
- SeaRiver MaritimeSeaRiver MaritimeSeaRiver Maritime is a privately held subsidiary wholly owned by ExxonMobil. The company was formed in the early 1990s by Exxon when it spun off its maritime operations into the new company following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989....
- ExxonMobil Fuels Marketing Company
- ExxonMobil Lubricants & Specialties Company
- ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company
- International Marine Transportation
- Chemical
- ExxonMobil Chemical Company
- ExxonMobil Global Services Company
- ExxonMobil Information Technology
- Global Real Estate and Facilities
- Global Procurement
- Business Support Centers
- Imperial OilImperial OilImperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
- Infineum
- Aera Energy
- XTO
History
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
corporation, Standard Oil
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...
which was established in 1870. The reputation of Standard Oil in the public eye suffered badly after publication of Ida M. Tarbell
Ida M. Tarbell
Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was known as one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era, work known in modern times as "investigative journalism". She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies...
's classic exposé The History of the Standard Oil Company
The History of the Standard Oil Company
The History of the Standard Oil Company is a book written by journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904. It was an exposé of the Standard Oil Company, run at that time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in America's history...
in 1904, leading to a growing outcry for the government to take action against the company.
By 1911, with public outcry
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
at a climax, the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
ruled that Standard Oil must be dissolved and split into 34 companies. Two of these companies were Jersey Standard ("Standard Oil Company
Petroleum industry
The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting , and marketing petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline...
of New Jersey"), which eventually became Exxon, and Socony ("Standard Oil Company of New York"), which eventually became Mobil.
In the same year, the nation's kerosene
Kerosene
Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
output was eclipsed for the first time by gasoline. The growing automotive
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
market inspired the product trademark Mobiloil, registered by Socony in 1920.
Over the next few decades, both companies grew significantly. Jersey Standard, led by Walter C. Teagle
Walter C. Teagle
Walter Clark Teagle , was responsible for leading Standard Oil to the forefront of the oil industry and significantly expanding the company's presence in the petrochemical field.-Biography:...
, became the largest oil producer in the world. It acquired a 50 percent share in Humble Oil & Refining Co.
Humble Oil
Humble Oil and Refining Co. was founded in 1911. The company would later consolidate with Standard Oil of New Jersey to become Exxon.-Early history:...
, a Texas oil producer. Socony purchased a 45 percent interest in Magnolia Petroleum Co., a major refiner, marketer and pipeline transporter. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co.
Vacuum Oil Company
Vacuum Oil Company was an American oil company known for their Gargoyle 600-W Steam Cylinder Oil. Vacuum Oil merged with Socony Oil to form Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, and is now a part of ExxonMobil.-History:...
, an industry pioneer dating back to 1866 and a growing Standard Oil spin-off in its own right.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey Standard had oil production and refineries in Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
but no marketing network. Socony-Vacuum had Asian marketing outlets supplied remotely from California. In 1933, Jersey Standard and Socony-Vacuum merged their interests in the region into a 50–50 joint venture. Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or "Stanvac," operated in 50 countries, from East Africa to New Zealand, before it was dissolved in 1962.
Mobil Chemical Company
Chemical industry
The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 different products.-Products:...
was established in 1950. As of 1999, its principal products included basic olefins and aromatics, ethylene glycol
Ethylene glycol
Ethylene glycol is an organic compound widely used as an automotive antifreeze and a precursor to polymers. In its pure form, it is an odorless, colorless, syrupy, sweet-tasting liquid...
and polyethylene
Polyethylene
Polyethylene or polythene is the most widely used plastic, with an annual production of approximately 80 million metric tons...
. The company produced synthetic lubricant base stocks as well as lubricant additives, propylene
Propylene
Propene, also known as propylene or methylethylene, is an unsaturated organic compound having the chemical formula C3H6. It has one double bond, and is the second simplest member of the alkene class of hydrocarbons, and it is also second in natural abundance.-Properties:At room temperature and...
packaging films and catalysts
Catalysis
Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. A catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations....
. Exxon Chemical Company (first named Enjay Chemicals) became a worldwide organization in 1965 and in 1999 was a major producer and marketer of olefins, aromatics, polyethylene and polypropylene
Polypropylene
Polypropylene , also known as polypropene, is a thermoplastic polymer used in a wide variety of applications including packaging, textiles , stationery, plastic parts and reusable containers of various types, laboratory equipment, loudspeakers, automotive components, and polymer banknotes...
along with speciality lines such as elastomer
Elastomer
An elastomer is a polymer with the property of viscoelasticity , generally having notably low Young's modulus and high yield strain compared with other materials. The term, which is derived from elastic polymer, is often used interchangeably with the term rubber, although the latter is preferred...
s, plasticizer
Plasticizer
Plasticizers or dispersants are additives that increase the plasticity or fluidity of the material to which they are added; these include plastics, cement, concrete, wallboard, and clay. Although the same compounds are often used for both plastics and concretes the desired effects and results are...
s, solvent
Solvent
A solvent is a liquid, solid, or gas that dissolves another solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution that is soluble in a certain volume of solvent at a specified temperature...
s, process fluids, oxo alcohol
Oxo alcohol
Oxo alcohols are alcohols that are prepared by adding carbon monoxide and hydrogen to an olefin to obtain an aldehyde using the hydroformylation reaction and then hydrogenating the aldehyde to obtain the alcohol...
s and adhesive
Adhesive
An adhesive, or glue, is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials...
resin
Resin
Resin in the most specific use of the term is a hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, particularly coniferous trees. Resins are valued for their chemical properties and associated uses, such as the production of varnishes, adhesives, and food glazing agents; as an important source of raw materials...
s. The company was an industry leader in metallocene catalyst technology to make unique polymers with improved performance.
In 1955, Socony-Vacuum became Socony Mobil Oil Co. and in 1966 simply Mobil Oil Corp. A decade later, the newly incorporated Mobil Corporation absorbed Mobil Oil as a wholly owned subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
. Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972 and established Exxon as a trademark throughout the United States. In other parts of the world, Exxon and its affiliated companies continued to use its Esso trademark.
On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez
Exxon Valdez
Oriental Nicety, formerly Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and Dong Fang Ocean is an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in Alaska...
oil tanker
Oil tanker
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries...
struck Bligh Reef
Bligh Reef
Bligh Reef, sometimes known as Bligh Island Reef, is a reef off the coast of Bligh Island in Prince William Sound, Alaska. This was the location of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. After the incident, US Code 33 § 2733 mandated the operation of an automated navigation light to prevent future...
in Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound is a sound off the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System...
, Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and spilled more than 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³) of crude oil. The Exxon Valdez oil spill
Exxon Valdez oil spill
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused...
was the second largest in U.S. history, and in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident, the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
The Oil Pollution Act was passed by the 101st United States Congress, and signed by President George H. W. Bush, to mitigate and prevent civil liability for future oil spills off the coast of the United States....
. An initial award of $5 billion USD punitive
Punitive damages
Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit...
was reduced to $507.5 million by the US Supreme Court in June 2008, and distributions of this award have commenced.
In 1998, Exxon and Mobil signed a US$73.7 billion definitive agreement to merge and form a new company called Exxon Mobil Corporation, the largest company on the planet. After shareholder
Shareholder
A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....
and regulatory approvals, the merger was completed on November 30, 1999. The merger of Exxon and Mobil was unique in American history
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
because it reunited the two largest companies of John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
's Standard Oil
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...
trust, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey/Exxon and Standard Oil Company of New York/Mobil, which had been forcibly separated by government order nearly a century earlier. This reunion resulted in the largest merger in US corporate history.
In 2000, ExxonMobil sold a refinery in Benicia, California
Benicia, California
Benicia is a waterside city in Solano County, California, United States. It was the first city in California to be founded by Anglo-Americans, and served as the state capital for nearly thirteen months from 1853 to 1854. The population was 26,997 at the 2010 census. The city is located in the San...
and 340 Exxon-branded stations to Valero Energy Corporation, as part of an FTC
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
-mandated divestiture of California assets. ExxonMobil continues to supply petroleum product
Petroleum product
Petroleum products are useful materials derived from crude oil as it is processed in oil refineries.According to crude oil composition and demand, refineries can produce different shares of petroleum products. The largest share of oil products is used as energy carriers: various grades of fuel...
s to over 700 Mobil-branded retail outlets in California.
In 2005, ExxonMobil's stock price
Stock
The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
surged in parallel with rising oil prices, surpassing General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
as the largest corporation in the world in terms of market capitalization
Market capitalization
Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...
. At the end of 2005, it reported record profits of US $36 billion in annual income, up 42% from the previous year (the overall annual income was an all-time record for annual income by any business, and included $10 billion in the third quarter alone, also an all-time record income for a single quarter by any business). The company and the American Petroleum Institute
American Petroleum Institute
The American Petroleum Institute, commonly referred to as API, is the largest U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry...
(the oil and chemical industry's lobbying organization) put these profits in context by comparing oil industry profits to those of other large industries such as pharmaceuticals and banking.
On June 12, 2008, ExxonMobil announced that it was exiting the retail fuel business, citing the increasing difficulty to run gas stations under rising crude oil costs. The multi-year process will gradually phase the corporation out of the direct market, and will affect 820 company-owned stations and approximately 1,400 other stations operated by dealers distributing across the United States. The sale has not resulted in the disappearance of Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
and Mobil
Mobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...
branded stations; the new owners will continue to sell ExxonMobil gasoline and license the appropriate names from ExxonMobil, who will in turn be compensated for use of the brands.
In 2010, ExxonMobil bought XTO Energy
XTO Energy
XTO Energy is an American Fortune 500 energy producing company. Its primary products are oil and natural gas. It is based in Downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Its current CEO is Keith Hutton.-History:The company was founded in 1985 as Cross Timbers Oil Company...
, the company focused on development and production of unconventional resources.
In terms of potential future developments, many gas and oil companies are considering the economic and environmental benefits of Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG). This is an innovative technology designed to enable the development of offshore gas resources that would otherwise remain untapped, because environmental or economic factors make it unviable to develop them via a land-based LNG operation. ExxonMobil is waiting for an appropriate project to launch its FLNG development, and the only FLNG facility currently in development is being built by Shell, due for completion in around 2017.
On 30 August 2011, ExxonMobil announced a $3.2 billion joint venture with Russian oil company Rosneft
Rosneft
Rosneft is an integrated oil company majority owned by the Government of Russia. Rosneft is headquartered in Moscow’s Balchug district near the Kremlin, across the Moskva river...
to develop two offshore oil fields in Russia, the East-Prinovozemelsky field
East-Prinovozemelsky field
The East-Prinovozemelsky field is a gigantic undeveloped Arctic oil and gas field located on the continental shelf of Russia in the South Kara Sea between the Yamal Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya island.-History:The field is divided into three license blocks: EPNZ-1, EPNZ2, and...
in the Kara Sea
Kara Sea
The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya....
and the Tuapse field
Tuapse field
The Tuapse field is a large offshore oil field located in the Black Sea, roughly in size and between underwater, containing between of oil.-History:...
in the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
.
Corporate affairs
The current Chairman of the Board and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation is Rex TillersonRex Tillerson
Rex W. Tillerson is the current Chairman, President, and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation, positions previously held by Lee Raymond.-Education:...
. Tillerson assumed the top position on January 1, 2006, on the retirement of long-time chairman and CEO, Lee Raymond
Lee Raymond
Lee R. Raymond was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and has been president since 1987 and a director since 1984....
, who received a retirement and severance package
Severance package
A severance package is pay and benefits an employee receives when they leave employment at a company. In addition to the employee's remaining regular pay, it may include some of the following:* An additional payment based on months of service...
of approximately $400 million USD, of which some were critical.
Board of directors
, the current ExxonMobil board members are:- Michael BoskinMichael BoskinMichael Jay Boskin is the T. M. Friedman Professor of Economics and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He also is Chief Executive Officer and President of Boskin & Co., an economic consulting company.Boskin holds B.A. with highest honors, M.A., and Ph.D...
, professor of economics Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, director of Oracle CorporationOracle CorporationOracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, Shinsei BankShinsei Bankis a Japanese commercial bank headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo.-History:Shinsei Bank is the successor of a trust bank, the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which had a government monopoly on the issuance of many long-term debt securities...
, and Vodafone Group - Larry R. Faulkner, President, Houston Endowment; President Emeritus, the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
- William W. George, professor of management practice, Harvard Business SchoolHarvard Business SchoolHarvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
- James R. HoughtonJames R. HoughtonJames R. Houghton is the retired Chairman of the Board of Corning Incorporated.Houghton earned Bachelor of Arts and master of business administration degrees from Harvard University . He is currently a senior fellow of Harvard College, a member of the Harvard Corporation. Mr...
, Chairman of the Board, Corning Incorporated - Reatha Clark King, former chairman, Board of TrusteesTrusteeTrustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
, General MillsGeneral MillsGeneral Mills, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 corporation, primarily concerned with food products, which is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known brands, such as Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Pillsbury, Green...
Foundation - Philip E. Lippincott, retired Chairman of the Board, Scott Paper CompanyScott Paper CompanyThe Scott Paper Company is a USA-based corporation which manufactures mostly paper based consumer products.Scott Paper was founded in 1879 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by brothers E. Irvin and Clarence Scott, and is often credited as being the first to market toilet paper sold on a roll...
and Campbell Soup CompanyCampbell Soup CompanyCampbell Soup Company , also known as Campbell's, is an American producer of canned soups and related products. Campbell's products are sold in 120 countries around the world. It is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey... - Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chairman and CEO, Carlson CompaniesCarlson CompaniesCarlson is a privately held international corporation in the hotel, restaurant, and travel industries. Headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, near Minneapolis, Carlson brands and services, including franchised operations, employ more than 170,000 people in more than 150 countries and territories...
- Samuel J. PalmisanoSamuel J. PalmisanoSamuel J. Palmisano was president and chief executive officer of IBM, which as of 2009 was the largest IT company in the world and 45th largest company overall. He was elected chairman in October 2002, effective January 1, 2003, and has served as CEO since March 2002. Before he became CEO,...
, Chairman of the Board, IBM Corporation - Joaquin Pelayo, Chairman of the Board and President, McGraw Hill.
- Steven S Reinemund, retired Executive Chairman of the Board, PepsiCoPepsiCoPepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
- Walter V. ShipleyWalter V. ShipleyWalter V. Shipley was the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chase Manhattan Bank and its predecessor Chemical Bank. Shipley was named chief executive of Chemical in 1981 and held the position through 1999 and remained at the bank as chairman through January 2000, just prior to the...
, retired Chairman of the Board, Chase Manhattan Corporation - Rex TillersonRex TillersonRex W. Tillerson is the current Chairman, President, and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation, positions previously held by Lee Raymond.-Education:...
, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Exxon Mobil Corporation - Edward E. Whitacre, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, AT&TAT&TAT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
Joint ventures and other strategic alliances
- Imperial OilImperial OilImperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
70% Ownership in Imperial Oil
- Infineum is a joint venture between ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell for manufacturing and marketing lubricant and fuel additives.
- Aera Energy LLCAera Energy LLCAera Energy LLC is a natural gas, oil exploration and production company jointly owned by Shell and ExxonMobil headquartered in Bakersfield, California...
is an E&P joint venture with Shell Oil, operating in California.
Production
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3 percent of the world's oil and about 2 percent of the world's energy.ExxonMobil, like other oil companies, is struggling to find new sources of oil. According to Wall Street Journal it replaces only 95% by volume of the oil it pumps. This stands in contrast to natural gas, where it replaces 158% by volume through purchases or finds.
ExxonMobil is a signatory participant of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
Revenue and profits
In 2005, ExxonMobil surpassed Wal-MartWal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
as the world's largest publicly held corporation when measured by revenue, although Wal-Mart remained the largest by number of employees. ExxonMobil's $340 billion revenues in 2005 were a 25.5 percent increase over their 2004 revenues.
In 2006, Wal-Mart recaptured the lead with revenues of $348.7 billion against ExxonMobil's $335.1. ExxonMobil continued to lead the world in both profits ($39.5 billion in 2006) and market value ($460.43 billion).
In 2007, ExxonMobil had a record net income of $40.61 billion on $404.552 of revenue, an increase largely due to escalating oil prices as their actual oil equivalent production decreased by 1%, in part due to expropriation of their Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
n assets by the Chavez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
government.
As of July 1, 2010, ExxonMobil occupied 8 out of 10 slots for Largest Corporate Quarterly Earnings of All Time. Furthermore, it occupies 5 out of 10 slots on Largest Corporate Annual Earnings.
Financial data
| Year-end | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | 358 955 | 365 467 | 390 328 | 459 579 | 301 586 | 383 221 |
| Net income | 36 130 | 39 500 | 40 610 | 45 220 | 19 280 | 30 460 |
| Total assets | 208 335 | 219 015 | 242 082 | 228 052 | 233 323 | |
| Total debt | 7 991 | 8 347 | 9 566 | 9 425 | 9 605 |
Environmental record
ExxonMobil has been a contributor to environmental causes (the company donated $6.6 million to environmental and social groups in 2007). Its environmental record has been a target of critics from outside organizations such as the environmental lobby group GreenpeaceGreenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
as well as some institutional investors who disagree with its stance on global warming. The Political Economy Research Institute ranks ExxonMobil sixth among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States. The ranking is based on the quantity (15.5 million pounds in 2005) and toxicity of the emissions. In 2005, ExxonMobil had committed less than 1% of their profits towards researching alternative energy, less than other leading oil companies.
Exxon Valdez oil spill
The March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spillExxon Valdez oil spill
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused...
resulted in the discharge of approximately 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³) of oil into Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound is a sound off the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System...
, oiling 1300 miles (2,092.1 km) of the remote Alaskan coastline. The State of Alaska's Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council stated that the spill "is widely considered the number one spill worldwide in terms of damage to the environment", but many larger spills have occurred.
Exxon was widely criticized for its slow response to cleaning up the disaster. John Devens, the Mayor of Valdez, has said his community felt betrayed by Exxon's inadequate response to the crisis. Exxon later removed the name "Exxon" from its tanker shipping subsidiary, which it renamed "SeaRiver Maritime
SeaRiver Maritime
SeaRiver Maritime is a privately held subsidiary wholly owned by ExxonMobil. The company was formed in the early 1990s by Exxon when it spun off its maritime operations into the new company following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989....
." The renamed subsidiary, though wholly Exxon-controlled, has a separate corporate charter and board of directors, and the former Exxon Valdez
Exxon Valdez
Oriental Nicety, formerly Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and Dong Fang Ocean is an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in Alaska...
is now the SeaRiver Mediterranean. The renamed tanker is legally owned by a small, stand-alone company, which would have minimal ability to pay out on claims in the event of a further accident.
After a trial, a jury ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages, though an appeals court reduced that amount by half. Exxon appealed further, and on June 25, 2008, the United States Supreme Court lowered the amount to $500 million.
In 2009, Exxon still uses more single-hull tankers than the rest of the largest ten oil companies combined, including the Valdez's sister ship, the SeaRiver Long Beach.
Exxon's Brooklyn oil spill
New York Attorney General Andrew CuomoAndrew Cuomo
Andrew Mark Cuomo is the 56th and current Governor of New York, having assumed office on January 1, 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 64th New York State Attorney General, and was the 11th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...
announced on July 17, 2007 that he had filed suit against the Exxon Mobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company to force cleanup of the oil spill at Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and to restore Newtown Creek
Newtown Creek
Newtown Creek is a estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City, New York, United States. It derives its name from New Town , which was the name for the Dutch and British settlement in what is now Elmhurst, Queens...
.
A study of the spill released by the US Environmental Protection Agency in September 2007 reported that the spill consists of 17 to 30 US gal (64,352 to 0.11356236 m3) of petroleum products from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. The largest portion of these operations were by ExxonMobil or its predecessors. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was approximately 11 million USgals (41,639.5 m³). The study reported that in the early 20th century Standard Oil of New York operated a major refinery in the area where the spill is located. The refinery produced fuel oils, gasoline, kerosene and solvents. Naptha and gas oil, secondary products, were also stored in the refinery area. Standard Oil of New York later became Mobil, a predecessor to Exxon/Mobil.
Sakhalin-I in the Russian Far East
Scientists and environmental groups voice concern that the Sakhalin-I oil and gas project in the Russian Far East, operated by an ExxonMobil subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas Limited (ENL), threatens the critically endangered western gray whale population. In February, 2009, independent scientists, convened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature issued an urgent call for a "...moratorium on all industrial activities, both maritime and terrestrial, that have the potential to disturb gray whales in summer and autumn on and near their main feeding areas" following a sharp decline in observed whales in the main feeding area in 2008, adjacent to ENL's project area. The scientists also criticized ENL’s unwillingness to cooperate with the scientific panel process, which “certainly impedes the cause of western gray whale conservation.”Funding of global warming skeptics
ExxonMobil has been accused of paying to fuel skepticism of anthropogenicAnthropogenic
Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes impacts on biophysical environments, biodiversity and other resources. The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity. The term was first used in the technical sense by Russian...
global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
(i.e. the belief that an increase in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere is due to the greenhouse effect, caused primarily by increased levels of carbon dioxide released in the burning of coal and petroleum-based fuels).
ExxonMobil has drawn criticism from the environmental lobby for funding organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...
and skeptical of the scientific opinion
Scientific opinion on climate change
The predominant scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth is in an ongoing phase of global warming primarily caused by an enhanced greenhouse effect due to the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases...
that global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
is caused by the burning of fossil fuel
Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years...
s. According to Mother Jones Magazine
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
, the company channeled more than $8 million to forty different organizations that challenged the scientific evidence of global warming and that the company was a member of one of the first such skeptic groups, the Global Climate Coalition
Global Climate Coalition
The Global Climate Coalition was a group of mainly United States businesses opposing immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The group formed in response to several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . A major scientific report on the severity of global warming...
, founded in 1989. According to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, ExxonMobil has funded, among other groups skeptical of global warming, the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
, George C. Marshall Institute
George C. Marshall Institute
The George C. Marshall Institute is a politically conservative think tank established in 1984 in Washington, D.C. with a focus on scientific issues and public policy. In the 1980s, the Institute was engaged primarily in lobbying in support of the Strategic Defense Initiative...
, Heartland Institute
Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is a libertarian, American public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois which advocates free market policies. The Institute is designated as a 501 non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service and advised by a 15 member board of directors, which meets quarterly. As of...
, Congress on Racial Equality, TechCentralStation.com, and International Policy Network
International Policy Network
The International Policy Network is a global think tank headquartered in the City of London. It defines itself as a non-partisan, non-profit organization, but has also been described as a "corporate-funded campaigning group"...
. ExxonMobil's support for these organizations has drawn criticism from the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, the academy of sciences of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The Union of Concerned Scientists
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. James J...
released a report in 2007 accusing ExxonMobil of spending $16 million, between 1998 and 2005, towards 43 advocacy organizations which dispute the impact of global warming. The report argued that ExxonMobil used disinformation tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry
Tobacco industry
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any warm, moist environment, which means it can be farmed on all...
in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking, saying that the company used "many of the same organizations and personnel to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
and delay action on the issue." These charges are consistent with a purported 1998 internal ExxonMobil strategy memo, posted by the environmental group Environmental Defense, stating
ExxonMobil has been reported as having plans to invest up to US$100m over a ten year period in Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
's Global Climate and Energy Project.
In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal revealed that a YouTube video lampooning Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
, titled Al Gore's Penguin Army, appeared to be astroturfing
Astroturfing
Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some...
by DCI Group
DCI Group
DCI Group is an American public relations, lobbying and business consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. The company was founded in 1996 as a grassroots consulting firm, and has since expanded its practice to become a public affairs company offering a range of services...
, a Washington PR firm with ties to ExxonMobil.
In January 2007, the company appeared to change its position, when vice president for public affairs
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
Kenneth Cohen said "we know enough now—or, society knows enough now—that the risk is serious and action should be taken." Cohen stated that, as of 2006, ExxonMobil had ceased funding of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
and "'five or six' similar groups".
While the company did not publicly state which the other similar groups were, a May 2007 report by Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
does list the five groups it stopped funding as well as a list of 41 other climate skeptic groups which are still receiving ExxonMobil funds.
On February 13, 2007, ExxonMobil CEO Rex W. Tillerson acknowledged that the planet was warming while carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
levels were increasing, but in the same speech gave an unqualified defense of the oil industry and predicted that hydrocarbons would dominate the world’s transportation as energy demand
Energy consumption
Energy consumption is the consumption of energy or power. It is covered in the following articles and categories:* World energy consumption* Domestic energy consumption* Fuel efficiency in transportation* Electric energy consumption* Electricity generation...
grows by an expected 40 percent by 2030. Tillerson stated that there is no significant alternative to oil in coming decades, and that ExxonMobil would continue to make petroleum and natural gas its primary products
Primary sector of industry
The sector of an economy making direct use of natural resources. This includes agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining, and extraction of oil and gas. This is contrasted with the secondary sector, producing manufactures and other processed goods, and the tertiary sector, producing services...
, saying: "I'm no expert on biofuel
Biofuel
Biofuel is a type of fuel whose energy is derived from biological carbon fixation. Biofuels include fuels derived from biomass conversion, as well as solid biomass, liquid fuels and various biogases...
s. I don't know much about farming and I don't know much about moonshine. ... There is really nothing ExxonMobil can bring to that whole biofuels issue. We don't see a direct role for ourselves with today's technology."
However, recently Exxonmobil has announced that it will plan on spending up to 600 million dollars within the next 10 years to fund biofuels that come from algae. On July 14, 2010 Exxonmobil announced that, a year after teaming with Synthetic Genomics, Inc.
Synthetic Genomics
Synthetic Genomics is a company dedicated to using modified or synthetically produced microorganisms to produce the alternative fuels ethanol and hydrogen. Synthetic Genomics was founded in part by J. Craig Venter...
, they had opened a greenhouse to research algae as a possible biofuel
Algae fuel
Algae fuel might be an alternative to fossil fuel and uses algae as its source of natural deposits. Several companies and government agencies are funding efforts to reduce capital and operating costs and make algae fuel production commercially viable...
.
A survey carried out by the UK's Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
found that in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society said "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".
On July 1, 2009, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper revealed that ExxonMobil has continued to fund organizations including the National Center for Policy Analysis
National Center for Policy Analysis
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a non-profit American conservative think tank whose goals are to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control...
(NCPA) along with the Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, despite a public pledge to cut support of lobby groups who deny climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
.
Funding of Climate Change Skepticism
A recent analysis by Carbon Brief from 2011 concluded that 9 out of 10 climate scientists who claim that climate change is not happening, have ties to ExxonMobil. The results showed that out of the 938 papers cited by climate sceptics, 186 of them were written by only ten men, and foremost among them was Dr Craig D. IdsoCraig D. Idso
Craig D. Idso is the founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.He is the brother of Keith E. Idso and son of Sherwood B. Idso....
, who personally authored 67 of them. Idso is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a 501 non-profit organization based in Arizona in the United States...
, an ExxonMobil funded think tank. The second most prolific was Dr Patrick Michaels
Patrick Michaels
Patrick J. Michaels is an American climatologist. Michaels is a senior research fellow for Research and Economic Development at George Mason University, and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute...
, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
, who receives roughly 40% of his funding from the oil industry. This goes in parallel with the ‘work’ of the Koch industries
Koch Industries
Koch Industries, Inc. , is an American private energy conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas, with subsidiaries involved in manufacturing, trading and investments. Koch also owns Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hills Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals and Matador Cattle Company...
; Koch industries is the second largest privately held company in the US, and in the past 50 years, they have invested more than 50.000.000 dollars in spreading awareness of research which discredits global warming, according to Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
.
Environment
The Exxon Valdez oil spillExxon Valdez oil spill
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused...
in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, was a watershed moment for environmental critics of the oil industry.
Foreign business practices
Investigative reportingInvestigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
by Forbes Magazine raised questions about ExxonMobil's dealings with the leaders of oil-rich nations. ExxonMobil controls concessions covering 11 million acres (44,515.5 km²) off the coast of Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
that hold an estimated 7.5 Goilbbl of crude.
In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control
Office of Foreign Assets Control
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury under the auspices of the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. OFAC administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S...
reported that ExxonMobil engaged in illegal trade with Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
and it, along with dozens of other companies, settled with the United States government for $50,000.
In March 2003, James Giffen
James Giffen
James H. Giffen is an American businessman and an authority on American-Soviet trade. He is the founder and chairman of Mercator Corporation. He was the prime accused in the $80 million Kazakhgate bribery scandal, which was at one time the largest US investigation ever into an overseas bribery...
of the Mercator Corporation was indicted, accused of bribing President Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the nation received its independence in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union...
of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
with $78 million to help ExxonMobil win a 25 percent share of the Tengiz
Tengiz Field
Tengiz field is an oil and gas field located in northwestern Kazakhstan's low-lying wetlands along the northeast shores of the Caspian Sea...
oilfield, the third largest in the world. On April 2, 2003, former-Mobil executive J. Bryan Williams was indicted on tax charges relating to this same transaction. The case is the largest under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is a United States federal law known primarily for two of its main provisions, one that addresses accounting transparency requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and another concerning bribery of foreign officials.- Provisions and scope...
. This series of events is depicted in the film Syriana
Syriana
Syriana is a 2005 geopolitical thriller film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, and executive produced by George Clooney, who also stars in the film with an ensemble cast. Gaghan's screenplay is loosely adapted from Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil...
.
In a U.S. Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
release dated September 18, 2003, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is a federal district court. Appeals from the Southern District of New York are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case...
announced that J. Bryan Williams, a former senior executive of Mobil Oil Corporation, had been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison on charges of evading income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
es on more than $7 million in unreported income, "including a $2 million kickback he received in connection with Mobil's oil business in Kazakhstan." According to documents filed with the court, Williams' unreported income included millions of dollars in kickbacks from governments, persons, and other entities with whom Williams conducted business while employed by Mobil. In addition to his sentence, Williams must pay a fine of $25,000 and more than $3.5 million in restitution to the IRS, in addition to penalties and interest.
Human rights
ExxonMobil is the target of human rights activists for actions taken by the corporation in the IndonesiaIndonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n territory of Aceh
Aceh
Aceh is a special region of Indonesia, located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. Its full name is Daerah Istimewa Aceh , Nanggroë Aceh Darussalam and Aceh . Past spellings of its name include Acheh, Atjeh and Achin...
. In June 2001 a lawsuit against ExxonMobil was filed in the Federal District Court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
of the District of Columbia
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The suit alleges that the ExxonMobil knowingly assisted human rights violations, including torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, murder and rape, by employing and providing material support to Indonesian military
Military of Indonesia
The Indonesian National Armed Forces in 2009 comprises approximately 432,129 personnel including the Army , Navy including the Indonesian Marine Corps and the Air Force ....
forces, who committed the alleged offenses during civil unrest
Civil disorder
Civil disorder, also known as civil unrest or civil strife, is a broad term that is typically used by law enforcement to describe one or more forms of disturbance caused by a group of people. Civil disturbance is typically a symptom of, and a form of protest against, major socio-political problems;...
in Aceh. Human rights complaints involving Exxon's (Exxon and Mobil had not yet merged) relationship with the Indonesian military first arose in 1992; the company denies these accusations and filed a motion to dismiss
Motion (legal)
In law, a motion is a procedural device to bring a limited, contested issue before a court for decision. A motion may be thought of as a request to the judge to make a decision about the case. Motions may be made at any point in administrative, criminal or civil proceedings, although that right is...
the suit, which was denied in 2008 by a federal judge, but then dismissed in August 2009 by a different federal judge. The dismissal is currently under appeal.
LGBT
When Exxon Corporation merged with Mobil Corporation in 1999, the newly merged company ended enrollment in Mobil Corporation's domestic partner benefits for same-sex partners of employees, and it rescinded formal prohibitions against discrimination based on sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
by removing it from the company's Equal Employment Opportunity policy. In 2010 the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
, an LGBT lobbying group and political action committee, gave Exxon Mobil a score of "0" in its Corporate Equality Index
Corporate Equality Index
The Corporate Equality Index is a report published by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation as a tool to rate American businesses on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. Its primary source of data are surveys but researchers cross-check...
, a scorecard that rated 590 companies on several criteria including diversity training that covers gender identity issues, transgender-inclusive medical coverage including surgical procedures, and "positively engaging the external LGBT community."
On May 26, 2010 ExxonMobil shareholders voted down LGBT benefits for its employees – only 22% of shareholders voted yes for the issue.
Headquarters
ExxonMobil's headquarters are located in Irving, TexasIrving, Texas
Irving is a city located in the U.S. state of Texas within Dallas County. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city population was 216,290. Irving is within the Dallas–Plano–Irving metropolitan division of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, designated...
.
]
As of January 2010, the company is conducting an internal study regarding possible consolidation of facilities to the northern Houston suburb of Spring
Spring, Texas
Spring, Texas is a census-designated place within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Houston in Harris County, Texas, United States, north of Downtown Houston. The population was 54,298 at the 2010 census...
, at the intersection of Interstate 45
Interstate 45
Interstate 45 is an intrastate Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. It connects the cities of Dallas and Houston, continuing southeast from Houston to Galveston over the Galveston Causeway to the Gulf of Mexico...
and the Hardy Toll Road
Hardy Toll Road
The Hardy Toll Road runs from Interstate 610, near central Houston, to Interstate 45, north of Houston just below the Harris County line. The road generally parallels Interstate 45. The portion from I-610 to Crosstimbers Road is known as Spur 548, although this is unsigned.Construction on the...
. Architectural documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle outline an elaborate corporate campus, including twenty office buildings totaling 3000000 square feet (278,709.1 m²), a wellness center, laboratory, and multiple parking garages. Alan Jeffers, a spokesperson for the company, did not say whether the consolidation study includes the Irving headquarters, but definitely includes the Fairfax headquarters. Chris Wallace, the chief executive of the Greater Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce, said that he believed that it does include the headquarters. In October 2010 the company stated that it would not move its headquarters to Greater Houston
Greater Houston
Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown is a 10-county metropolitan area defined by the Office of Management and Budget. It is located along the Gulf Coast region in the U.S. state of Texas...
.
Since then, the corporation has acknowledged a move to a suburb between The Woodlands, TX and Spring, TX. This campus will be built to house 8,000 employees, and will be an environment that is suitable for work, play, and life. Beginning early in 2014, and ending some time in 2015, employees will move into the campus and begin work. ExxonMobil hopes to install this as its permanent corporate headquarters.
See also
- Baton Rouge RefineryBaton Rouge RefineryExxonMobil's Baton Rouge Refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the second-largest oil refinery in the United States, with an input capacity of per day as of January 1, 2007 ....
(in Louisiana, United States) - Exxon Corp. v. Exxon Insurance Consultants International LtdExxon Corp. v. Exxon Insurance Consultants International LtdExxon Corp. v. Exxon Insurance Consultants International Ltd [1982] Ch. 119 is a leading decision in English law on the existence of copyright in a name alone and the infringement of a trade mark...
- Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., Et al.Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., Et al.Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corporation, et al. is a lawsuit filed on February 26, 2008 in a United States district court. The suit based on the common law theory of nuisance claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change....
- List of companies by revenue
- Save the Tiger FundSave the Tiger FundSave the Tiger Fund was established in 1995 as a partnership between the ExxonMobil Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, STF gave 313 grants totaling $15.7 million between 1995 and 2007, amounting to about one quarter of all philanthropic funds spent on tiger conservation...
- The July 2011 Yellowstone river oil spill