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Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

by Steve Coll

3.91 · Rating Details · 2,028 Ratings · 219 Reviews

In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.

Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the “God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.

The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymond’s successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymond’s programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil’s public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story.

The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

Winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012 ...more

Hardcover, 704 pages

Published May 1st 2012 by Penguin Press (first published January 1st 2012)

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May 14, 2012 Holly Morrow added it

Oh, you know I had to read this. OK, first things first: this book is only for the hardcore. I mean, you have to be REALLY interested in Exxy Mobes to get through 600+ pages of dense material here. I am about as highly motivated a reader as Steve Coll is likely to find, but it just gets loooong. OK, next: its not a hatchet job. I found it overall quite fair. It is extensively researched and gets the fundamentals of the energy business right (for example: the name of the game for oil/gas companie Oh, you know I had to read this. OK, first things first: this book is only for the hardcore. I mean, you have to be REALLY interested in Exxy Mobes to get through 600+ pages of dense material here. I am about as highly motivated a reader as Steve Coll is likely to find, but it just gets loooong. OK, next: its not a hatchet job. I found it overall quite fair. It is extensively researched and gets the fundamentals of the energy business right (for example: the name of the game for oil/gas companies is reserves replacement, everything else is a sideshow). The substance is accurate and generally criticizes where criticism is warranted (though praise is perhaps a bit spare and the stories that he chooses to explore in depth seem selected with a preference for showing the company in a negative light). One thing I found off: the whole “private empire” construct just doesn’t work. As Coll himself states in the introduction, he wanted to write a book about American corporate power and how it is its own force – separate and apart from traditional government power. And he kind of jams everything into that frame, especially when talking about ExxonMobil’s operations overseas. He keeps repeating phrases like “…but ExxonMobil didn’t consider itself a tool of American diplomacy; it was its own private empire.” Well, what private American company DOES consider itself a tool of US diplomacy? And is the opposite of that running a “private empire?” I found the whole idea flawed, and never substantiated – or really even explained. He just repeatedly cues the Darth Vader music and then moves on. So, given that that is a, maybe THE, central theme in the book, its an important flaw. Moreover, it assumes an omnipotence that is laughably far from what reality feels like in the company – beleaguered, subject to the whim of geology and fickle, irrational, and sometimes venal governments – both foreign and here at home. For all of Coll’s seeming attempts to show some unholy alliance between ExxonMobil and the US government (when he isn’t trying to prove the “private empire” thesis), what is actually demonstrated, even when Lee Raymond is running ExxonMobil and his buddy Dick Cheney is in the White House, is that the USG and private companies pursue their own respective interests. Sometimes those interests intersect, sometimes they don’t. But all in all, the USG doesn’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about whats best for ExxonMobil, and ExxonMobil doesn’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about whats best for the USG. What he gets very right is the culture of the company – diligent, priggish, smart as hell, data-driven, disciplined and rigorous to a fault, unsentimental. I have laughed with some ex-military guys in the company about how easy the transition must have been. And he captures very well the transition from Lee Raymond, the extremely hard-assed former CEO, to Rex Tillerson – a transition that held some subtle but important shifts in company policy. And he demonstrates some of the “can’t win” dynamics that surround a company as big and with as much baggage as Exxon – for years the company was criticized for climate denialism, but when Tillerson came out in favor of a carbon tax, it was seen as a poison pill in the cap-and-trade debate rather than a considered decision; for years the company was criticized for its lack of investment in alternative energy, but when they made a major investment in algae biofuels, many critics dismissed it as a marketing gimmick ($600 million would be a pretty expensive marketing gimmick). At any rate, I suspect this book will be a lot more ExxonMobil than people really want to curl up with. But I found it overall well-done and fair, if one cuts through the sinister and ominous smoke that wafts about in the tone of the book (starting with the black cover and scary title) and focuses on the substance. ...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environment, journalism, united-states, world-politics

This is an indelible picture of the long-standing oil enterprise. Even though the style is understated, factual (and sometimes sardonic) we are given an up-close view, of what for all intents and purposes, is a most nefarious business. It’s not what they are doing, but the way they are doing it. Extracting oil is their primary activity – what happens to the environment and the people in the land they occupy is all secondary. Only recently – when Rex Tillerson took the helm of ExxonMobil in 2006 This is an indelible picture of the long-standing oil enterprise. Even though the style is understated, factual (and sometimes sardonic) we are given an up-close view, of what for all intents and purposes, is a most nefarious business. It’s not what they are doing, but the way they are doing it. Extracting oil is their primary activity – what happens to the environment and the people in the land they occupy is all secondary. Only recently – when Rex Tillerson took the helm of ExxonMobil in 2006 did it begin to acknowledge that global warming and climate change were occurring. Prior, they were in full denial.

If you are going to take on ExxonMobil be thoroughly prepared – one scientist remarked, on a court case against ExxonMobil that at the end they had become “better scientists”.

The estimates of the reserves of both natural gas and oil have risen over the last few years – partially because of new discoveries and new technology. However the extraction processes are still in the development stages and getting to these reserves is becoming more and more environmentally invasive – leading to more global warming. ExxonMobil (as do the other major oil companies) have nicely documented procedures on how to deal with oil spills and other environmental calamities – but this is just paper – the actual resources (equipment such as planes, trucks...) to carry-out the cleanup of the catastrophe only partially exist. ExxonMobil devotes a significant portion of their environmental documentation on dealing with the media.

The saddest and most revealing parts of the book are how ExxonMobil inhabits impoverished countries. There are cogent chapters on ExxonMobil in Indonesia, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Nigeria. The author demonstrates that in the African countries the quality of living has not improved (not so sure about Indonesia). While it may not be ExxonMobil role to manage the distribution of wealth in these societies – they themselves are profiting immensely from these ventures. One could argue that this is exploitation pure and simple. After all, if one goes into a country and makes a ton of money should you not give something in return? Shouldn’t you ensure that it is just not a small group of the country’s leaders (family members) who keep the wealth?

This book is a powerful and searing depiction of a multinational. We are given a narrative of their leaders (Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson) plus many other people and companys’. The author is somewhat dismissive of the electric car and how it would impact the oil and car manufacturing industry. This would lead to a substantial decrease in fuel consumption and thus slow down global warming. Why is it that industrialized Europe uses less fuel consumption per capita that North America?

At the end of this book we know that ExxonMobil is very successful at its’ core business and does it very well. But there is a large moral quandary to it all.

...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Minyoung Lee rated it really liked it

Disclaimer: I worked for and been involved in Exxon's major competitor since 2006, and therefore my perspective of Exxon and this book in general may be skewed. A lot of the focus of the book is based on this recent history of Exxon, which I was actually fortunate to have lived through and experienced, so I may have more of an appreciation of what the author is trying to portray about the company and the industry during the time.

That being said, I found this book extremely entertaining and true Disclaimer: I worked for and been involved in Exxon's major competitor since 2006, and therefore my perspective of Exxon and this book in general may be skewed. A lot of the focus of the book is based on this recent history of Exxon, which I was actually fortunate to have lived through and experienced, so I may have more of an appreciation of what the author is trying to portray about the company and the industry during the time.

That being said, I found this book extremely entertaining and true to the sentiment of what most non-Exxon people in the industry feel about Exxon. Admittedly, the content of the book was slightly different to what I had expected. I had expected some individual's viewpoints and preachy commentary, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire book pretty much comprised of detailed and very visual anecdotes. The overall tone of the book is very objective, and the author is definitely not trying to force anything down the reader's throat, and I appreciate this aspect of the writing very, very much.

The truth just simply is that Exxon is an extremely large and powerful company driven by stakeholder profits, and is very successful at what it does. It currently holds a credit rating better than that of the US. Us "smaller" oil companies (and the general public as well, I suppose) like to diss the company as evil and unethical, but maybe Exxon's strategy of completely disengaging itself from "morals" is exactly what makes the company so profitable in the first place. I am personally very proud of the approach my employer takes in contrast to Exxon in terms of how it treats host countries and deal with community issues, but the author did remind my guilty heart that my employer can probably do this because Exxon paves the way and opens the doors of hostile markets through its "f*ck you, we're Exxon" attitude, and we just have to slip in from behind. So kudos to Exxon and the niche it had paved in the industry and the US economy.

Love it or hate it, one still has to admit, that this formidable monster of a corporation does affect so much of the every contemporary person's life. The author did a very good job of depicting a very sensitive topic in a very objective, readable tone. ...more

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May 16, 2012 Mal Warwick rated it liked it

The Truth Behind One of the Companies You Hate the Most (and It Ain't Pretty)

Until recently, when GoldmanSachs emerged as such a deserving target of opprobium, ExxonMobil was, without doubt, our country’s most-hated corporation. The two companies probably compete for that distinction today. Private Empire is Steve Coll’s admirable attempt to explain how and why the world’s most profitable private oil company became a pariah — and to relate how the company has changed in recent years. Oh, yes, it The Truth Behind One of the Companies You Hate the Most (and It Ain't Pretty)

Until recently, when GoldmanSachs emerged as such a deserving target of opprobium, ExxonMobil was, without doubt, our country’s most-hated corporation. The two companies probably compete for that distinction today. Private Empire is Steve Coll’s admirable attempt to explain how and why the world’s most profitable private oil company became a pariah — and to relate how the company has changed in recent years. Oh, yes, it has changed.

Unless you’re under the age of 20, you were already highly aware of the ExxonValdez disaster off the coast of Alaska in 1989 — the country’s biggest oil spill until BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. You probably also knew that ExxonMobil is the direct descendent of the Standard Oil trust assembled in the 19th Century by the quintessential robber baron, John D. Rockefeller. So, perhaps it’s clear how, when the company came into existence in its present form — in 1999, with the acquisition of Mobil Oil, another Standard offspring — it had already been rivaling its ancestor for public displeasure for a decade as a result of Exxon Valdez. (“Fortune had ranked the corporation as America’s sixth most admired before the accident; afterward, it fell to one hundred and tenth.”) It’s pretty hard not to know at least a few facts about a company that’s often ranked the biggest private enterprise in the world and supplies so much of the fuel to which we are so blithely addicted.

It’s no mystery why ExxonMobil stayed so unpopular many years after the Exxon Valdez spill. A heavy-handed Texan named Lee Raymond set the company’s tone and policy during his 12-year reign as CEO (1993-2005). ”Exxon maintained a ‘kind of 1950s Southern religious culture,’ said an executive who served on the corporation’s board of directors during the Raymond era. ‘They’re all engineers, mostly white males, mostly from the South . . . They shared a belief in the One Right Answer, that you would solve the equation and that would be the answer, and it didn’t need to be debated.’” And, whatever that One Right Answer might be, it was closely held unless Raymond thought it needed to be made public. As one new employee he brought on observed, “the oil corporation’s system for maintaining confidential information was far more severe than anything she had seen while holding top secret clearance at the White House.”

It was Raymond’s determined, some might say fanatical, insistence that scientists hadn’t proved the reality of human-caused global warming that led the company to invest heavily in Right-Wing think tanks and other front groups campaigning against any proposals to regulate carbon emissions. Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, despite his similar background, proved far more resilient on the issue. He discontinued the corporation’s support for anti-climate change campaigners and later took a high-profile public position in favor of a carbon tax.

Interestingly, “Rex Tillerson believed that transformational change would upend the oil business and global energy economy eventually. Breakthrough batteries might be the pathway, or breakthrough biofuels, or cheaper, more efficient solar technology, or some combination of those technologies, or perhaps something unimagined in the present. Not anytime soon, however. For two decades and probably much longer, Tillerson’s Management Committee concluded . . . [that] ExxonMobil could feel secure about its investments in oil and gas.”

Like Daniel Yergin in his excellent recent book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, Steve Coll debunks the notion of Peak Oil, quoting ExxonMobil executives on the significant evidence against it. However, what both authors underplay is that the large new deposits of oil and natural gas the companies are adding to their reserves, seemingly by the day, tend to require more expensive and environmentally more damaging methods of extraction. Peak Oil may not be a reality, but we’re surely in for years of increasing costs, both financial and environment, to extract fossil fuels unless the leadership of the world’s major countries manage to cap and then reduce carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, there seems little likelihood of that. ExxonMobil’s own strategic plan projects rising sales of petroleum and natural gas at least until 2030 — by which point the total load of carbon in the atmosphere will be so great that the world’s coastal cities will all be likely to drown in rising water by the end of the century. (Name a big city: odds are 4 to 1 that it’s vulnerable to flooding from rising seas.)

Private Empire showcases Coll’s exhaustive research on ExxonMobil in its 704 pages. The book is structured chronologically, focusing on the period from 1989 t0 2011. Along the way, Coll constructs detailed scenarios that reveal the issues confronting the company in a number of countries where it sources oil or gas (or mightily tries to do so): Chad, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Iraq, and Qatar, among others, making clear that “ExxonMobil’s interests were global, not national.” Though the book is subtitled ExxonMobil and American Power, Coll makes clear that the corporation is anything but an expression of American power. In fact, he details the sometimes fractious relationship the company had even with the oil-friendly Administration of George W. Bush, despite Lee Raymond’s friendship with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Private Empire is a modern-day testimony to the even-handedness of “objective journalism.” Coll almost never reveals his personal feelings about the company and its misdeeds. In fact, the book will probably be read by some as an apologia for ExxonMobil. It’s not: the author is just too good at ferretting out the facts. On balance, it’s entirely clear why so many people hate ExxonMobil with such fervor.

Steve Coll is one of America’s most outstanding journalists. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his reporting on the SEC, the other for his 2005 book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Since 2007 he has worked as President and CEO of a Washington think tank, the New America Foundation, having previously served as a staff writer for The New Yorker and as an editor of The Washington Post.

(From www.malwarwickonbooks.com) ...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Michele Weiner rated it really liked it

Some parts of this very detailed look at the world according to ExxonMobile are riveting - The Exxon Valdez disaster opens the book and draws one into the Big Oil story immediately. After a too-brief recounting of the reaction of Exxon to this high-profile spill, there is a too-brief "How we got here" segment which goes as far back as the breaking up of the mammoth Standard Oil into baby companies, of which ExxonMobile is one, formerly known as Esso, which is short for Standard Oil of New Jersey Some parts of this very detailed look at the world according to ExxonMobile are riveting - The Exxon Valdez disaster opens the book and draws one into the Big Oil story immediately. After a too-brief recounting of the reaction of Exxon to this high-profile spill, there is a too-brief "How we got here" segment which goes as far back as the breaking up of the mammoth Standard Oil into baby companies, of which ExxonMobile is one, formerly known as Esso, which is short for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Whew. And then it becomes the world according to Lee Raymond, CEO. Exxon recruits mainly from southern and midwestern universities, and mainly engineers or scientists. The corporate atmosphere is very regimented and homogeneous, almost cult-like or Amway in its boosterism and insularity. Exxon doesn't advertise like it used to and it doesn't really lobby like other people do. It just sends straight-as-an-arrow, arrogant engineers with Power Point presentations to educate the rubes about oil. Exxon believes, or did for years, that nobody not in the oil business understood the "global oil market," by which they appeared to mean that they might be bad, but if they were prohibited from some bad actions by US law, other companies from countries without scruples would just step in and buy the oil anyway. In other words, you need us more than we need you, suckers. ExxonMobile screwed the people of Alaska out of proper compensation for the continuing pollution of Prince William Sound, as BP is doing in the Gulf. They took it through the courts till all the original parties were dead, and believe that's just business played the hard way. When some public interest groups tried to do in-depth research to see if there was still oil in the sound and how it affected wildlife, ExxonMobil followed them and hounded them with FOIA requests until some quit in disgust. That didn't stop them from proving that the oil is still there and messing up the ecosystem. Exxon suborned scientists to find that global warming didn't exist for fifteen or twenty years until the overwhelming evidence and a change at the top (Raymond retired unwillingly), enabled them to slowly alter their position. The fact that the oil is at present almost always found in places that are violent makes Exxon's job more difficult. Underdeveloped societies in which oil is discovered become corrupt and warped, the general population usually loses ground while a ruling group overindulges in aircraft, jewelry and weapons. Such a society (for example, Equatorial Guinea) becomes a target for overthrow from within and without. In Indonesia, Africa and Nigeria, Exxon is forced to work with emerging regimes of various degrees of bloodthirstiness, and to expose workers to threats of violence. Sometimes, the guards hired to protect the Exxon property and operations indulge in human rights violations commensurate with that particular country's tolerance for torture and death. Bodies were buried all over the Indonesian operation, for example, and ExxonMobil is being sued, though once again plaintiffs are dying off waiting for justice. The book discusses the dealings in Venezuela, and ExxonMobile's recent reemphasis on Canadian and American sources of oil sands and natural gas trapped in shale. Despite the need to work with tinpot despots to make money, Exxon doesn't like to depend on the US government in negotiations, unless they have to. Then a well-placed word to the right person, often Dick Cheney, achieves the goal. They continue to buy Republican Congressmen, but are now also stumbling around trying to find some Democratic friends. The new CEO is efforting to bring ExxonMobil some positive publicity while trying simultaneously to guide US policy. They oppose cap and trade, for example, preferring a known carbon tax. They are beginning to understand a bit about public relations and how to talk to people nicely and not lecture them. While I don't think I would call this book an apology for the oil business, I would say that Coll definitely underplays the corruption and immorality of ExxonMobil's laser focus on profits and lack of consideration for others who share the planet. This is an ugly group of people who think they are on God's side but who actually appear to worship Capitalism as practiced in the Gilded Age. I hope we can break them up again soon. ...more

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Jan 10, 2017 Caro rated it really liked it

I picked this up to understand Rex Tillerson's background and learned a whole lot more, especially about big oil, about which I knew very little. Coll's thesis is that the enormous, gigantic, world-spanning company Exxon/Mobil is a bigger actor in some countries than the US: for example, the amount of US aid to a country like Chad is dwarfed by the amount of money Chad earns from letting E/M drill for oil there. So who calls the shots? It will be interesting, shall we say, to see how Tillerson, ...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Patty rated it really liked it

This was a door stopper of a book. I haven't had a real hefty book for a bit and it was a real delight to sit and hold a real solid book again. And what a book it was. Starting with the the Exxon Valdez spill and book-ending with the Deepwater Horizon disaster Private Empire details the arrogance that is ExxonMobil.

Mr. Coll's writing style is easy even when explaining oil extraction methods or the geopolitics of oil and natural gas rights. It reads almost like a suspense novel except that it's a ...more

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Jan 10, 2015 Tirath rated it it was ok

When one sees the book title, one may suppose its about Exxon Mobil and its might and weight.
Instead the book reads like a thriller revolving around geopolitics, managers' egos and the might of contacts and cash flows.

Very little about the business, and a lot like a novel with conspiracies and characters...

Read only the first 100 pages and quit.

Note: This book is not for the business/ investment reader.

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Apr 27, 2012 Jim marked it as to-read-tier-2

Shelves: audiobook, energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/boo...

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May 03, 2012 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, business, 2012-new-books

In Private Empire, Steve Coll examines the structure, motivation, activities, and impact of the combined oil giant, ExxonMobil, since the creation of the company by merger in 1999. Coll investigates every aspect of the company, including its internal operational process, dealings with foreign governments, manipulation of environmental "science", and the company responses to accidents, starting with the Exxon Valdez. The book is vast and comprehensive, and packed with details and careful analysis In Private Empire, Steve Coll examines the structure, motivation, activities, and impact of the combined oil giant, ExxonMobil, since the creation of the company by merger in 1999. Coll investigates every aspect of the company, including its internal operational process, dealings with foreign governments, manipulation of environmental "science", and the company responses to accidents, starting with the Exxon Valdez. The book is vast and comprehensive, and packed with details and careful analysis. The book is vast, definitive, and some very complicated issues. Key takeaways for me were:

1. The overriding importance of “Booked reserves” or “equity oil”, those proven reserves that a corporation controlled legally and could exploit for sale in future years. In order to maintain profitability and stock price, every single barrel of oil processed in a given year must be replaced by another. The imperative is the single most important factor driving the relationships into which ExxonMobil enters globally.

2. ExxonMobil culture is driven by the Operations Integrity Management System, or O.I.M.S., “more vinyl binders than you can possibly imagine, every single goddamn aspect of how we operate,” as a former executive put it. O.I.M.S was developed post-Exxon Valdez to insure that the company never again suffered such a disaster. Comprehensive in scope, "O.I.M.S. involved “Framework Expectations” about eleven “Elements.” These included the basic challenge of risk assessment and management. O.I.M.S. section 2.1 declared, “Risk is managed by identifying hazards, assessing consequences, and probabilities.” Five subsections of the rule outlined how to achieve this goal through the use of data, documentation, and outside evaluators. The system also addressed human frailty in the workplace. Section 5.5 prescribed that Exxon employees should “routinely identify and eliminate their at-risk behaviors and those of their co-workers” while ensuring that “Human Factors, workforce engagement, and leadership behaviors are addressed.”

3. The leadership of ExxonMobil conceives of the company as a private empire, with no ties of loyalty or obligation to the United States, or indeed anyone but themselves. The company can and does aggressively pursue policies and positions that are indirect opposition to those of the U.S. Government. To give but one example of many, the company chief executive, Lee Raymond, to reject the Kyoto Protocol being negotiated by the Clinton administration: "It was extraordinary for the chief executive of a U.S.-headquartered multinational to lobby against a treaty he disliked by appealing to a Chinese Communist government, among others, to adopt a negotiating position opposed to a sitting American president. Raymond believed, however, that his obligation as Exxon’s chief executive was not primarily to support American diplomacy—and certainly not when he disagreed with its assumptions so profoundly. The Beijing address was “seminal,” recalled Frank Sprow, a senior Exxon executive who worked closely with Raymond on the climate issue."

4. And yet, ExxonMobil won't hesitate for a heartbeat to reach out to the U.S. government and demand action when it suits them:"In Washington, recalled a State Department official involved as the attacks worsened, “the oil companies kept telling us, ‘Goddamnit, can’t the C.I.A. and the navy solve this problem? We’ll tell you where they [the militants] are. . . . Why can’t you fix this swampy corner? It’s a bunch of pirates. Why can’t you just send the navy in there and fix this?’”

5. While funding bogus "science" to cast doubt on the reality of global warming, the company, knowing the truth, is preparing to exploit resources made available by the impact of global warming: "These investments in skeptics of the scientific consensus coincided with what at least a few of ExxonMobil’s own managers regarded as a hypocritical drive inside the corporation to explore whether climate change might offer new opportunities for oil exploration and profit. One of ExxonMobil’s most accomplished earth scientists, Peter Vail, had won acclaim for his insights into how changes on the earth’s surface affected ocean levels and other geological shifts. Vail had developed a calculation known as the Vail curve to describe some of these ocean events. In the ExxonMobil upstream division in Houston, scientists in charge of finding new deposits of oil and gas began to explore whether Vail’s scientific insights might give them a leg up in exploration by allowing them to predict how climate change—if it did materialize—might alter surface and ocean trends and lead the corporation to new oil finds. “So don’t believe for a minute that ExxonMobil doesn’t think climate change is real,” said a former manager involved with the internal scientific review. “They were using climate change as a source of insight into exploration.” This work remained unpublicized.

This is an excellent book, eye opening, full of detail, and well worth the substantial investment in time and effort to read.
...more

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Dec 23, 2016 Sandra rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, non-fiction, political

Well I finished it. And I can see why Trump and Tillerson will be a dynamic duo (that's written in sarcasm font). Tillerson is quite like Trump in his ability to make the truth quite elastic. Just call us the United States of Oligarchy. And the search for oil is endless and endlessly destructive.

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Oct 21, 2012 Samantha rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-stars

Steve Coll specializes in in-depth studies with huge casts of characters comprising presidents, dictators, executives, scientists, spies, and others in the woodwork. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century told the parallel tales of the Saudi royal family and Osama Bin Laden's millionaire father Mohammed and his children, including such compelling characters as libertine, airplane-flying eldest son Salem. Here Coll takes on ExxonMobil's odyssey from pariah status after the Exxo Steve Coll specializes in in-depth studies with huge casts of characters comprising presidents, dictators, executives, scientists, spies, and others in the woodwork. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century told the parallel tales of the Saudi royal family and Osama Bin Laden's millionaire father Mohammed and his children, including such compelling characters as libertine, airplane-flying eldest son Salem. Here Coll takes on ExxonMobil's odyssey from pariah status after the Exxon Valdez spill through the tenure of Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, who was responsible for both ExxonMobil's obsessive focus on safety and the corporation's intransigence over climate change. The thesis isn't that ExxonMobil is evil--despite accounts of complicity in torture in Aceh in Indonesia, support of Teodoro Obiang, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, and in the US pushing for restrictions on punitive damages in lawsuits--but that it is out for its own ends, including its own survival and continuing profitability, not for the aims of any country it does business in, including the United States. Various narrative threads are woven through the book--the events and repercussions in the above-mentioned nations as well as the saga of Raymond's succession, the company's legal maneuvering, its relationship with the George W. Bush administration, and its constant struggle to replace the oil it drills in the face of dwindling stocks of easily-accessible oil worldwide and the tendency toward "resource nationalism" in oil-producing countries. The book's closing chapters presage a new role for ExxonMobil in the future, with its new focus on natural gas and industrial applications of petroleum, its changing reputation in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, and its grudging acknowledgement of climate change and the need for new energy sources. Like Coll's other works the book is packed with detail and well-researched. Newcomers may be put off by the length, but the account quickly draws in the reader's attention. ...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Paul Pessolano rated it really liked it

“Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power” by Steve Coll, published by The Penguin Press.

Category – Business

How big is ExxonMobile and how much influence does it have on politics both National and International???? Steve Coll investigates not only these questions but many more and also looks into the dealings of other oil and gas companies. Coll is very neutral in his writing showing both sides of an issue and the possible outcomes of the decisions made by the companies. It is hard to visua ...more

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Oct 12, 2013 Sam rated it really liked it

The author makes an effort to let facts speak for themselves, only rarely interjecting a bit of personal opinion. Some examples...

- In 1987, Exxon reported more annual profit per employee than any other major American corporation.
- Mobil, the next largest American oil competitor, posted about half of Exxon's profit margin. Exxon made more profit on each dollar it invested than any of its American or international competitors. (1996)
- "I'm not a US company and I don't make decisions based on what ...more

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Mar 14, 2015 Brenda rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

"Private Empire" tells the history of ExxonMobil and provides an insight into how this large corporation works. ExxonMobil has always had a reputation for being a company that emphasizes procedure and has a culture based on discipline, and this book provides examples where this high level of organization has helped them succeed but also where this lack of flexibility has been a hindrance especially in times of crisis. Steve Coll also paints a great portrait of how oil and government interact and ...more

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Jul 03, 2016 Ann Hoff rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: eveyone, but dry in some spots

I finished this whole book, and was glad that someone looked into the behemoth that is Exxon-Mobile. I think of this book when people talk about Fracking, because it explains that The company needed to replace oil reserves when oil is sold & that wasnt happening. By using Natural gas, they could claim the reserves were on the rise. Another thing is they go into the illicit relationship with the CEO and Dick Cheney, how wars just happen to start where Exxon needs to have military support. it ...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, history, government-politics

an excellent and disturbing read. the degree to which exxon mobil influences american energy policy is frightening. they are not the only oil company to lobby the government, but they are certainly the biggest. their disregard for the people of the countries in which they drill (and make their billions), along with their continued dismissal of climate change (which, for an organization that is grounded in science, is utterly remarkable) makes it clear that their goal is profit no matter the cost ...more

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May 01, 2012 Trevor Emmitt rated it really liked it

If anything this extremely well-researched, in-depth assessment of ExxonMobil is too fair. Well-researched and in-depth are givens when speaking of Mr. Coll, whose exhaustive Bin Laden's was incredible and surprising. Private Empire is less eye-opening than it is informative, going beneath the public antipathy towards the world's largest corporation and explaining its operating strategy meticulously - whether it be lobbying Washington, relations with third-world dictators and revolutionaries, re ...more

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Sep 16, 2016 Kathleen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Well-written episodes of ExxonMobil's rigid culture and how it shapes major world events from 1989 to 2010. Coll has great detail and pacing within each episode to keep you turning pages, though the sheer number of chapters (28) is daunting. I liked how Coll weaves in questions about the nature of democracy and the responsibility of global corporations to the public good without sounding preachy or prescriptive. I'm an energy nerd so probably enjoyed this book more than the next person, but afte ...more

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Dec 07, 2014 Justin Mitchell rated it liked it

A meticulously detailed, sweeping book, but I'm not sure if it really merits its length or depth. Coll seems more interested in cataloguing the minutiae of ExxonMobil's global machinations since its creation than taking a stand -- which, in this case, makes for a rather dull read, with no overarching reason for existing, sort of like reading a collection of very long feature pieces as opposed to a book put together with any intention beyond simply gathering the information in one place. In any c ...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Matthew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, politics

This is an interesting book. Coll is definitely critical of ExxonMobil, but it's a fair sort of critical. If you're looking for a polemic, this is not what you want. He managed to give me a picture of a company that doesn't really pretend to be anything but a moneymaking machine, without making it unfactual. If you want a fair depiction of one of the biggest companies in the world, read this book.

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Jul 17, 2012 John Spillane rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooked

Coll is a superb writer, but this doesn't really rise above just telling you a ton about Exxon. Not sure why I was expecting more. The interesting bits for 90% of potential readers could be summed up in a mid-length New Yorker piece. The thought of actually reading this as opposed to audiobooking it gives me chills.

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Apr 24, 2012 Ted Lehmann rated it really liked it

Recommended to Ted by: TLC Book Tours

This is a highly readable and extremely important book. While long, detailed, and expensive, it moves right along, is highly detailed, and filled with useful information in a journalistic rather than an ideological framework. Must reading for people concerned about the risks of oil to our economy, environment, government, or culture. Read my complete review here: http://tinyurl.com/898guxf

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Oct 17, 2012 Richard Mcdermott added it

Outstanding read that puts in prospective the Global reach, influence and power that well run business can have. The book reads like an historical adventure novel that kept me awake reading it at night.

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Sep 01, 2012 Rschneider rated it liked it

Love Steve Coll and the way he puts his thoughts together, but 624pgs. of Exxon Mobil is tough for anyone to go past three stars. It was a loooong informative read.

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Jun 17, 2013 Max rated it it was amazing

Authoritative Lee Raymond dissection, which is more compelling then it sounds.

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Jan 29, 2017 Bryan rated it really liked it

I had decided to read this book after President Trump announced that Rex Tillerson would be nominated to be our next Secretary of State. ExxonMobile is a ubiquitous brand name found along road sides across the country, print media, and the like. It is often cited as the worlds largest oil company and one of the most profitable corporations in history. Like many others, I was concerned about our chief diplomat being from the head of such a large company with such complicated business relations ac I had decided to read this book after President Trump announced that Rex Tillerson would be nominated to be our next Secretary of State. ExxonMobile is a ubiquitous brand name found along road sides across the country, print media, and the like. It is often cited as the worlds largest oil company and one of the most profitable corporations in history. Like many others, I was concerned about our chief diplomat being from the head of such a large company with such complicated business relations across the world. But, in reading this extensive report on the Exxon's activities, it feels like Steve Coll buried the lede somewhere in the nearly 700 pages of this book that I was unable to unearth.

First, there is no question about Coll's solid reporting on the activities of ExxonMobile over the past half-century. Every page reads with loads of interesting facts and you can really tell that he went to the ends of the earth to conduct interviews and see many of the places reported on in these pages. The book begins with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 to 2012. We take a number of detours that stretch back the founding of the company with John D. Rockefeller and the breakup of Standard Oil for Anti-Trust business practices. Coll meticulously documents the extreme care and precision that Exxon has taken to maintain their position as a global powerhouse in the oil business. He frequently cites their need on strong data and analysis to make decisions meant to last 10-15 years down the line. As he mentions a few times in the book, administrations come and go, policies change, Exxon tries to always take the long view on deals.

Of course this narrative becomes complicated, as Coll's reporting so thoroughly displays. Coll presents this conflict in the term, "Private Empire" throughout the book. From Climate Change to business arrangements with foreign strongmen to the relationship with our domestic political parties, Exxon has consistently found itself making policy decisions that put the company squarely in the political arena.
If there is any weakness to this, to me at least, it seems that he does a good job of documentation ongoing problems that challenge Exxon's position in the global markets, but he never seems to present a smoking gun on Exxon's activities. This book begins sounding like an expose on the corporation, yet it just seems to confirm the difficulties in managing such a far reaching business venture. In terms of Tillerson, while he seems to be a fairly boring individual, I wasn't totally blown away with any scandalous undertakings during his tenure with the company.

Ultimately, if you have a major problem with the principle of major oil companies doing business around the globe and contributing to the climate change problem, then you'll probably find much to hate in this book. If you don't partially have a problem with oil companies, then you probably won't find anything in the 688 pages to convince you that Exxon is a menace. While I don't love or hate Exxon, I found much to be concerned with but nothing nefarious about the company that the book seems to hint at in the early sections. This book takes a lot of effort to read, for in my mind, little major payoff. You will definitely learn about Exxon's activities but doesn't seem like there is too much else.
...more

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Jan 03, 2017 Michael Sun rated it liked it

I primarily read this to get a better understanding of Rex Tillerson since he's now the incoming Secretary of State, but the book focuses mostly on the actions of his predecessor, Lee Raymond, so it was quite disappointing in that respect-- doesn't provide much more on Tillerson than a magazine profile would.

The investigative journalism is quite strong and Coll does a good job of illustrating the arrogance, ruthlessness, and greed of Exxon-Mobil and its executives. However, the book is poorly or ...more

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Aug 14, 2016 Tucker Stone rated it it was amazing

This isn't the first book that long-time journalist and author Steve Coll has written about oil, but Private Empire--Coll's years-in-the-making examination of the Exxon corporation--does have a wiry sense of newness to it, a general feeling that, for the first time in years, Coll's carnivorous ability to drain sources whole might have run dry. Whereas his previous string of books has seen Coll structure entire passages around knockout quotes--many of which often turn out to be rollicking strings This isn't the first book that long-time journalist and author Steve Coll has written about oil, but Private Empire--Coll's years-in-the-making examination of the Exxon corporation--does have a wiry sense of newness to it, a general feeling that, for the first time in years, Coll's carnivorous ability to drain sources whole might have run dry. Whereas his previous string of books has seen Coll structure entire passages around knockout quotes--many of which often turn out to be rollicking strings of hilariously creative expletives--Private Empire leans quieter, with chapters that empty out slowly, like a listing laundry bag. It's a quality that might be, at first, difficult to embrace, but as the pages flit by, it becomes more and more clear: the book can only read like this, a taciturn list of events and decisions, because the subject won't have it any other way.

Coll opens the book in the only way history could ever allow, on that morning in '89 when the companies name became forever entangled with Valdez. Holding back from pat surprises and cheese, his ability to recall that event's feeling--the way the world just seemed to stop and hold its collective breath as so many political consciousnesses were born--makes for an experience rich with feeling for anyone who might remember those events first hand. By the time Coll's starts introducing colorful side characters--the best and first being Admiral Paul Yost, a Coast Guard commandant known most at that point for banning beards amongst all his men, ensuring a legacy of disgust, the book seems like its going down the road so many others have before: courtroom battles, funny lines, the late-night legal revelations popularized in movies.

And then it doesn't. Instead, it chases a company, its hard-as-nails chief executive, and a near-robotic system of discipline that does more to explain why men become libertarians then any political theory ever will. There's a toxic, undeniable logic to this book, one that you can almost sense Coll struggling against. This is a story of a fortress of intelligence and income, of people who have gone further down the road of profit than almost anyone in human history. After decades of writing and reporting about these sorts of people--Coll's previous books have been on the reach of the CIA, the incredible financial success of the Bin Laden empire (as well as the dark monstrosity of its infamous son), the fall of massive corporations and the destruction of the AT&T empire--you can't blame him for the shadow of wonder throughout the book. Exxon is an unusual place, an unusual beast, and at its highest level of staff, there isn't a real comparison. These are men--and it is all men, for reasons the book explicitly details--who dismiss Vladimir Putin publicly, who humiliate Hugo Chavez in New York courts out of a weird sense of fairness, men who respond to an offer of help from then-President George W. Bush with a startled sneer and a violent shaking of heads. And they do it less out of ego--which is what onlookers wrongly assume--then they do it of a faith in efficiency and the cold pursuit of success. As an "aw-shucks, what can you do" Bush put it himself, when an insulted head of state asked the President to put the company in line, "Nobody tells those guys what to do."

It's in the way the company handled climate change--or rather, how it refused to handle climate change--that Coll is most able to shake off the allure of the company's massive success, because it's there that the company is most wrong. It's also there that Coll might have missed an opportunity to write more about the contemporary addiction with the wholesale fabrication of belief that so diseases today's corporate empires, the way that governments and focus groups and gigantic corporations decide their side and then invest all energy into proving its veracity. Year after year, billion after billion, ExxonMobil so thoroughly fucked up what had once been a straightforward issue--humans have culpability in the Earth's changing climate--that a generation grew up believing the debate's origin was in science, when it actually came straight from the bank.

---What follows are some key passages I found interesting. I apologize for not expanding this review into the larger piece the book deserves.

Page 309: "Hardly anyone outside of the industry truly grasped the gargantuan scale of global energy production. Titanic changes in the patterns of energy use over decades would be required to create even modest changes in fuel consumption patterns."

Page 418: During the Khodorkovsky arrest, the Bush administration decided to go after Putin a bit, to fuck with him for embarrassing the US, and they offered this service to ExxonMobil, essentially saying that they'd help put the metal to Vladimir during a contract renegotiation he'd just called for. ExxonMobile sneered back and said "no thanks, not necessary." The implication being that the US governement doesn't scare Putin, which, in light of the last year, seems to be completely accurate.

Page 448: ExxonMobile didn't mess around with subsidized businesses, as a rule, for two reasons: because subsidies could dry up, making it costly, and because one easy way to please voters would be to figure out which subsidized businesses ExxonMobile was in and then take that business away.

Page 472: "It's hard to get used to the fact that Nigerian officials will lie to you straight up".

Page 502: One of the things that makes it hard to understand ExxonMobile's profits is because people don't really understand how big they are. One number he threw out was this: 4000 dollars a second, in taxes.

Page 548: If the US does decide to restrict the sale of Canadian tar sands oil, then ExxonMobile will just sell it to Asia. That's how oil works. The US can't do shit.

Page 615: "The public demanded protection from reckless airplane operators and pushed airline companies into compliance--crashes repelled customers."

Page 617: Every time that the end of oil gets predicted, it's been wrong. Also: Mongolia probably has 152 billion tons of coal, which is enough to run power plants in China for another 50 years. ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Tom rated it it was amazing

I read "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll a while back and learned a lot about Afghanistan. That said, I had an idea what I was in for in picking this one up, it would be through, methodical, sometimes a bit dry but you can usually follow the bouncing ball. It can be a bit tedious but if you're looking to blow through something of 350 pages and you won't remember the beginning by the time you finish go the the NYT Bestseller list of Fiction and pick a highly repetitive author. Private Empire sticks with ...more

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About Steve Coll

Steve Coll is President & CEO of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004.

He is author six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on t ...more

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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T

The Taking of Getty Oil: The Full Story of the Most Spectacular & Catastrophic Takeover of All Time

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“Fortunately for Obiang, coup-prone African governments rolling in oil but lacking in arms and intelligence to defend their bounty had a discreet alternative to the Pentagon and the C.I.A. for defense support: Israel.” — 2 likes

“The ExxonMobil forecast numbers suggested that to make an impact on oil demand, the world’s governments would have to reach a unified conclusion that climate change presented an emergency on the scale of the Second World War—a threat so profound and disruptive as to require massive national investments and taxes designed to change the global energy mix.” — 1 likes

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