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.
Lynn says:
"For top-notch investigative reporting about the petroleum industry,you're not likely to do better than to pick up Private Empire by Steve Coll. A New Yorker staff writer and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, Coll's latest book provides a timely window into the petroleum industry's cast of characters and a context often worthy of an action/intrigue thriller. Starting with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and ending with the BP Macondo spill in April 2010, Coll reveals a corporate culture that has proven more powerful in many respects than the presidencies that have come and gone during its tenure as what truly can best be described as a 'private empire'.
This in-depth saga follows, via fascinating material gleaned via hundreds of interviews and previously classified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the fateful decisions that have led to a perfect storm-like escalation of challenges to the fossil-fueled world we live in and that the high-stakes players like Exxon/Mobil profoundly influence. These challenges include volatile geopolitical relationships not only in the Middle East or Venezuela, but with formidably unpredictable human beings in numerous countries like Equatorial Guinea and Russia... as well as wrestling with the maintenance of share prices despite the precarious vagaries in 'unconventional gas' development, mounting lawsuits, rampant corruption and violence worldwide connected with dwindling resources, the expense of lobbyists battling regulations, industry PR/media damage control and, of course, the environmental costs/limits of energy replacement to keep up with worldwide demands with an economic neoliberal mindset bent on growth. The story in some ways is an antidote to the quick sound-bites that so often gloss over or entirely ignore the ramifications of our oil dependency and can't help but continue to inform one's perspective long after the final page."
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.
Lynn says:
"For top-notch investigative reporting about the petroleum industry,you're not likely to do better than to pick up Private Empire by Steve Coll. A New Yorker staff writer and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, Coll's latest book provides a timely window into the petroleum industry's cast of characters and a context often worthy of an action/intrigue thriller. Starting with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and ending with the BP Macondo spill in April 2010, Coll reveals a corporate culture that has proven more powerful in many respects than the presidencies that have come and gone during its tenure as what truly can best be described as a 'private empire'.
This in-depth saga follows, via fascinating material gleaned via hundreds of interviews and previously classified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the fateful decisions that have led to a perfect storm-like escalation of challenges to the fossil-fueled world we live in and that the high-stakes players like Exxon/Mobil profoundly influence. These challenges include volatile geopolitical relationships not only in the Middle East or Venezuela, but with formidably unpredictable human beings in numerous countries like Equatorial Guinea and Russia... as well as wrestling with the maintenance of share prices despite the precarious vagaries in 'unconventional gas' development, mounting lawsuits, rampant corruption and violence worldwide connected with dwindling resources, the expense of lobbyists battling regulations, industry PR/media damage control and, of course, the environmental costs/limits of energy replacement to keep up with worldwide demands with an economic neoliberal mindset bent on growth. The story in some ways is an antidote to the quick sound-bites that so often gloss over or entirely ignore the ramifications of our oil dependency and can't help but continue to inform one's perspective long after the final page."
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