Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Private Empire: Exxon-Mobil and American Power is a 2012 work of investigative journalism by American reporter Steve Coll. The book examines the business practices and culture of U.S.-based multinational oil giant Exxon-Mobil, arguing that the company is in effect a “private empire,” exercising major influence on the international stage in its pursuit of massive profits. Coll also considers the role Exxon has played in the projection of American political power internationally during the last two decades.

As the “descendant” of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Exxon has been around for a long time: Coll focuses on the way the company has changed in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. He recreates the public reaction to the spill, which was one of outrage at Exxon’s recklessness and lack of concern for the environment.

Coll mentions both positive and negative aspects of Exxon’s response. He notes that the company became nothing short of obsessed with safety. However, as he investigates this obsession, he finds that in many instances the goal of “safety” measures is less safety than squeezing more productivity from workers, by requiring more attention from them, and more precision in their work. The new “safety culture” of Exxon is a culture of greater discipline, enforcement, uniformity, and—ironically—workplace insecurity.



Alongside the Valdez disaster, Coll identifies another pivotal moment in Exxon’s recent history. In 1993, the company moved its headquarters from New York City to Irving, Texas. Coll suggests that the result was a profound change in company culture, towards a more rugged “Texan” worldview.

The central figure in this new order is CEO Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond. Having guided the company through the wake of the Valdez spill, Raymond pilots Exxon’s merger with Mobil. Despite coming from a scientific background, Raymond refuses to accept the growing scientific consensus on climate change, instead, lending his company’s considerable weight to attempts to undermine that consensus.

Raymond’s nickname refers to his hardness. Coll recounts an anecdote about a text message “Iron Ass” sent to one of his executives, who was in the hospital after a road accident: “This is your last injury as an employee of Exxon.”



From Raymond at the head, Coll follows Exxon’s tentacles all over the world, from equatorial Africa to the Middle East, Indonesia, and South America. He traces Exxon’s involvement in politics in Washington, D.C. and Moscow.

The picture he paints is of a company as large and powerful as a country. He notes that insofar as revenue is the private equivalent of gross domestic product, Exxon is one of the world’s thirty richest countries. The company runs one of Washington’s largest lobbying operations, with as many as twenty former senators and other elected representatives on the payroll.

In many of the territories where it operates, Exxon Mobil is more politically active than the diplomats of any nation-state. “Why should it be otherwise?” Coll observes. “Exxon Mobil’s investment in the Chad-Cameroon oil project would amount to $4.2 billion. Annual aid to Chad from the United States was only about $3 million.”



As well as a diplomatic establishment, Exxon maintains private armies and intelligence operations in many countries, rarely collaborating with the United States government’s forces. In Chad, Coll finds, Exxon operates a paid security force of more than 2,500 men, equipped with S.U.V.s. Exxon’s intelligence operation there is bigger and better funded than the C.I.A’s. In the Niger Delta, a crucial oil region, Exxon funds the Nigerian Navy as well as deploying its own ships. Coll finds that Exxon “recruited, paid, supplied, and managed sections of the Nigerian military and police.” Some Nigerian policemen even wear the company’s red-horse logo on their uniforms. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Exxon funds counterinsurgents whose widespread use of torture and murder lead the U.S. government to cut funding to the Indonesian government.

Coll finds abundant evidence that the American government is—or pretends to be—helpless to control the company. He reports that President George W. Bush once told the Indian prime minister, “Nobody tells these guys what to do.”

Coll profiles all of “these guys”—Exxon’s senior figures—including then-CEO Rex Tillerson, who has since served briefly as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. He notes that when Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond retired, he took a $400-million retirement package.



Domestically, Exxon has spent millions of dollars to influence the public and scientific conversation on climate change—naturally, in favor of the idea that burning oil is not a contributing factor. Coll finds that while Exxon was still attacking the idea of man-made climate change in public, the company was privately gambling that melting in the Arctic caused by climate change would make new oil reserves accessible for drilling.

Private Empire was shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. The New York Times noted that the book “assuredly does what it sets out to do: show the inner workings of one of the Western world’s most significant concentrations of unelected power.”