Journalist Steve Coll looks at ExxonMobil’s private empire and American power

Hour 2

According to our guest, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist STEVE COLL, ExxonMobil makes over $450 billion a year, the size of Norway’s GDP and about 3 percent of the U.S. GDP, positioning it as the largest company in the world, just ahead of Apple. The publicly traded ExxonMobil’s work in gas and oil exploration, production, supply, and transportation is based in Texas, and its headquarters are commonly called the “Death Star,” characterizing its closed business practices. The company’s strong communication campaigns pivoted on climate change science after 2006, and ExxonMobil is now developing its sustainable corporate citizenship profile to meet the much of the world’s changing views on carbon-based fuel. Coll’s book on the company is called “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.” Coll will discuss ExxonMobil’s lobbying of and withholding information from Congress; its long-term entanglements in small countries, many in Africa; and how the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico was partially caused by ExxonMobil’s influence in inconsistent, loose federal oversight.

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[audio: 052212_110630.mp3]