From Alaska to Iraq: Exxon Mobil’s Global Reach

by Karen Button

March 24 marked the 17th anniversary of the US’s largest and most devastating oil spill in US history. In 1989 Exxon’s tanker Valdez ran aground in remote Alaska, dumping millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound’s pristine waters, coating 1,600 miles of its coastline. The Sound’s wildlife and Cordova’s (the small fishing town hardest-hit) economy are still in recovery nearly two decades later. Exxon’s legacy of devastation lives on in Alaska.

When the company originally self-reported a loss of 10.8 million gallons from its cargo of 53 million, the number was widely accepted, and is still widely used today to describe the spill. However, a report finally released five years post-spill by the State of Alaska estimated 30-38 million gallons were actually spilled.

Exxon denies this claim, as it also denies responsibility for lingering illnesses that hundreds of former workers are now suffering. Nicknamed the “Valdez Crud,” over 6,700 workers sought care for various respiratory illnesses at Exxon-run health clinics during clean-up operations. Federal health investigators visited the clean-up sites three times during the summer of 1989, yet Exxon refused to turn over any health records to officials. In the ensuing lawsuits, Exxon has settled most cases out-of-court, requiring all records sealed and preventing access to any information about the causes of illness.

The oil giant also reneged on their promises to pay for all damages wreaked by the spill. Ordered in 1994 to pay $5 billion in punitive damages (based on their profits in 1989) to the thousands of families whose livelihoods were ruined, Exxon instead filed numerous appeals, the latest of which was this past January. This was the same month the mega-corporation reported the largest annual profit ever earned by a US corporation--$36 billion dollars. Further, Exxon acted deplorably behind the scenes, offering seven Seattle-based seafood operators a 15 percent cut of the $5 billion if they would settle out of court. Even the courts registered their disgust with Exxon’s behaviour, when US District Judge Holland accused them of acting “as a Jekyll and Hyde, behaving laudably in public, and deplorably in private.”

In February both DemocracyNow! and The Miami Herald reported that Exxon Mobile earns a massive $5 million an hour. The oil giant could pay its twelve-year-old debt to Alaskans with just five days of its revenue, instead, it accrues upwards of one million in interest for each year it delays.

Exxon Mobil has one of the most deplorable environmental and public relations records of major oil companies. Yet, it is also one of four multi-national companies most likely to profit hugely in Iraq.

Though the contracts have yet to be signed, behind-the-scenes agreements have all but guaranteed privitisation of nearly 80 percent of Iraq’s oil fields. In Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth, industry analyst Gregg Muttitt writes, “At an oil price of $40 per barrel, Iraq stands to lose between $74 billion and $194 billion over the lifetime of the proposed contracts.” According to James Paul of the Global Policy Forum, “Shell, BP, Exxon, [and] Chevron would get the lion’s share.” In an earlier interview he pointed out, as an example, if Exxon were to gain control of Iraq’s best known super-giant field, al-Majnoon, it would double the company’s reserves in one stroke. “If you figure oil at $50 a barrel and multiply it out,” Paul explained, “it’s a total profit spread of $1 trillion. That’s more than all companies put together since John D. Rockefeller.”

Now, consumer and advocacy groups are taking on the world’s largest privately-owned oil conglomerate through boycotts.

The 15-member environmental and public interest advocacy group www.exxposeexxon.com hosts a website detailing Exxon Mobil's not-so-honorable activities, which include paying for scientific reports downplaying the threat of global warming. The group, which launched their boycott last July, represents hundreds of thousands of members and includes groups like USPIRG, MoveOn.org, and Greenpeace, which has labeled Exxon Mobil “No. 1 Climate Criminal.” In a related story, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that an IRS audit of Greenpeace was prompted by a little-known watchdog group that challenged Greenpeace's tax-exempt status. “Two and a half years ago, Public Interest Watch… wrote to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to audit Greenpeace and accusing the environmental group of money laundering and other crimes.” Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, “tax records show more than 95 percent of the funding of Public Interest Watch was provided by the oil giant Exxon Mobil.”

Last December www.consumersforpeace.org also kicked off a consumer boycott, for reasons related to the war in Iraq. A coalition of organisations that include After Downing Street, Gold Star Families for Peace, the Traprock Peace Center, International Socialist Review, and Progressive Democrats of America, the group said Exxon Mobil was “selected for boycott because of its apparent active involvement in U.S. policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular.”

Besides calling for “an immediate withdrawal of US troops and
mercenaries from Iraq and prosecution of US officials responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the group is also joining the call for a “buy-cott” of Citgo gas.

Headquartered in the Houston, Texas, Citgo was purchased in 1990 by the PDVSA, a subsidiary of the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. With some 4,000 employees, it is one of the US’s largest refineries. That may be crime enough in the eyes of the Republican Congressman from Texas, “Big Oil” Joe Barton, who has initiated an investigation into Citgo. But what’s aggravated Mr. Barton most, it seems, is that the Venezuelan-owned company actually lowered its prices for oil last year, rather than raise them. Not only did Citgo supply 25 million gallons of discounted heating oil to low-income homes across the Northeast, it also gave free supplies to homeless shelters and to four Maine Tribes. These are the “crimes” being investigated.

Yet, the program was initiated in part at the request of a dozen US senators. Ten major oil companies were asked late last year to help low-income families pay their heating bills from record oil profits. Citgo was the only company to respond. The nationalized oil company also committed $1 million in aid to survivors of Hurricane Katrina, while others have been accused of padding their pockets at the expense of those in need.

While the violence that now defines Iraq grabs headlines, the quiet bargaining between privitisation and nationalisation of Iraq’s oil is taking place behind closed doors. Ask any Alaskan who lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill and they will tell you Exxon is no longer welcome. Windfall profits rule the game in privatised industry. Yet, most northeasterners who’ve benefited from the shared nationalism of Venezuela’s Citgo corporation would have a different story to tell.

At least for now in the US, there is a choice at the pump.

For more information about where to find a Citgo station, go to http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp