Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, who is meeting
with Donald Trump on Tuesday to discuss becoming his secretary of
state, is a seasoned deal-maker whose close ties to Vladimir Putin
and other world leaders could redefine American interests
abroad.
His emergence as a candidate to be the nation's top diplomat
despite having no government experience surprised senior Exxon
officials—including Mr. Tillerson, according to people familiar
with the matter.
Friends of the 64-year-old Texas oilman, whom they describe as a
staunch conservative, said they expect he will consider the job due
to his sense of patriotic duty and because he is set to retire from
the company next year.
His appointment would introduce the potential for sticky
conflicts of interest because of his financial stake in Exxon,
which explores for oil and gas on six of the world's seven
continents and has operations in more than 50 countries. He owns
Exxon shares worth $151 million, according a recent securities
filing.
Alan Jeffers, an Exxon spokesman, said Mr. Tillerson wouldn't
comment on his candidacy.
It is unclear how Mr. Tillerson, a strong supporter of free
trade, would fit ideologically with Mr. Trump, who has spoken out
repeatedly against trade deals. Little is known of the
foreign-policy views held by Mr. Tillerson, who as secretary of
state would be expected to handle any changes to the 2015 nuclear
agreement with Iran, sanctions on Russia and disputes with China,
the subject of repeated barbs from Mr. Trump on the campaign
trail.
People familiar with the transition also place Mr. Tillerson, a
late entry in the president-elect's wide-ranging search for a
secretary of state, behind the three top contenders— Mitt Romney,
Rudy Giuliani and David Petraeus .
Friends and associates said few U.S. citizens are closer to Mr.
Putin than Mr. Tillerson, who has known Mr. Putin since he
represented Exxon's interests in Russia during the regime of Boris
Yeltsin.
"He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than
probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,"
said John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary during the
Clinton administration and president of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, a Washington think tank where Mr.
Tillerson is a board member.
In 2011, Mr. Tillerson struck a deal giving Exxon access to
prized Arctic resources in Russia as well as allowing Russia's
state oil company, OAO Rosneft, to invest in Exxon concessions all
over the world. The following year, the Kremlin bestowed the
country's Order of Friendship decoration on Mr. Tillerson.
The deal would have been transformative for Exxon. Mr. Putin at
the time called it one of the most important involving Russia and
the U.S., forecasting that the partnership could eventually spend
$500 billion. But it was subsequently blocked by sanctions on
Russia that the U.S. and its allies imposed two years ago after the
country's invasion of Crimea and conflicts with Ukraine.
Mr. Tillerson spoke against the sanctions at the company's
annual meeting in 2014. "We always encourage the people who are
making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage
of who are they really harming with sanctions," he said.
One of the first issues Mr. Tillerson would have to resolve as
secretary of state would be his holdings of Exxon shares, many of
which aren't scheduled to vest for almost a decade. The value of
those shares could go up if the sanctions on Russia were
lifted.
The shares would likely have to be sold under State Department
ethics rules, Chase Untermeyer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar,
said in an interview.
"He could not erase his strong relationship with a particular
country," Mr. Untermeyer said. "The best protection from a conflict
of interest is transparency."
Mr. Trump has also faced repeated questions about how he will
untangle himself from his real-estate empire to avoid potential
conflicts as president. He has yet to clarify what steps he would
take, saying on Twitter shortly after he was elected that he can't
have a conflict of interest as president. On Nov. 30, he tweeted he
would soon "leave his great business in total," promising to
disclose details at a Dec. 15 press conference.
Mr. Tillerson has over the years shown ideological flexibility
on certain topics when he deems it strategically important to the
companies or institutions he has led.
He helped shift Exxon's response to climate change when he took
over as CEO in 2006. He embraced a carbon tax as the best potential
policy solution and has said climate change is a global problem
that warrants action. That was a break from his predecessor, Lee
Raymond.
Still, Mr. Tillerson is a polarizing figure among Democrats and
environmental activists. They have accused Exxon of sowing doubt
about the impacts of climate change during Mr. Raymond's tenure and
say Mr. Tillerson hasn't done enough to disclose the future impact
of climate-change regulations on the company's ability to get oil
out of the ground.
"This is certainly a good way to make clear exactly who'll be
running the government in a Trump administration—just cut out the
middleman and hand it directly to the fossil-fuel industry," said
Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and founder of
350.org.
Exxon has disputed the criticism and accused activists and
Democratic attorneys general of conspiring against the company.
The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Mr. Tillerson was
born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas,
where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn
band and participated in a community service-oriented
fraternity.
He joined Exxon in 1975 and has spent his entire career at the
company.
For most of his adult life, he has also been closely involved
with the Boy Scouts of America, even occasionally incorporating the
Scout Law and Scout Oath into his speeches.
Mr. Tillerson played an instrumental role in leading the
organization to change its policy to allow gay youth to participate
in 2013, Mr. Hamre said. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates
subsequently moved to lift the organization's ban on gay adult
leaders as Boy Scouts president in 2015.
"Most of the reason that organizations fail at change is pretty
simple: People don't understand why," Mr. Tillerson said in a
speech after the 2013 decision, urging leaders to communicate about
the policy to help make it successful. "We're going to serve kids
and make the leaders of tomorrow."
Peter Nicholas, Gordon Lubold and Jim Oberman contributed to
this article.
Write to Bradley Olson at Bradley.Olson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 06, 2016 10:05 ET (15:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024