Environment
Oil giant behind Bush challenge to Kyoto
Thanks to the merger of Exxon and Mobil oil companies in 1999, ExxonMobil, trading in Britain as Esso, is now the largest corporation in the world.
ExxonMobil has close ties to US President Bush dating back to his days as a failed oil executive, and then as governor of Texas. Through campaign contributions of $1.2m to his Presidential campaign and lobbying (over $11 million in 1999), it has clearly bought influence over government.
Indeed Bush’s energy policy reads as if it were written by ExxonMobil: build a new power plant every week for the next twenty years, with heavy emphasis on drilling in the Arctic Refuge – and build more oil refineries.
ExxonMobil consistently denies any responsibility for climate change, and openly funds climate sceptics. It has spent millions on advertising to discredit Kyoto.
While some other oil companies have taken tentative steps to invest in clean energy sources, it remains the recalcitrant dinosaur of the industry.
This powerful multinational has lobbied hard to ensure Congress agrees a drilling programme in the Arctic which will have a devastating effect on the environment .
They brush off the fact that these plans are completely opposed by the indigenous people of the area, the Gwich’in who rely on the Caribou herds which breed on the coastal plain.
ExxonMobil also openly advocates free trade agreements which have meant a growing gap between rich and poor, fewer environmental and human rights restrictions. What they are particularly interested in is that such agreements provide a global mechanism to push fossil fuels on the developing world.
Debt restructuring agreements by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have forced developing countries to cut social services and open up their resources. This has allowed multinational companies like ExxonMobil to access oil and gas reserves at rock bottom prices
In the run up to the FTAA meetings in Quebec City in April, ExxonMobil ran major press advertisements supporting the FTAA
ExxonMobil also has an appalling record in many areas where it operates for complicity with repressive regimes. exploitation of indigenous peoples and destruction of the environment.
In Aceh, Indonesia, human rights groups report that ExxonMobil provided earth moving equipment that was used to dig mass graves, equipped soldiers involved in atrocities, and allowed company facilities to be used for torture and interrogation.
Its roads were used to bring victims to the mass graves. Twelve mass graves have been identified, with at least 2,000 Acehnese torture victims buried in the area.
The company has spent around $530,000 per month on security forces. Aceh has been the scene of long standing atrocities by the Indonesian military in its attempt to crush the independence movement.
Other issues in Aceh include land seizures with minimum compensation, fields flooded with liquid waste, and explosions which have destroyed villagers’ homes.
ExxonMobil is part of an international consortium of oil companies lobbying the World Bank to finance an oil and gas pipeline from Chad to Cameroon, slashing through fragile rainforest and the traditional homelands of the Baka and Bakola peoples, indigenous communities of hunter-gatherers.