Fortune and fantasy on Africa's oil frontier
It’s that time of year, and ExxonMobil is getting a lot of attention. The company is number two on the Fortune 500 list this year, behind WalMart and ahead of Chevron.
ExxonMobil earned $19.3 billion in profits. That’s a significant decline from 2008 when ExxonMobil was at the top of Fortune’s list, but all in all, still pretty good.
Rex W. Tillerson, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, earned more than $10 million in total compensation (although he ranks “only” 129th on the Forbes Executive Pay list).
ExxonMobil spent $27 million lobbying last year, outspent only by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
And ExxonMobil’s taxes? Well, apparently that’s complicated. ExxonMobil does pay a lot of taxes, but most of the corporation’s tax spending is overseas. According to Forbes, “Naturally, the oil giants do most of their business with high-tax oil-rich regimes. Exxon has many homes for the plentiful profits left over, with 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. These (legally shelter) the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi.”
Christiane Badgley has been producing and editing documentary films for the past twenty years, with much of her work focused on the U.S. criminal justice system and post-colonial African politics and history.
