In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of the power wielded by a company whose annual revenues are larger than the total economic activity in most countries. In many of the countries where it operates, ExxonMobil has a greater sway than that of the US embassy and in Washington it spends more on lobbying than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is to outsiders a black box.
Private Empire begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The narrative spans the globe, taking readers to Moscow, impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere as ExxonMobil carries out its activities against a backdrop of blackmail threats, kidnapping, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. In the US, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil's ruthless Washington lobbying offices and its corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives oversee a bizarre corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.
Private Empire is the masterful result of indefatigable reporting. Coll draws here on more than 400 interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than 1000 pages of previously classified U.S. documents; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. Private Empire is the chilling, definitive portrait of ExxonMobil.
- ISBN13 9781846146688
- Publish Date 1 July 2012 (first published 1 May 2012)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Allen Lane
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 540
- Language English