The UT ties

Three of the nine regents and the president of the university have considerable investments in ExxonMobil. Exxon is headquarted in Irving, Texas, and they, like many Texan corporations, are reaping the benefits of having friends with the Board of Regents and UTIMCO. As of June 2003, UTIMCO had a total of $7,526,161 invested in the ExxonMobil Corporation.

Why they're here:

Exxon is involved in a number of programs, namely in the UT business school, since they can get something out of these programs. If they increase the quality of the schooling, students are better educated, and higher skilled employees are thus produced. They also like UT due to the astounding amount UTIMCO has invested in the company. In the business school, there is a lack of ethics in the classrooms, and that is further supported by the corporations who show an interest in the school.

ExxonMobil is one of the "Energy Finance Recruiters" designated to encourage graduate business students to join them in worldwide domination. They also are one of the major oil and gas exploration, production, and distribution companies that are available in a special program offered through the business school. The UT Department of Finance offers the first and only MBA specialization in energy finance, and this means that the students have superb opportunities to find jobs in such companies like El Paso Energy, ExxonMobil, Phillips, and Texaco; energy trading firms such as Enron (once upon a time), Koch, and Williams (yes, the Longhorn Pipeline commissioners); and power companies such as Southern Company, Entergy and Reliant. ExxonMobil is also one of the corporations noted as the "Centrally Coordinated Corporations." This means they have "broad funding interests and priorities" in UT. In other words, they are putting money into the school hoping to get something out of it, such as top-notch graduate students (future employees). This is classic American business, and now it has invaded our *public* universities.

General Information

Since Exxon and Mobil merged several years ago, the Exxon-Mobil behemoth is the second largest corporation in the world. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Exxon economy is larger than all but 44 countries in the world; the company is valued at about $63 billion - or about the size of Pakistan’s economy. ExxonMobil takes advantage of politically unstable countries such as Chad, Colombia, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Angola. It is a company that has no human rights policy and has actually fought against implementing one. Due to its size, it is next to impossible to bring accountability to the corporation's unhindered global power.

Exxon has intentionally interfered with actions taken against global warming. There are numerous rural towns still affected by this monstrous company since they are used as dumping sites. The remaining uncultivated land around the world is constantly being pushed to modernization simply for profit.

Read some disturbing human rights violations for which it is responsible. Currently, Exxon is building a controversial pipeline across a sizeable piece of populated land (a la Austin's very own Longhorn Pipeline). It is 1,050 kilometers (a little more than 656 miles), spanning from the Doba oil fields in the southern region of Chad to the Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. This $3.5 billion project is getting help from the Chevron Corporation, the Petronas of Malaysia, and the World Bank, which is investing $365 million in "aid" money. The US Export-Import Bank is donating another $286 million to the cause. The Chadian government is actually pursuing local activists, journalists, elected officials, and any critic of the project and systematically harassing and detaining them. Their routine procedures of interrogation and intimidation include torture and rape. In March 1998, Chadian security forces killed more than 200 unarmed civilians in small villages in the Doba oil region. This is just one example of the continuing global struggle against Exxon.

ExxonMobil is also keen on destroying the ecosystems of the world. There are few pristine wild areas left in America, but this company has had a hand in destroying former pristine wilderness areas. The Arctic Refuge in Alaska was tainted by the $7.9 billion ExxonMobil spent on exploring and developing the area. Besides the Cameroon/Chadian pipeline, ExxonMobil is exploring options for pipelines spanning Alaska and Canada in addition to one starting in Papua New Guinea to the Australian mainland, threatening the Cape York Wilderness. Forests in each of these areas are essentially doomed.

Exxon has yet to disburse $5 billion it agreed to pay for the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Also, it has been leading the lobby against the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty which would attempt to reduce global emissions to below 1990 levels, directly addressing global warming. 55 countries around the world must ratify this in order for it to come to force. Weeks after his inauguration George W. Bush announced the US would not take part in this, declaring the protocol "dead." The other countries met once in July 2001, finalized the rules in October 2001, and the treaty is set to be ratified September 2002.

How Does ExxonMobil do it?

Since 1992, ExxonMobil has donated at least six times as much as Enron to lobbying government officials, over $41 million. In the 2000 election cycle, the company and its employees donated more than $1.22 million to Bush. They still donated to other candidates, aggregately $150,000. ExxonMobil donates money to make its political friends happy, and in return they receive help from government organizations and access to otherwise restricted lands. They give more money to lobbyists than any other competitor and came in second to campaign contributions next to Enron. In return, they have received over $5 billion in taxpayer subsidies over the last ten years. They have received money from the US Export-Import Bank and the World Bank for a total of $1.17 billion for oil field development in Western Siberia, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, from which they received $116 million for oil field development on Russia’s Sakhalin Island. They have received other forms of help from the Bush/Cheney administration such as having a National Energy Strategy drafted, which increased the US reliance on oil and the head of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change changed.

Most recently, the US has taken ExxonMobil’s side in a human rights lawsuit. The US government claimed the suit would undermine the War on Terrorism. The lawsuit contained claims that the company paid and directed Indonesian security forces to carry out acts of murder, torture, and rape to protect the companies operations in the 90’s. The International Labour Rights Fund filed this suit on behalf of 11 Indonesian villagers in the province of Aceh. This was all to keep some small-time villagers quiet, and the government is completely protecting the corporation.

In the 2000 election cycle, British Petroleum Amoco was the third largest oil and gas contributor in campaign contributions. In the wake of the Enron scandal, BP CEO John Browne historically renounced the practice of corporate campaign contributions noting, "That's why we've decided, as a global policy, that from now on we will make no political contributions from corporate funds anywhere in the world." This shows it is possible for a world to function without corporate involvement after two of the top three contributors to the Republican Party are no longer handing out any money.

ExxonMobil utilizes its absolute power to its full advantage. The second largest corporation in the world is essentially running portions of the world due to the amount of money it has in its pockets. ExxonMobil, hell-bent on global domination, is invading every corner of the earth. ExxonMobil has opposition everywhere it goes (all over the planet). The world should rid itself of this corporation; it can start with UT.