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Rex Tillerson got burned in Venezuela. Then he got revenge.

B

Bodhisattva

Hall of Fame
Aug 22, 2001
21,601
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Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
I find this to be awesome on many levels.

Rex Tillerson hadn't been CEO of ExxonMobil very long when the late president Hugo Chavez made foreign oil companies in Venezuela an offer they couldn't refuse. Give the government a bigger cut, or else.

Most of the companies took the deal. Tillerson refused.

Chavez responded by nationalizing ExxonMobil's considerable assets in the country, which the company valued at $10 billion. The losses were a big blow to Tillerson, who reportedly took the seizure as a personal affront.

.....

Flash forward to May 2015. Just five days after former military general David Granger was elected president of the South American nation of Guyana, unseating the country’s long-ruling leftist party, ExxonMobil made a big announcement.

In the deep blue waters 120 miles off Guyana’s coast, the company scored a major oil discovery: as much as 1.4 billion barrels of high-quality crude. Tillerson told company shareholders the well, Liza-1, was the largest oil find anywhere in the world that year.

.....

There was just one problem with this undersea bonanza. Venezuela claimed the waters — and the hydrocarbons beneath them — as its own.

Clearly drilling in the disputed area was potentially a good business decision for ExxonMobil, not some sort of elaborate revenge scheme by its CEO.

But revenge had been served. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's successor, was livid.

.....

At current oil prices, the Liza deposits could be worth $70 billion, more than 30 times the size of Guyana's annual GDP.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...a-then-he-got-revenge/?utm_term=.d82fbeb2559d
 
D

day-day

Hall of Fame
Jan 2, 2005
10,041
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Where do I sign up to become a citizen of Guyana to get my annual government stipend from taxes on oil?

I'm embarrassed to say that I was not aware of the land dispute between Venezuela and Guyana.
 
Tide1986

Tide1986

Suspended
Nov 22, 2008
15,670
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Birmingham, AL
As a follow-up, here's a good summary of why Tillerson is well-qualified to be SoS:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...erson_confirm_a_personal_diplomat_132836.html

Diplomacy is personal. Thomas Jefferson used relationships he developed as ambassador to France to secure America’s greatest bargain, the Louisiana Purchase. Drawing on decades of personal connections, Secretary Dean Acheson successfully negotiated the formation of NATO, and the establishment of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund following World War II.

Last week, Senators harshly criticized Rex Tillerson for the very ties and experiences with foreign leaders that, in fact, give him unusually strong credentials as Secretary of State. A further irony is that the criticism was levelled by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The name says it. Relationships count, and Tillerson, as the CEO of the world’s largest private energy company, with operations around the world, has developed those relationships.
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