Giant that can pour oil on troubled water

The Life: A new book by Steve Coll paints a balanced picture of ExxonMobil, a corporation that courts controversy wherever it goes - as much from its vast profits as its efforts to undermine the scientific research behind climate change.

Review: Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

With roots in the Emirates stretching back to 1939, ExxonMobil has been tied up for decades in the development of Abu Dhabi's oil wealth.

But in its US heartland, the company's reputation is more tarred than a bitumenised seagull.

A new book by Steve Coll paints a balanced picture of a corporation that courts controversy wherever it goes - as much from its vast profits as its efforts to undermine the scientific research behind climate change.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, charts in detail the trail the corporation has left in its scramble across Africa, the Middle East and Asia in search of new reserves of crude - and which, as the title suggests, has the global clout of a leading economic power in its own right.

The book's intent is to fathom the incentives that led ExxonMobil across Aceh in Indonesia, Equatorial Guinea, Venezuela, Chad and Russia as it scouted out new sources of oil and gas.

Every quarter, ExxonMobil would double its efforts to replace the oil reserves being pumped out of the ground to satisfy analysts on Wall Street.

Throughout, Exxon Mobil comes across as thoroughly indifferent to domestic US interests, bending the state department to its will and calling up former vice president Dick Cheney for favours.

In the countries where the corporation does business outside of its native US, Mr Coll charts how ExxonMobil has been reluctantly drawn into local conflicts in an effort to keep the oil flowing.

The company is at its most blunt under the tenure of Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, the droopy-jowled chief executive with a painting of a tiger behind his desk at ExxonMobil's Irving, Texas headquarters, known internally as the "Death Star".

Rex Tillerson, the current incumbent and an Eagle Scout who played drums in the University of Texas marching band, is a rather different character, eventually publicly acknowledging the science behind climate change and even coming out in support of a US carbon tax.

Mr Coll has assembled a detailed picture of the inner workings of America's biggest company as it sought to influence government officials, politicians and public opinion - right down to its unswerving reliance on PowerPoint slides.