Tillerson, Rex W.

▪ 2009

born March 23, 1952, Wichita Falls, Texas

      ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson opened 2008 in a good position to repeat his past successes. ExxonMobil, the world's largest petroleum company, closed 2007 with earnings of $40.6 billion, ensuring its rank as the world's most profitable firm for the second year in a row. That success did not prevent prominent shareholders—including descendants of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller—from challenging Tillerson's control over the firm; they launched a proposal to split the CEO and chairman roles by naming an independent board member as chair. Central to their criticism was the oil company's reliance on traditional energy sources, especially in an age when most energy firms were directing a portion of their research funds to the development of biofuels and wind and solar energy. Tillerson brushed aside charges that the firm emphasized short-term profitability at the expense of larger concerns such as pollution, global warming, and the development of sustainable resources. In May a majority of shareholders reflected full support of Tillerson's leadership as CEO and chairman by rejecting the proposal to split the two roles.

      Having grown up in two of the country's leading oil- and gas-producing states, Oklahoma and Texas, Tillerson entered the engineering program at the University of Texas at Austin (B.A., 1975). He joined Exxon Corp. as a production engineer, and by the mid-1980s he was a business development manager in the firm's natural gas department. He later served as the general manager (1989–92) for Exxon's oil and gas production operation in a region that spanned Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Tillerson took his first overseas assignment as president of Exxon Yemen, Inc., and next oversaw (1995–99) company operations in Thailand's Khorat Plateau, the Caspian Sea, and Russia's Sakhalin Island. After Exxon merged with Mobil Corp. in 1999 to form ExxonMobil, he held a number of senior executive positions. CEO Lee Raymond personally chose Tillerson as his successor, and the new CEO assumed leadership of the combined firm in 2006.

      Tillerson's successes stemmed from a broad working knowledge of ExxonMobil's many oil and natural gas operations. His experience managing technologically and geologically challenging upstream (exploration and drilling) operations prepared him for the difficult conditions that became the norm for the oil industry in the 21st century, especially as the world's supplies of easy-to-reach crude oil diminished. Geopolitics posed another challenge, particularly in Venezuela's nationalization of oil fields (2007), which stripped ExxonMobil of its oil concessions in two Venezuelan projects. Despite the challenges, Tillerson asserted that fossil fuels represented the only resource capable of meeting growing global energy demands. Further evidence of the firm's commitment to oil production came in June 2008 when ExxonMobil revealed its plan to exit the low-profit-margin retail gasoline business. Seven weeks later Tillerson announced that ExxonMobil had broken its own record in the second quarter of 2008, with a net income of $11.68 billion; third-quarter net income was even higher, at $14.83 billion.

Sarah Forbes Orwig

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