I know, I know, but forget that it says Buzzfeed. Really interesting article for anyone that's been looking into ExxonMobil
How Can Trump Cozy Up To Putin? Ask Exxon
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/dinograndoni/trump-tillerson
Rex Tillerson, who President-elect Donald Trump interviewed this week for the job of secretary of state, once was merely a rising star at Exxon Mobil in the early 2000s.
Back then, Tillerson was responsible not only for managing oil well sites across the globe — at the time, Exxon operated in more than two dozen countries on every continent except Antarctica — but also for finding new spots to start pumping for the largest US oil and gas company.
Tillerson was intrigued by a nation with one of the largest untapped reserves of crude oil left the world.
“He had a particular interest in Russia because of the reserves,” Bruce Misamore, a former executive at the now-defunct Russian oil company Yukos, told BuzzFeed News. Together, Tillerson and Misamore served on the board of the US-Russia Business Council, a trade association that seeks to open up Russia for Western investment.
“He’s overseeing the entire Exxon Mobil oil and gas operations worldwide,” Misamore said. “Yet he’s on the US-Russia Business Council. That’s really how important the Russia relationship was to him.”
Bucking hard-line orthodoxy on both sides of the aisle that has sought to punish Russia for invading Crimea and other parts of Ukraine, Trump has pushed for a warmer relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Few Americans have sought that goal as much as Tillerson, who, if Trump nominates him, could be the next president’s conduit to the Kremlin. While Trump has claimed he has never met Putin, Tillerson has — many times.Cont..