so you're exxon mobil in the 90s you're one of the biggest oil companies in the world and because of that you have a lot of global influence the only problem is you're an american company and as a multinational corporation your business practices don't always align with the us's foreign policy sometimes america's dictator of the month happens to be someone you're doing business with or the world family who just signed their country's oil away turns out to be america's next target to liberate that kind of thing having us politics interfere with your business model is a pesky inconvenience your solution to become one of the most powerful organizations on earth comparable to an actual government or sovereign nation we'll increase our ability to participate in more of the new opportunities in the global oil and chemical business by doing that you have your own foreign policy your own climate policy and even a pseudo embassy where world leaders can meet to help you take over the global oil supply it's gone so far that exxon mobil is one of the most important geopolitical influences in the world quote able to determine american foreign policy and the fate of entire nations end quote exxon mobil is what we call a private empire it's a story of how a single company can rise up to challenge entire nation states and this private empire all started with one of history's greatest businessmen john d rockefeller [Music] i'm worried about future oil supplies what's exxon doing to help we've already invested three billion dollars in alaska and in the years ahead we'll invest billions more up here to supply the rest of the us with oil and gas and we're exploring north of alaska in the arctic ocean where we will need to build man-made islands to hold our drilling rigs it will clearly take more than one company's efforts to solve our energy problems but exxon is helping to solve some of them because energy is our business oh sorry you look under the hood i'll take care of this most service stations are just service stations but a standard oil station is something else [Music] john d rockefeller created the standard oil company in 1870 it was the start of america's oil rush and rockefeller wanted as much control of the market as possible unfortunately the government deemed there is such a thing as too much control and 40 years later standard oil is declared a monopoly and is split into 34 smaller companies luckily for rockefeller he has shares in almost every single one of those 34 businesses so he eventually made even more money than he would have if standard oil survived two descendants of standard oil were exxon and mobile exxon was the most direct descendant of standard oil and mobile was exxon's biggest competitor they had a fierce competition going for decades until in 1998 the two companies decided to merge these synergy benefits come as a result of the merger the idea was to recreate their glory days as an almost monopoly on us oil by reuniting the two biggest companies stemming from standard oil exxonmobil became one of the biggest corporations in the world by both revenue and market cap there was nowhere to go but up except for one small detail oil supply for years only the elite like exxon have been able to invest in the best asset classes while us smaller investors have been left in the dust and one of those exclusive asset classes is fine arts while according to our price blue chip our prices have outpaced the s p 500 by 168 from 1995 to 2021. the problem is this asset class has been traditionally controlled by the rich for the rich by the mere fact that they're the only ones who have a few million dollars to drop on a single piece of arts but not anymore because that's where masterworks comes in with masterworks average everyday people like you can finally tap into this lucrative art market by owning a fraction of a great piece of arts here's how it works their research team selects the artists that have the most momentum using their proprietary data they then purchase a great piece of art at a fair price they securitize the artwork through the sec so that anyone can invest in it and that's where you come in you can invest in a fraction of that artwork so you have fractional ownership in it masterworks then holds it for three to ten years before selling the painting and boom you receive your cut of the sale after their fees or you can even sell your shares of the artwork on what's called the secondary market if you don't want to wait that long what's great is that masterworks has a great track record with historical performance of 15 net of fee since their inception so what are you waiting for get in on this exclusive asset class by going to masterworks. rtran right now the link is on the screen and in the video description below it's free to get started and unlike actual art galleries it's free to look again that's masterworks.
art slash j trim with the link below thanks to masterworks for sponsoring this video but for america they are more ominous they tell the arabs that their oil weapon is wounding america the country that supports and supplies their enemy israel they tell the government that america is vulnerable and that her supplies of energy are not inexhaustible after the 1973 oil crisis there was a massive oil shortage in the us for years exxon had very good ties to the middle east in 1953 you even supplied the ruler of oman with money so that he could raise an army that led to a 5 year war in oman basically exxon did what the us government usually does funding dictators which usually led to wars in exchange you got a massive oil concession which shows just how profitable doing business with dictators can be unfortunately by the late 90s these favors had pretty much dried up the oil embargo had ruined relations between u. s oil companies and the middle east so you needed a new stable oil supply fast one tactic was to try to persuade oil countries that you could deliver massive amounts of cash in exchange to rights to extract oil unfortunately countries like china and russia were looking to do the same thing except they could offer a lot more favors in return loans weapons sales and geopolitical favors you just couldn't compete by the 90s you ranked 14 on the list of the biggest oil companies right underneath corporations like armaco and saudi arabia and gazprom in russia exxon merges with mobile to form exxon mobil in 1998 and when the early 2000s came around you were desperate to get to the top so you made a plan you would take advantage of the power vacuum and instability during the iraq war by moving your operations into iraq together with companies like bp and the world dutch shell exxon mobil increased oil production facilities and finally some more oil came flowing into the company whether or not the iraqi people benefited from it was irrelevant until the power vacuum was filled and the country was stable you would be milking it for all it's worth exxon mobil was finally moving up the ladder again and what they came new opportunities to implement your unique foreign policy around the world we're exxon we're bob vesper who helped find oil 40 miles off the louisiana coast we're jerome degree who's producing the oil from that find we're tom witt who helps move the oil ashore we're jan warman who refines it into gasoline we're bob danaher who sees that the gasoline gets to you we're more than 100 000 people working on energy we're exxon us politics often got in the way of your goals outside the us but what if you could disregard them to do so you would either have to be great at lobbying or influencing the white house or you would need a man on the inside over the next 20 plus years you would have both and it started with the election of george bush in 2001 president bush came from an oil loving family him and dick cheney his vice president were pretty much big oil's dream team while he was campaigning bush got 1. 5 million dollars in donation from the oil industry at the same time it was the biggest ever donation to a single candidate and when he was inaugurated well it was time to return the favor exile mobile has so much influence with the white house it was common knowledge that quotes when the corporation's washington representatives needed a meeting they almost always got one end quote unlike other companies you chose to avoid asking for specific favors instead you used the white house as a source of information what the people on the hill didn't realize was that the info you were gathering would help you set up your own little oil empire with their own foreign policy just like any other sovereign states one of the first independent political decisions exxon mobil made was going up against hugo chavez and venezuela exxon mobil and venezuela had a long history but when hugo chavez became president he suddenly wanted to nationalize oil this meant that he wanted to take the oil industry away from private companies like exxon mobil and have the government run it obviously losing your operation to the venezuelan government was a nightmare so instead of caving you took it to the world bank in the end the world bank sided with you and so did the us you got to claim over 16 billion dollars from venezuela over the years even while venezuela became one of the poorest countries in the world even after the economic crisis started you still gunned for more money asking for another 1.
6 billion in 2014. today the average income in venezuela is around 53 dollars [Music] in chad you took a more gentle approach at its weakest and most vulnerable moments you came like a knight in shiny armor offering economic freedom and development in exchange for oil oil wasn't going to help the country build its healthcare or education system they needed money and money was something you would happily give in exchange for their natural resources at first it seemed like a fair trade but exxon mobil snuck something into the contract right underneath their noses article 34 of the contract states that no matter what no matter the law or the government's opinion no one could change the agreement without exxon mobil's permission not even future governments of chad you had gotten them right where you wanted them and until today exxon mobil still operates in chad one of the poorest countries in the world and all that development and infrastructure you promised while most people in chat still don't have access to a steady food or water supply and decent housing and medicine is almost non-existent with only one doctor per 38 000 people just like u. s foreign policy you have made it a habit of promising unbelievable growth and development and once you got what you wanted all of that was thrown out the window so far your deals were other countries were borderline unethical sure you have made some shady moves but most of it could be excused by the cutthroat nature of the business that was until you got involved in the conflict in indonesia between 1976 and 2005 a group of rebels fought against the indonesian army to make the province of atte independence around the same time mobile was operating in the arun gas fields in the region when the conflict broke out mobile and then exxon mobil hired military units from the indonesian army to keep their facilities in operation safe yes the company mobile then exxon mobil had its own private army you claimed it was all in the name of keeping your employees away from danger but conveniently omitted the fact that those same military units were committing horrible human rights violations against the local people every violation in the book was committed by these military units who often use the money you paid them to get more weapons and recruits the company's excuse you never knew you were just trying to keep your business going in 2001 11 villagers sued exxon mobil for being complicit in the human rights abuses in 2015 you sold your operations enacted to another company and in 2017 litigation was still ongoing [Music] around this point in time you realize that you needed some serious influence in the white house to keep you out of trouble so when donald trump became president and chose rex tillerson as secretary of state your luck couldn't be better tillerson joined exxon in 1975 and stayed all the way through the merger to become chairman and ceo of the company in 2006.
