The Washington Post tells the interesting story of Trump secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson and Hugo Chavez. "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 in 2007 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.
Only Tillerson didn't get mad, at least in public. He got even.
Threatened with a weaponized state Tillerson ceded Chavez the physical ExxonMobil assets and took his company to neighboring Guyana. There it developed one of the largest oil finds in the world. Now Guyana is sitting pretty while Venezuela is in abject misery. |