Rex Tillerson

Date of Birth: 03.23.1952

Rex Wayne Tillerson (English: Rex Wayne Tillerson) - American businessman and industrial manager, CEO and chairman of the oil company ExxonMobil (2006 - 2017). U.S. Secretary of State (2017-2018).

Place of Birth, Education. Rex Wayne Tillerson was born on March 23, 1952, in Wichita Falls (Texas, USA). He grew up in Oklahoma and Texas, the main oil and gas-producing states in the USA. In 1975, he graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (during his university studies, he was a member of the fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, which admitted only Boy Scouts until 1968).

Career. He began his career at Exxon in production and rose to head the business development division in the gas department by the mid-1980s. He gradually climbed the corporate ladder, initially becoming head of the company's subdivision in Yemen in 1995 and then was appointed head of Exxon Neftegas Ltd - a joint venture between Exxon and the Russian company Neftegaz for the extraction of hydrocarbons on the shelf off the coast of Sakhalin. In 2001, he became Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil, and in 2004, he was appointed to the board of the company and, starting January 1, 2006, was the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. On December 14, 2016, the company announced Tillerson's resignation and the introduction of his successor Darren Woods effective January 1, 2017.

According to documents provided to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by anonymous sources, Tillerson became the director of the Bahama-registered Russian-American company Exxon Neftegas in 1998 (according to ExxonMobil, he left this position in 2006 when he took over the company).

In the 1990s, Tillerson played an important role as Exxon’s representative in Russia in the agreement to form an international consortium to develop the oil and gas resources of 'Sakhalin-1'. In 2007, after already leading the company, he managed to defend the company's interests in conflict with the Russian authorities and Gazprom. In 2009, he secured Exxon a $30 billion contract with Qatar for liquefied natural gas production.

In 2011, ExxonMobil signed a contract for oil production in Iraqi Kurdistan, which violated Iraqi laws and also caused outrage in Washington. That same year, Exxon reached an agreement with Rosneft that allowed the company access to oil reserves in the Russian Arctic sector in exchange for investments from the Russian company into Exxon overseas projects. This contract was frozen after sanctions were imposed in 2014, with losses for the American company estimated at about $1 billion, and Tillerson advocated for the repeal of the decisions made. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Tillerson has been personally acquainted with Rosneft's head, Igor Sechin, since the 1990s, who has been working in the St. Petersburg city council since the 1990s; the newspaper describes Sechin as the most influential man in Russia after Putin, and in 2014 he fell under personal sanctions.

Tillerson advocated for lifting the decades-old ban on U.S. crude oil exports and for removing restrictions on developing liquefied natural gas export projects. Under Tillerson's leadership, ExxonMobil reported a net income of $34 billion in 2014 and paid $80 billion in taxes. Furthermore, the company continued its cooperation with Rosneft after sanctions were imposed in 2014. Forbes magazine ranked Tillerson 25th in its list of the most powerful people in the world for 2015 (having ranked 20th in 2014).

According to the same magazine, Tillerson owns 2.6 million shares of ExxonMobil, valued at about $240 million in 2015, and the owner earned a return of $27 million.

Political Career. In 2011, he personally donated $42,800 to political campaigns, with the amount going to the campaign funds of Republican candidates at various levels, including Senator Mitch McConnell and presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In December 2016, Tillerson was mentioned as one of the possible candidates for the position of U.S. Secretary of State in Donald Trump's future cabinet. On December 6, the elected president held a personal meeting with Tillerson at Trump Tower in New York, and the business newspaper The Wall Street Journal expressed concern about the potential appointment of a person with 'ties to Putin'.

Tillerson has long been acquainted with Vladimir Putin. During a speech at the University of Texas in 2016, he stated that he has known Putin for 15 years, although some media trace their acquaintance back to the time of Boris Yeltsin. In 2011, ExxonMobil signed a contract with Rosneft for oil and gas production in the Arctic, and one condition of the deal was the ability for Rosneft to invest in the projects of the Western company. In 2012, Tillerson and Sechin signed a contract in the presence of Putin for the joint extraction of hydrocarbons in Western Siberia, after which the executive director of Exxon Mobile met with the Russian leader. In 2013, Putin awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense of the USA, John Hamre, described Tillerson as the person who communicated with Putin more than any other American citizen, except Henry Kissinger. Tillerson is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Newsweek magazine reminded that in 2006, Royal Dutch Shell was forced to sell a large part of its stake in the Sakhalin-2 project to Gazprom, and in 2008 British Petroleum sold its Russian operations after the Russian authorities did not issue a visa to the CEO, and the FSB conducted raids at the offices of the joint venture TNK-BP (these entities came under the ownership of Rosneft in 2013). William Browder cited the opinion that ExxonMobil does not face such problems.

As of February 1, 2017, he was the 69th Secretary of State of the United States.

On March 13, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and appointed CIA Director Mike Pompeo in his place.

Personal Life. Tillerson is married to Renda St. Clair, and they have four children.

He is a devout Protestant and begins all business meetings with a prayer.

03.23.2022