Prominent Texan Rex Tillerson, Head of ExxonMobil, Picked As Secretary Of State

AUSTIN, TX — A Texan has been tapped as the president-elect's secretary of state: Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of Irving-based ExxonMobil Corp. has been picked as the incoming administration's top diplomat, as Donald Trump made the official announcement on Tuesday.

The selection caps several days of speculation that he would be picked as secretary of state. As Patch previously reported, Tillerson had emerged as the leading candidate for the post after meeting with president-elect Donald Trump last Tuesday and this past Saturday.

Trump himself had Twitter-teased his consideration of Tillerson, even as former GOP presidential nominee was summoned to Trump Tower to interview for the job.

While many observers have expressed concerns over Tillerson's closeness to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, Trump has posited the oil executive's familiarity with the foreign leader as a positive. He again made the assertion Tuesday via Twitter after deciding on Tillerson to be secretary of state in his administration.

"The thing I like best about Rex Tillerson is that he has vast experience at dealing successfully with all types of foreign governments," Trump wrote on Twitter, without specifying Russia in particular. In an earlier Tweet, he called Tillerson one of the "truly great business leaders of the world."

Tillerson not only heads up a major Texas-based corporate behemoth at ExxonMobil — the nation's fifth-largest company based on market capitalization with $269 billion in revenues, based in the Dallas suburb of Irving — but was born and reared in Texas before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin.

Born in 1952 in Wichita Falls, Texas, Tillerson graduated from Huntsville High School in Huntsville, Texas, in 1970. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin five years later. During his time at UT Austin, he was involved in various university activities, including the Tejas Club, Longhorn Band and Alpha Phi Omega. In 2006, Tillerson was named a Distinguished Engineering Graduate by university officials.

At Exxon, Tillerson climbed the ranks in reaching the highest level of power he now enjoys after joining the company in 1975 as a production engineer. He became general manager of the central production division of Exxon USA in 1985 before being named executive vice president of ExxonMobil Development Co. after Exxon's merger with Mobil.

By 2004, Tillerson became president and director of ExxonMobil before being elected chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil in 2006. Tillerson assumed the top post after the retirement of his predecessor, Lee Raymond.

But for all the details of Tillerson's storied career at Exxon, his selection as secretary of state is sounding alarm bells in many circles. On the heels of the intelligence community confirming Russian's role in the U.S. presidential election, Tillerson's personal closeness with Vladimir Putin has come into greater focus.

The two men reportedly have close ties since Tillerson represented Exxon's interests in Russian during the premiership of Boris Yeltstin. John Hamre, the president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (for which Tillerson is a board member), has said on the record that Tillerson "has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger."

Tillerson also is a friend of Igor Sechin, leader of the Kremlin's siloviki faction, widely regarded as the second-most-powerful man in Russia after Putin. Such connections have no doubt benefited Exxon, illustrated with the ExxonMobil's signing of an agreement in 2011 to drill in the Arctic as part of a project valued at up to $300 billion. The company started to drill in the Kara Sea during the summer of 2014, only to have the project halted in September of that year followings sanctions against Russian during the Ukrainian crisis.

Tillerson's deep ties of friendship with the Russians was cemented when Putin awarded him with the Order of Friendship by Putin — the highest award the country bestows on non-citizens — in 2013.

Given such concerns, a rocky nomination process to officially confirm Tillerson is all but a certainty. Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed in the past few days the nominee will face intense scrutiny over his relationship with Russia that spans two decades. The hearings will not only spotlight ExxonMobil's business ties, but the untold billions in oil contracts that would be allowed to proceed if the U.S. lifted sanctions against Russia — sanctions about which Tillerson has been publicly skeptical.

Even Republican stalwarts such as John McCain have expressed concern about Tillerson's selection, given growing evidence that Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election by selectively delivering hacked emails from the campaign of Hillary Clinton to Wikileaks for global distribution while not acting on intercepted emails from the Trump camp.

Even the CIA now believes Russia acted to give Trump an edge in the election for which he ultimately won the Electoral College vote if not the popular one, which Clinton won by more than 2.8 million votes.

"Vladimir Putin is a thug, bully and murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying," McCain recently told Fox News. On Saturday, the senator said Tillerson's connections to Putin were "a matter of concern to me" and vowed to scrutinize the nominee closely come confirmation time by members of Congress.

While Tillerson's deep ties with Russia have come under the spotlight recently, Tillerson's front-runner status for the job of secretary of state raised some eyebrows, beyond that connection, almost immediately. First, his selection is considered unorthodox, given Tillerson's utter lack of having ever governed or having ever held any diplomatic positions.

Secondly, Tillerson was recommended to Trump as a possible pick by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, both of whom happen to be paid consultants for ExxonMobil, according to a report by Politico.

On Friday, NBC News confirmed the selection of Tillerson was imminent. The selection seemed a fait accompli given another tweet from former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday evening, confirming he was no longer under consideration for the same post.

Romney expounded on that development on his Facebook account, able to write of his not getting the job beyond the unforgiving, 140-character-count rigors of Twitter:

Tillerson and Romney were two of several Trump had considered for the top diplomatic post, although he was always considered the front runners by political observers. Also considered at some point were former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee; David H. Petraeus, the former Army general and C.I.A. director; and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor and presidential candidate in 2012.

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