Business Environment

The Worst Company: ExxonMobil

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ExxonMobil is one of the largest and the top richest oil and energy company in the world. Despite the performance, the company is worse due to various reasons. The company has failed to perform better in different environments. Here is an analysis about ExxonMobil and the conditions that makes it the worst company in the world.

Domestic

After the fire accidents in its Baytown Texas accident in 2021, ExxonMobil is becoming one of the companies with the worst working environments for employees to work. The incident left four employees injured. The company has limited safety standards to protect its employees and accidents nearly occurs annually from its plants and other facilities such as pipeline.

Another case in the US is the 2019 incidence in Nova Scotia where a heavy chain fell nearly hurting employees. These incidences have damaged the reputation of the company in the US and workers should be more willing to work with other oil companies than ExxonMobil (Krauss, 2021). Another challenge is the ability of the company to always get away with issues. Despite the public outcry about pollution, accidents and other concerns, ExxonMobil still has the power to continue drilling at shore and offshore. Currently, it is ranked as the company that has caused the highest levels of pollution in the United States.

Global

ExxonMobil is one of the companies that raises concerns about global warming. Besides its drilling activities, it is one of the companies with the highest number of spillage and accidents. The talk of global climate change will continue being a concern that the company should address lest it risks more lawsuits and global outcry.

Technological

ExxonMobil mobile has been accused of implementing limited safety technologies to protect the workers at its plants. The accident at Texas plant was due to the lack of hazard detection technology to keep the workers safe. The technological concerns affect the safety concerns with other plants such as the 1989 accidents at the shore oil rig (IBM, 2022). However, the company is currently implementing new measures to making the system efficient. The company presently uses super computers to deal with safety measures however these measures are not enough to deal with the pollution issues. However, the company is still lagging behind in most technological concerns. Some of these technologies are critical for reducing the level of pollution which occur due to burning of fuels and emitting some toxic gases in the atmosphere.

Political legal

ExxonMobil is one of the companies that currently has the highest number pf lawsuits in the UK and the US. The company has been sued by individuals, activities and big corporations due to its environmental malpractices (Abushanab, 2022). The company has been sued for many cases and currently has over 16 cases pending in court. Most of these cases are due to the environmental malpractices and unethical conducts. Currently there are different issues affecting the company and some of them are political related. The company has been accused of political and policy lobbying. The lobbying is in favor of policies that do not affect the company (Abushanab, 2022). The company has funded political campaigns and has been accused of lobbying politicians to ensure certain policies that affect the company such as oil exploration do not affect the company performance.

Social cultural

Exxon faces various questions about its ethical approaches to various issues. Companies have a responsivity to all the stakeholders including local communities, employees and shareholders. However, it has been accused of sidelining other stakeholders and focusing more on the shareholders. The replacement of managers in the company is an indication that safety is not a priority rather profits (Vaidhyanathan, 2020). Mangers sometimes have to cut costs and compromise n safety matters to improve the profits. Sometimes managers are slow to implement modern technologies and modern processing equipment’s because such expenses would decrease the revenues. As managers skip these safety concerns to increase profits, other stakeholders are paying the price (Vaidhyanathan, 2020). Employees working in plants are working in hazardous areas and they could become accident victims any time. Residents near ExxonMobil facilities are facing safety threats when oil spills on rivers, fire outbreaks affect the air and other issues.

The company has alsoe been accused on insufficient safety protocol and risk management measures. Many question how the company passes government inspection about safety protocols especially those related to EPA (Vaidhyanathan, 2020). There incidences where the company has been slow to respond to oil spillages taking up to more than ten days to begin cleaning despite knowing that the spillages spread affecting local area. The company has also had other issues such as bribery allegations to access oil in different areas. One of the cases is the bribery to the Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea presidents to allow oil exploration while redirecting the cash to the presidents of these regions (Vaidhyanathan, 2020). These cases have led to the negative reputation as many question the company’s willing to violate the American principles of transparency just to access oil.

Economic Environment

ExxonMobil fasces a lot of criticism based on its approach to environmental matters. First the company has a bad reputation for funding change denial. The company relies on oil drilling and burning of fossil fuel and funded climate change denial claims so as to not loos market. To date, the company is even reluctant to diversify into clean energy sectors such as wind and solar the way its competitors are doing (Denning, 2020). Instead it still funds research and publishes document to show that the world still need natural gas and crude oil to meet energy demands instead of leading the focus on how to shift to cleaner e energy for the global safety.

ExxonMobil has been in controversies about various accidents that contributed to the pollution of the environment. Some of these accidents arise from using means such as tracking to transport oil instead of relying on pipeline which is much safer. In 2020, ExxonMobil truck carrying crude oil was involved in and accident that polluted the Cuyan River. The company has alsoe had a record of explosion within its plants such as explosion in Baytown Texas plant, Torrance California 2015, Bearmount Texas 2013, Arkansas pipeline in 2013, and it sea rig in Mexico (Krauss, 2021). These accidents have affected its expenses in terms of having to hire a bigger legal team, pay more in lawsuits, pay for environmental fines, cover settlements with the injured parties. For instance, the company did not perform well in the 2020 financial year due to the lawsuits and accidents it had to handle. As things change, the future could alsoe indicate some losses since people are transitioning to cleaner energy while ExxonMobil is still on oil exploration (Krauss, 2021). This means that it lacks diversification in its economic revenue sources.

References

Abushanab, N. L. (2022, February 24). The Economic Infeasibility of ExxonMobil. The Santa Barbara Independent. https://www.independent.com/2022/02/23/the-economic-infeasibility-of-exxonmobil/

Denning, L. (2020, May 1). Exxon Mobil’s Problem Is Strategic, Not Pandemic. Yahoo. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exxon-mobils-problem-strategic-not-155449867.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAH9v9tOU9yANr6H7lR9JNL51Ry-Q2Fdqdo-CaLXCJNYPxyLl4IX-q2RpUdH6mYr8hTUbo0-bGLo8de3_pE_WCln6YwJ8lGMoUqcWJS_iTZSW1I3mBcCEaS1Jsvp81qS1796dHcAomV7JRNx1bEP4h_aFiKe2W3ovtyO4r_Zu19Mo

IBM. (2022). ExxonMobil strives to solve complex energy challenges. https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/exxonmobil/

Krauss, C. (2021, October 29). Exxon Mobil lost $22 billion in 2020, its worst performance in four decades. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/business/exxon-mobil-lost-22-billion-in-2020-its-worst-performance-in-four-decades.html

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2020, January 15). ExxonMobil Is the Most Damaging Tech Company. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/exxonmobil-most-damaging-tech-company.html