Interview with LAWRENCE RAWL: Exxon Strikes Back

Q. Exxon bashing is now in vogue. While Johnson & Johnson got good press for its handling of the Tylenol scare in 1982 and Perrier won praise recently for quickly recalling its tainted spring water, Exxon is charged with “arrogance.” Are you arrogant?

A. We would have liked to recall the oil off the Prince William Sound. We called, but it didn’t hear us. Now let’s talk about that word arrogance. Last year customers boycotted us and cut up 40,000 credit cards. But, on average, those cards weren’t being used much, while many other customers had ordered more than 160,000 cards in that same time period. So the media ask, “Has this hurt you? Do you think your company will survive?” Well, certainly we will survive. Ralph Nader says, “Boycott!” and when we’re asked, we say we haven’t noticed it. Is that arrogance? Maybe I should have said that I’m wringing my hands or something. I guess I’m supposed somehow to be generating sympathy, but it’s very hard to do if you ask me a straight question and I want to give you a straight answer.

We said we would do all we could after the Alaska spill: we took responsibility, we spent over $2 billion, and we gave Alaska fishermen $200 million on no more than their showing us a fishing license and last year’s tax return. And we’re “arrogant.” That bothers the hell out of me. Maybe “big” is just arrogant. Or maybe I just get emotional and that’s arrogant. Or maybe I say things people don’t like to hear. Is that arrogance? You tell me.

Q. But Alaska was just the beginning. Next there was a refinery explosion in Louisiana. Then a 567,000 gallon spill off New York City, and most recently another spill in the same area. Isn’t there a pattern here?

A. I think, in the end, the Alaska spill was caused by compounded human failure. In Louisiana that was legitimately an act of God. We still don’t know why that pipeline broke, and it doesn’t look like corrosion. But the refinery was halfway back up in 15 days, and is now fully operational. Incidentally, there were a lot of heroes in that accident. It was a good safety response. As for Arthur Kill ((the big New York spill)), that was an act of God ripping that pipeline, but the way it was handled afterward was human error.

Q. You refuse to play the game of corporate statesman. Thus your p.r. problem began instantly when you failed to rush to the scene of the Alaska spill. Was that a big mistake?

A. We had concluded that there was simply too much for me to coordinate from New York. But let me just tell you something. There were a lot of things lying out there before the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks, from the great concern over the hole in the ozone to the greenhouse effect and acid rain. This tanker went on the rocks, and visually it was perfect for TV and not too bad for pictures of oily birds in the printed media. How would those environmentalists ever let that go? If I just went up there and said I was sorry? I went on TV and said I was sorry. I said a dozen times that we’re going to clean it up. But people keep saying that I don’t commit. I don’t know what the hell that means. What do you do when you commit? Do you hang yourself or hold a gun to your head and say, “I’m gonna squeeze it five times, and if there’s not a bullet in there I’ll be all right?”

We’re gonna take our heat, and we’re gonna clean it up, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if I showed up and made a speech in the town forum. I wasn’t going to spend the summer there; I had other things to do, obviously.

Q. The Justice Department has indicted Exxon on criminal charges, with the implication that the company willfully caused the Alaska spill. Is that unfair?

A. They almost act as if it was some conspiracy of ours to foul up that sound. In the future, corporations are going to conclude that it just doesn’t pay to take responsibility and make restitution. Instead companies will say, “Let everyone else clean it up and sue us and see if they can collect.”

Q. Captain Joseph Hazelwood feels equally cheated. Federal laws grant immunity to captains who report oil spills. Hazelwood quickly reported his, but Alaskan officials are bent on frying him anyway.

A. Sure, but my sense of his trial is that the prosecution is not doing a very good job. It’s a jury trial, and if the prosecution gets too heavy on Hazelwood, it’s gonna make the jury sympathetic. I’d never heard of the man before the accident, but I gather that when it came to being a mariner and operator, he was one of the best. At times I’ve been very, very irritated with Hazelwood, but I’ve also put myself in his shoes and said, “Jesus, the poor guy’s just taking all that damned heat up there.” It’s been tragic for him. It’s been a bitch for us too.

Q. But Exxon fired Hazelwood.

A. A lot of the public and press think we fired him because we thought he was drunk on the ship, but we never said that, and we have cautioned people not to assume it. Hazelwood was terminated because he had violated company policies, such as not being on the bridge and for having consumed alcohol within four hours of boarding the ship.

Q. Some of your critics say Exxon’s huge personnel cutbacks in the 1980s have hurt the company in terms of safety and maintenance. Are they right?

A. We haven’t reduced people at the lowest level, and our supervision of them hasn’t changed. But somewhere between the top of the house and the bottom there are employees who need more training, as well as managers who have to do a better job of evaluating people. Since the Alaska spill, we have had every affiliate worldwide go back and review their practices, but as they say in the tire business, you’ve got to look at where the rubber hits the road. What’s motivating these people on the docks and ships? Are they upset? Is there too much pressure? Maybe we’ll have industrial psychologists talk to them. We’re not rushing people when they’re moving oil. We want them to slow down. I don’t have the answer, but I’m dissatisfied with sitting tight and hoping the bad luck goes away, because if you’ve got bad luck, you’ve missed something somewhere.

Q. Why did you close down your East Coast refinery? After all, the recent spill of 5,000 gallons was cleaned up very quickly.

A. It’s sort of like taking time out in a basketball game when the point guard starts shooting air balls. We said, “Let’s just shut the damn thing down.” Fortunately, we’ve got longer than a 20-second time-out. We’re going back to square one, and we’re gonna get it right. And if we can’t operate that thing right, we won’t operate it at all. You can carry all of this further, away from Exxon, and look at the whole industry’s problems. In 1989 there were 368 spills just in New York harbor, so you might ask, “What is happening to this industry, and is Exxon just a part of it?” Well, I don’t want to be a part of that, and that’s why we’re rededicating ourselves.

Q. In 1986 FORTUNE magazine listed Exxon as one of America’s ten “most admired” companies. Do you think you can ever win back that kind of public confidence?

A. I’ve been with Exxon for 38 years, and the thing that has bothered me most is not the castigation, the difficulties or the long hours; it’s been the embarrassment. I hate to be embarrassed, and I am. Our safety practices have been excellent, and we have drilled them and drilled them into our employees over the decades. There is a lot of pride inside Exxon all over the world, and that pride is being challenged. We’ll win it back, but we’re not going to do it by debating on TV with some guy who says, “You know, you killed a number of birds.” And we say, “We’re sorry, and we’re doing all we can.” There were 30 million birds that went through the sound last summer, and only 30,000 carcasses have been recovered. Just look at how many ducks are killed in the Mississippi Delta in one hunting day in December! People have come up to me and said, “This is worse than Bhopal.” I say, “Hell, Bhopal killed more than 3,000 people and injured 200,000 others!” Then they say, “Well, if you leave the people out, it was worse than Bhopal.”

Q. There will be more calls for your ouster at next month’s annual stockholders’ meeting. Personally, how do you cope?

A. You eventually get immune to it, but sometimes I lay awake at night. Sometimes I feel I’ve been working my butt off all this past year, and I haven’t got anything done. It’s a frame of mind. I go home, my kid says to me, “Dad, what’s the matter? You look awful. Did you have a hard day?” I say, “I must have had a hard day; I’m totally exhausted.”