The news, reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, that Rex Tillerson — the CEO of the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company — was involved in an anti-fracking lawsuit because the drilling was happening where he lives was rightly met with cries of outrage and incredulity.
But as a former Big Oil executive himself, Louis W. Allstadt is in a better place than many to call Tillerson out on his hypocrisy.
Up until his retirement in 2000, Allstadt was the executive vice president of Mobil oil, back before it merged with Exxon. Over 31 years spent with the company, he ran its marketing and refining in Japan and managed its worldwide supply, trading and transportation operations.
Since then, however, he’s become a vocal opponent of fracking in New York state and, more recently, a crusader in the fight to mitigate climate change. “Over the past couple of years, I think it’s become more and more obvious that you might be able to stop someone from drilling in your town,” Allstadt told Salon, “but the impacts are going to get everybody. It doesn’t matter where you live.”