Word: exxon
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...most powerful petitioner was Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas. Gabler and her husband Mel, a retired clerk for Exxon, have spent some 20 years scrutinizing text books for political bias, moral lapses and erosion of traditional values. The Gablers have regularly influenced the Texas board of education to drop texts that they consider too liberal, and in doing so have won the public admiration of such New Right leaders as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly. But at this year's hearings, a new organization took on the Gablers: People for the American Way, a group founded...
...Exxon unveiled a new electronic device called the "alternating-current synthesizer" that the company claimed could save energy by making electric motors more efficient. To help in developing and marketing the product, Exxon bought Reliance Electric Corp. of Cleveland for $1.2 billion, which was roughly twice as much as many industry analysts thought the firm was worth. Exxon has since discovered that its synthesizer is too expensive to be practical, and Reliance last year earned a mere $31 million for its new parent...
...Exxon's stumbling in nonoil fields may stem in part from the inbred nature of its management. Many of the top executives, including Chairman Clifton Garvin Jr., 60, are engineers who have spent their entire careers at Exxon. Wall Street analysts have begun to wonder if these lifetime oilmen have the versatility to venture out of the petroleum industry...
Sensitive to such criticism, Garvin is now pursuing a back-to-basics strategy. Said he at May's annual meeting: "We are emphasizing established business lines of demonstrated profitability." Despite ambitious efforts to find new oil, however, Exxon's results have been mixed. Since 1978 its oil reserves have dwindled 13%, to 7 bil lion bbl. In the meantime, costly drilling in the Baltimore Canyon and in the Destin Dome region of the Gulf of Mexico has turned up a discouraging number of dry holes. Wall Street stock analysts think that other oil companies may have greater growth...
These multiplying miseries have darkened what Exxon had hoped would be a bright centennial year. It was in 1882 that John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Exxon's corporate ancestor. Since then, Rockefeller's creation has grown bigger and richer than the founder could ever have imagined. Exxon's leaders will need skill and lots of luck to match their corporation's first-century achievements in its second 100 years. -By Charles Alexander. Reported by Frederick Ungeheuer/New York