Word: exxon
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...keep ahead of the uncertainties brought on by supply interruptions, Exxon uses a pair of IBM 3033 computers that are constantly updated with details that show, among other things, where the entire Exxon fleet is at any moment, and toward what ports the ships are headed. Sometimes the telex traffic originated by the so-called LOGICS system takes on real drama. Recently, when LOGICS operators learned that an Exxon tanker was due to call at the Colombian port of Buenaventura, where marauders in small boats are common at night, a message was quickly dispatched to the ship's master: "Beware...
...engineers and chemists like Garvin, who have risen through the company's legendary "Texas pipeline"?from Exxon's sprawling refinery complexes of the Gulf Coast to senior management positions?the Oil Game is no longer very much fun. Hounded by the White House, harassed by consumer and environmental groups, harangued even by OPEC for profiteering, the company has become a target of opportunity for practically every cranky, disaffected group...
...position. Is his primary task to make profits for shareholders, who consist not just of the Rockefeller family (they control only about 1% of the stock) but also of union pension funds, investment trusts, and more than 600,000 everyday investors? Or is his main job, as Exxon's advertisements imply, to be a defender of the national security? As Garvin told TIME Correspondent John Tompkins, in an observation that no Exxon chief would have made as recently as five years ago: "I accept that we are in some sense 'different' and that Government is going to have an increasing...
Some other Exxon executives are less circumspect. Mused one to Tompkins: ''What we're playing is something like Monopoly, only the board has been changed around, and the dice are loaded. Every time you roll you go directly to jail, and whenever you do collect money it is in rials or yen. Worst of all, you have to play blindfolded while your opponents get to cheat and knock over the table in periodic rages...
When technical hiccups occur, the whole global system often begins to tremble and twitch. Example: just as U.S. refinery capacity was being strained by the demand for gasoline, Exxon was hit in late March by a freak fire at its Bayway Refinery in Linden, N.J. The accident has knocked out some 160,000 bbl. per day of refining production until at least June. That has kept the company switching around tankers on the high seas, sending them to other refineries in a desperate rush to make sure that every drop of crude is refined in a hurry...