Thanks all…this was a lot of fun as well as enlightening.

Seems like there should be a movie in that subject matter too!

Before we get to the end, Steve, tell us what might be next for you. I’m sure a lot of your readers are wondering what to look for down the road. If you can’t be too specific to avoid having your ideas hijacked, maybe you could give us a hint.

Ironic, isn’t it, how the government went one direction and ExxonMobil the other in an era when the two were almost partners — I’m thinking of the close relationship between Dick Cheney and Lee Raymond for instance. Would you say ExxonMobil found the Bush administration to be not as useful or helpful as it first thought it would be? Everyone assumed the oilman Bush was in the pockets of Big Oil.

Steve, I have to ask you about the very ending of your book, where you contrast the U.S. government’s massive deficit with ExxonMobil’s enormous profits. Is it fair to compare the financial situation of an organization whose primary mission is public service to one whose main responsibility is to make a profit?

I’m not sure they’ve put much money into climate research recently, but it may because the political environment has swung so much to the right they don’t need to. When they funded the Global Climate Coalition a decade or so ago, there were actually a lot of Republicans — John McCain and Mitt Romney, for instance — who accepted that climate change was real. Now almost the entire Republican Party is in climate-denial mode and have stymied action in Congress, so the oil companies don’t need to do anything but donate to GOP candidates to make their case.

those subsidies have really become a partisan issue in this country today, with Obama’s party mostly aligned to try to strip them away from Big Oil and Republicans virtually unanimous that they can’t be touched. If there was ever an election where the public can make a choice on that issue, this is it.

Is ExxonMobil still a blue chip investment in every respect? I’m asking in the context of what has happened to BP since the spill — the company’s financial performance is still behind where it was before April 2010. Is ExxonMobil — and all global corporations operating in risky environments, for that matter — always just one big mistake away from financial crisis?

Siun does hit the nail on the head in saying “As corporations replace governments as the centers of power…” Is ExxonMobil the premier example of this, or just one of the biggest among many corporate superpowers that share the same approach?

Lord Browne said he knew Exxon would drop to the bottom of the industry after the Valdez spill, and he was right at the time. Has the situation now reversed itself since the BP spill? Especially since ExxonMobil placed such enormous emphasis on safety after Valdez — it has put them at the top again at least in regard to employee safety. They haven’t killed 15 people in a refinery and 11 more on a drilling rig like BP.

There are a number of places in the book where you describe tensions and animosity between ExxonMobil and BP. How would describe the relations between the two companies?

well one thing that caught my attention in your book was that Alaska refused to allow dispersants to be used on the Exxon Valdez spill, but they were widely used in the BP spill to minimize damage to coastal areas. It didn’t prevent the beaches from being harmed, but it did make cleanup easier. Does that suggest to you that Exxon was right that dispersants should have been used in Prince William Sound?

Steve, after researching the effects of the Valdez spill on Prince William Sound, what is your assessment of the impacts of the BP spill on the Gulf of Mexico?

there are some EPA requirements for cleaner gasoline in the summer that pushes up the price, but that’s probably not as important a factor as increased demand in the summer that causes prices to rise as soon as the big driving season starts.

Read Steve’s book — ExxonMobil put a lot of money into research to try to counter evidence that climate change was occurring. And if there are more than 3 or 4 percent of actual scientists who deny climate change is occurring, we haven’t really heard from them

I’m very interested in this, too, Steve. I think you mentioned in the book that there could be a point in the near future where ExxonMobil has more revenues from natural gas than from oil, particularly with the current shale boom. Do you think that’s going to happen, that EM will be more gas than oil?

I think the Republican Party has a big responsibility for that too. Lately even some conservatives in Congress (Jeff Flake for example) are showing signs of being embarrassed that so many in the party have their heads in the sand on climate change.

Speaking of Iraq’s turmoil, I found the sections of the book about EM and the Bush administration’s conduct of the war to be fascinating. They (ExxonMobil) made out pretty well in the end, didn’t they?

Is one of the reasons Americans don’t see climate change as a crisis that the oil companies have held too much sway in the debate about it? In other words, do the climate deniers have the upper hand through Fox News, etc?

Most politicians don’t go out of their way to talk to reporters, so no, I’ve never been approached by politicians except when they need press.