And the executives won’t be hundreds of miles away from employees anymore-now they’ll just be two floors up, in the same campus spanning hundreds of acres. The new digs aren’t by any means something to scoff at, though a few changes are being made the Journal notes that there will be no designated chef, but the private elevators will remain. If one was to try to reproduce the palace, it would likely cost $1,000 per square foot, Doug Agarwal, founder and president of Texas-based real-estate firm CCI, tells the Journal, making the entire largely empty grounds likely worth around $20 million. Exxon decked out its home of a quarter century with French limestone and staircases imported from Africa, peppering the inside with paintings and sculptures. “Closer collaboration and the new streamlined business model will enable the company to grow shareholder value and position ExxonMobil for success through the energy transition,” chief executive officer Darren Woods said in a statement to Bloomberg last year.īut what a pod they are leaving behind. A representative from Exxon told Fortune they had nothing to add to the story. The Houston campus, technically located in Spring, Texas, was opened back in 2014 by former CEO Rex Tillerson, holder of the “Order of Friendship” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and then, briefly, secretary of state in the Trump White House. Perhaps the God Pod’s aesthetic of decadence looks a bit old-fashioned, or even tacky, in an age of inflation and green transition, although the transition to Houston has been in the works for many years.
As previously reported in Columbia Journalism professor Steve Coll’s business classic Private Empire and, more recently, the Wall Street Journal, the God pod is roughly 20,000 square feet and only accessible to a small handful ofthe very top executives (and their assistants), along with an assortment of private chefs and many fine sculptures and paintings.ĭespite raking in record profits in 2022, people familiar with the matter told the Journal that the new office is in line with recent promises to adopt a leaner focus on spending and the new pod promises to be more economical, if maybe only slightly.
The God pod is the fittingly excessive name for the excessive executive suites at Exxon. In its impending move to Houston, Exxon is going a bit less ham on its heavenly treatment of higher-ups. It slimmed down to just three business lines: upstream, product solutions, and low-carbon efforts. The company said at the time that this would save $6 billion by 2023, funding 40% of its dividend payouts. The move away from the God Pod was first disclosed back in January 2022, when Exxon announced it would be moving from Dallas to Houston in a drive to cut costs and streamline departments.
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