It was a moment of triumph for the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil. Almost a decade into the job, Rex Tillerson learned in September 2014 that the costliest well in the company's history had struck oil a mile beneath the icy seas off the Siberian coast. It was what the industry likes to call an ele-phant-as much as a billion barrels, then worth about $97 billion. Exxon's Russian partner, Rosneft, estimated the ocean floor around the $700 million well could hold more crude than the entire Gulf of Mexico. Tillerson had bet big on Russia, and it looked like he'd finally silence concerns that Exxon's crude output had plummeted for most of his tenure.
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