Who are they?

Over 135 years ago John Rockefeller and some friends joined together to create an oil company in Ohio. And we all know how the story goes… billions and billions of dollars later Standard Oil has swollen to the oil and gas conglomerate, ExxonMobil. Going from Little Standard Oil Company, making kerosene… to big, bad ExxonMobil, ruling the world… that is a pretty good feat if I do say so myself.

Today ExxonMobil has its paws in every thing from lubricants to polymers. They have locations from Japan to Djibouti (my kids get a kick out of saying that word)

Rex Tillerson, CEO and Texas native, has been with Exxon for nearly 20 years. Mark Albers, who serves as senior VP, was also raised in Texas. How befitting is that… Two native Texans reigning over the world’s largest oil company.

In the news

Being that ExxonMobil is the emperor of oil, they are always in the news for one thing or another. Let’s see if I can condense this into one paragraph…

Cynthia Reyna is named as the 2008 winner of Exxon’s Hispanic Heritage scholarship.

The city of San Francisco is suing Exxon because supposedly they contaminated soil and water and refuse to clean it up.

The company has plans to begin producing a million barrels of oil a day off the Atlantic coast of Africa while simultaneously decreasing production in Australia.

Exxon begins to transition out of the consumer pumping station business. They are in the process of selling off 20% of its stations.

Exxon looks like they are getting their wish. They fought the payment of millions of dollars in interest payments resulting from the Alaska oil spill. The courts said they only have to pay actual damages.

Stock prices are beginning to slowly creep up again after bottoming out on Wednesday.

There is tons more going on with Exxon right now, but I’ve only got 5 minutes… but I guess this is enough for now. So I’m moving on…

The card

Exxon offers 3 personal credit cards… two gas cards and one MasterCard. Today I’m talking about their MasterCard

The basics

• Exxon’s credit card is issued by Citibank
• There are two variations… regular or platinum
• Interest rate of 10.99% (prime plus 5.99%) on the platinum and 14.99% (prime plus 10.99%) on the regular card
• 20 day grace period
• Credit lines start at $500
• No annual fee
• $39 late fee and $35 over the limit fee

The extras

• 6 months interest free for first balance transfer
• 3% rebate on Exxon and Mobil purchase
• 1% rebate on all other purchases

My take

As far as credit cards go… this one is ok. I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. The one thing that I really like about the card is the 3% rebate on Exxon gas purchases. This can give us some relief at the pump. But there are a couple of things I am not too keen on… first, the grace period is kind of short. With such a short grace period on purchases, interest will start kicking in before you even get the bill in hand. Most cards offer a 25 day grace period. Secondly, their rebate program is a use it or lose it. If the rebate is not redeemed within six months, then it expires. But overall, I suppose it’s a decent card.