Will Trump's Pick As Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson Lift Russian Sanctions To Avoid Clash Of Interests?

Almost each of U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump's pick for his incoming administration has created controversies but perhaps the biggest of them all has been his choosing Rex Tillerson as the secretary of state earlier this week.

The choice of Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, has caused almost every quarter of American politics, including Trump's own Republican Party, uneasy and there is every possibility of a confrontation between the president-elect and the Republican senators over this.

Ever since Tillerson's name surfaced as the candidate for the top position, frontline Republican leaders expressed reservations because of the former's long-time links with Russia. Especially after the American intelligence agencies concluded that the Kremlin tried to influence the election to choose President Barack Obama's successor this year, Tillerson's ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin has come under the scanner even more.

One serious concern about Tillerson is that Exxon, the world's largest oil company, has a massive monetary stake in one of Washington's prime foreign policy decisions and that is - whether to maintain sanctions on Russia with which the U.S. is not having great terms of late, according to a Vox article.

It said Exxon has been eyeing Russia's huge oil and gas deposits and between 2011 and 2013, it signed a number of deals with Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil giant to drill for oil in the Arctic, one of the biggest fossil fuel resources still left untapped, besides other oil exploration activities.

But Exxon's Arctic plan came to a halt in 2014 when the Obama Administration put sanctions on Russia's oil industry over the Kremlin's intrusion in Ukraine. Tillerson then had expressed reservations over the sanctions saying they didn't find them effective "unless they are very well implemented comprehensively".

According to Vox, Tillerson could soon see himself influencing the sanctions and doing so would help Exxon.