"At least three big American oil companies—Hess, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon—were major financial contributors to the Fulbright Program in Malaysia."
"When Carina Spiro first decided to apply to the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in 2016 as a senior in college, a particular phrase caught her eye. “In the description of Malaysia, the program said applicants must have ‘a sense of adventure,’” she said. “I thought, that’s me, sign me up.”
The renowned cultural exchange program operates out of an arm of the U.S. State Department to send groups of American young people and scholars abroad each year. Spiro applied to the English teaching component and was accepted to the 2018 Malaysia Fulbright year. She did not realize that her adventure in Malaysia would be connected with the oil and gas industry.
Spiro was assigned to work at a rural school in Sabah, a state on the northern part of the island of Borneo. One day, she and her fellow English teaching assistants—ETAs, in Fulbright-speak—were invited to what she called a “corporate luncheon” in the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Their lunch date was held in an office in the city’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers, which are named after Malaysia’s national oil and gas company. There, over a meal with executives from ConocoPhillips, the ETAs learned that it wasn’t the U.S. or Malaysian governments that would be paying for their year abroad. Rather, ConocoPhillips was picking up the whole tab for ETAs in Sabah—and, the ETAs learned, the oil and gas company was making even more money available for extra learning camps, special programming, and other activities for students. (A spokesperson from ConocoPhillips confirmed in an email that ETAs “have been invited to our office premises in our efforts to get to know them, and during the visit we present to them an overview on ConocoPhillips business and our community program here in Malaysia.”)"
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