Having weathered the pandemic’s demand slump, ExxonMobil is increasing oil production in the Permian Basin and expanding its operations in Guyana, Mozambique, China, Australia, The Netherlands and Indonesia. That’s according to Chairman-CEO Darren Woods of Irving, who said in the company’s second quarter call report that the Basin remains a big part of its plans.
“We continued to invest in our portfolio and grew our year-to-date production in the Permian by about 130,000 oil equivalent barrels per day versus the first half of 2021,” Woods said. “For the full year in the Permian, we expect to achieve 25 percent production growth for the second consecutive year.
“As demand has continued to recover, so has production from our industry-leading refining circuit. We increased throughput by 180,000 barrels per day in the first half of 2022 versus the first half of 2021.”
The executive reported that ExxonMobil’s off-shore Liza Phase 1 and 2 projects at Guyana are pumping 340,000 barrels per day while it has been awarded an interest in the expansion of Qatar’s North Field East, “further leveraging our experience as a global leader in liquefied natural gas and giving us the opportunity to help grow Qatar’s LNG capacity by 30 million tons per annum by 2026.
“Partnerships such as these are an important part of unlocking future opportunities in our new businesses like carbon capture and storage,” Woods said. “We recently signed multiple memoranda of understanding to explore the development of large-scale carbon capture and storage projects in China, Australia, the Netherlands and Indonesia.
“We further strengthened our portfolio by advancing a significant refining capacity expansion on the U.S. Gulf Coast, discovering new resources in Guyana, progressing LNG production in Mozambique and addressing non-core assets with announced divestments totaling more than $3 billion.”
Woods said the sales included XTO Energy Canada, the company’s Romanian upstream affiliate and its Barnett Shale gas assets.
“We continued to invest through the pandemic with the understanding that demand would recover,” he said. “With our Beaumont refinery expansion, we’re on pace to increase our refining capacity on the U.S. Gulf Coast by more than 17 percent or 250,000 barrels per day in the first quarter of 2023.”
Woods said two discoveries were made in Guyana, where the estimated recoverable resource base is almost 11 billion barrels, and natural gas flowed in the Coral LNG project off-shore at Mozambique with the first cargo to be shipped there this year.
“Overall it was a very strong quarter in both the financial results and in progressing our strategic priorities,” he said.
Executive Vice President-Chief Financial Officer Kathy Mikells reported that upstream earnings were up $3.3 billion to $11.1 billion.
“Crude oil realizations improved by 15 percent and natural gas realizations by 23 percent, driven by tight supply,” Mikells said.
“We produced higher volumes from our advantaged assets in Guyana and the Permian Basin and recovered from tough first quarter weather conditions in Canada.”
