ExxonMobil’s CEO lays out plans to ramp up production, even if the increase annoys Saudi Arabia

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ExxonMobil’s earnings came in better than expected on Friday (Feb. 2). Quarterly profits were a healthy $7.6 billion, although revenues of $84.3 billion missed forecasts. But the world’s largest oil company not run by the Saudi Arabian or Chinese governments is always looking to get bigger.

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To that end, in October it announced it would acquire Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the biggest presences in Texas’s oil-rich Permian Shale region, for nearly $60 billion.

“We expect to grow our volumes in 2024 to about 650,000 barrels per day, and then we’re going to continue that growth through to the targets that we’ve laid out in 2027 of about a million barrels a day,” CEO Darren Woods said on a call with investors.

OPEC lagging

For OPEC, things haven’t been so peachy. One of its members of more than 15 years, Angola, left in December. And production cuts meant to tighten supplies and make crude prices jump didn’t work; oil is still not that expensive.

One reason prices didn’t take off is because oil producers largely based in the US, like Exxon, flooded the market, making it harder for the Saudi-led coalition to compete. An analyst on the earnings call asked whether Exxon should worry about doing more to appease Saudi Arabia, which could decide to turn on its taps and bring ruin to American oil producers (much as the pandemic caused oil prices to drop and wreaked havoc in shale country).

“We’re not going to run the business to appease an external member out there,” Woods said. “The way we look at it comes back to: Every dollar that we choose to invest and spend, do we see a return? Are we convinced we’re effectively spending that money and we’re spending it efficiently? That’s the criteria that we’re using and that’s the plans that we’ve built.”

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