Chuks Isiwu
14 March 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos – Oil major ExxonMobil Corporation is targeting to more than double its earnings in seven years time.
In an aggressive growth plan unveiled recently, the company said its target is to increase earnings from last year’s adjusted profit of $15 billion to $31 billion by 2025 at 2017 oil prices.
“We’ve got the best portfolio of high-quality, high-return investment opportunities that we’ve seen in two decades,” Darren W. Woods, chairman and chief executive officer, said at the company’s annual meeting of investment analysts at the New York Stock Exchange.
“Our plan takes full advantage of the company’s unique strengths and financial capabilities, using innovation, technology and integration to drive long-term shareholder value and industry-leading returns,” he added..
Woods said this plan projects double-digit rates of return in all three segments of ExxonMobil’s business – upstream, downstream and chemical – which are all three world-class businesses in their own right.
In the upstream, the company expects to significantly increase earnings through a number of growth initiatives involving low-cost-of-supply investments in US tight oil, deepwater and liquefied natural gas, LNG. Growth coming online from new and existing projects is expected to increase production from 4 million oil-equivalent barrels per day to about 5 million.
The company plans to increase tight-oil production five-fold from the US Permian Basin and start up 25 projects worldwide. Those startups will add volumes of more than 1 million oil-equivalent barrels per day. In LNG, the company expects to bring on new production to meet a projected increase in global demand.
Upstream growth will benefit from ExxonMobil’s industry-leading exploration success and strategic acquisitions. In 2017 alone, the company added 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels to its resource base in locations including the Permian, Guyana, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea and Brazil.
ExxonMobil’s downstream business is projected to double earnings by 2025 by upgrading its product slate through strategic investments at refineries in Baytown and Beaumont in Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Singapore, and Fawley in the UK.
In its chemical business, ExxonMobil expects to grow manufacturing capacity in North America and Asia Pacific by about 40 percent. The company said that growth will be achieved in part by adding 13 new facilities, including two world-class steam crackers in the United States. These investments would enable the company to meet increasing demand in Asia and other growing markets.
