ExxonMobil on Track with Growth Plans: Update

(updates with comments by ExxonMobil CEO on company's approach to climate change)

ExxonMobil is pushing ahead with its long-term growth plans, investing throughout the price cycle to capture future gains, its CEO Darren Woods told investors on March 5.

"We are effectively executing our growth strategy that will lead to sustained improvement in shareholder value," Woods said at the US major's annual investor day at the New York stock exchange. "Using the strength of our balance sheet to invest through the cycle is a key element of our strategy. We are taking advantage of a favourable cost environment and investing in advantaged projects – underpinned by the long-term fundamentals of growing demand."

"The strength of our portfolio and our financial capacity enable us to continuously evaluate our priorities and the pace of investments while preserving value, which is critical in current market conditions and near decade-low commodity prices and margins," he continued.

ExxonMobil's capital expenditure plan remains unchanged, with spending expected to reach up to $33bn in 2020 and average between $30bn and $35bn annually through 2025. The company is also proceeding with a programme to divest $15bn of assets by the end of 2021. It aims to quit the European upstream sector altogether, having already sold its $4.5bn Norwegian business last year, and also wants to pare back operations in southeast Asia.

Massive investments in oil and gas are needed to meet the world's growing energy needs, ExxonMobil said, while also stressing it supported efforts to combat emissions.

“ExxonMobil is committed to being part of the solution,” said Woods. “We’re investing in new energy supplies to improve global living standards, working on technologies that are needed to reduce emissions and supporting sensible policies, such as those putting a price on carbon or regulations to reduce emissions of methane.”

The company pointed to its efforts in developing lower-emission solutions such as biofuels, carbon capture and energy-efficient manufacturing. These efforts are mainly focused on the areas of commercial transportation, power generation and high-energy industrial processes, as they account for 80% of energy-related emissions and current technologies are not enough to achieve deep reductions.

Unlike some of its rivals, such as BP, Spain's Repsol and Norway's Equinor, ExxonMobil is yet to set out a set of targets for reducing its emissions. Woods justified the company's lack of targets, saying it was approaching the issue of climate change "on a global scale."

"Individual companies setting targets and then selling assets to another company so that their portfolio has a different carbon intensity has not solved the problem for the world. It hasn’t made a dent in it. And in some cases if you're moving to a less effective operation you've actually made the problem worse," he said. "We’re not motivated to do that. We’re trying to stick to what is going to make a difference when you draw a circle around the world. This is not a company challenge: this is a global challenge."

The goal for ExxonMobil is to "solve the problem for society as a whole and not try to get into a beauty match, a beauty competition around who's sheet looks like what," he said.