The ExxonMobil Corp. more than doubled its 2019 earnings in 2023 and it acquired a carbon solutions company and announced plans to develop lithium for batteries in electric vehicles.
In his company’s fourth quarter 2023 earnings report Chairman-CEO Darren Woods said from Spring north of Houston that the corporation earned $36 billion during the year.
“Introduced in 2018 and coupled with consistently strong execution, our strategy is delivering results that lead the industry across a range of metrics including earnings and cash flow growth, total shareholder distributions and total shareholder returns,” Woods said. “On a constant-price basis we more than doubled earnings in 2023 versus our baseline year of 2019, demonstrating the improved earnings power of the company.
“Our growth and profitability reflect significant progress in high grading our portfolio of assets through advantaged projects, divestment of less strategic operations and significant cost reductions. During the year our divestments generated more than $4 billion of cash proceeds.”
Woods said ExxonMobil’s November acquisition of Denbury Inc., a carbon solutions company based at Plano, for $4.9 billion “provides opportunities to profitably accelerate our low-carbon solutions business with a compelling end-to-end customer decarbonization offer.”
Referring to the expected second quarter $59.5-billion closure on the company’s purchase of the Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources, he said, “The synergies will create significant shareholder value and accelerate Pioneer’s net-zero ambitions by 15 years to 2035.”
Woods said the company plans to supply a million EVs with lithium for batteries by 2030.
“With economically advantaged production lithium has a much smaller environmental impact than today’s supply,” he said. “In carbon capture and storage space we recently completed the construction of a pilot plant to further develop a unique proprietary technology that has the potential to significantly lower the cost of direct air capture.
“We also launched Proxima, a thermoset resin with a high value in use for coatings, infrastructure, automotive parts and wind power made from low-value components used in gasoline.”
ExxonMobil Senior Vice President-Chief Financial Officer Kathy Mikells said her company increased its value to shareholders by increasing capital expenditures.
“In the Permian Basin, we had guided to 600,000 oil equivalent barrels,” Mikells said. “We came in at 620,000. In Guyana we had said 380,000 and we came in at 390,000.
“We’re looking to leverage technology to drive incremental efficiencies and as importantly to drive effectiveness. So things like how we use artificial intelligence and chat box and our customer care centers give our customers better service.”
Mikells said predictive analytics are being applied in ExxonMobil’s centralized drilling and fracking operation in Houston and that bringing together its information technology organization with its engineering and research organization will further enhance how it uses technology to drive efficiency and value.
