HOUSTON The ExxonMobil Corp. garnered earnings of almost $8 billion in the second quarter, twice what it earned in the second quarter of 2018 with comparable oil and gas prices, which Chairman-CEO Darren Woods says reflected the company’s efforts to reshape its portfolio of businesses, invest in advantaged projects and drive a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness.
“In the Permian, we set another production record and we remain on track for an overall growth in production of 10 percent this year,” Woods said in ExxonMobil’s second quarter earnings call. “As I said last quarter, our growth won’t be linear as we execute our development plans to balance and optimize capital efficiency, resource recovery and production rates.
“Our priority will remain on driving value, not volumes.”
Woods said the company achieved a record quarterly gross production rate of 380,000 barrels per day in Guyana.
“Our team in Guyana continues to deliver excellent operating, environmental and safety results while optimizing and growing production,” he said. “In fact we see the potential to increase the combined gross capacity of these two floating production storage and offloading facilities to above 400,000 barrels a day with further de-bottlenecking, which is nearly a 20-percent increase above the investment basis and a testament to the ingenuity of our people. In the Gulf Coast we continue to profitably grow our business.
“In the second quarter we achieved mechanical completion of the Baytown chemical expansion.”
Woods said the Baytown project will increase volume and improve the mix with 750,000 tons per year of additional performance chemical products.
“The Baytown expansion is the final product solutions component of our Growing the Gulf initiative that was announced in 2017,” he said. “If you recall, the initiative committed to investments of $20 billion over 10 years to capitalize on the United States’ advantaged resources, economic growth and strong regional support for our businesses and the jobs we create. Eleven of the 13 projects are up and running.
“The Baytown expansion after product qualifications should begin contributing by the fourth quarter.”
During the second quarter, Woods said, ExxonMobil completed the divestment of its Billings, Mont., refinery with cash proceeds from the divestments of its non-strategic assets having totaled $2 billion this year.
He said the company’s low-carbon solutions business continued to build an advantaged, low-cost, high-return initiative to capture, transport and store carbon.
“We announced the CO2 offtake agreement with Nucor, one of North America’s largest steel producers, and we signed an agreement to acquire Denbury and provide us with the largest owned and operated network of CO2 pipelines in the U.S.,” Woods said. “Combining Denbury’s assets and experience with our capabilities will significantly accelerate and expand our ability to profitably help customers reduce their emissions and allow ExxonMobil to play an even greater role in a thoughtful energy transition.”
Senior Vice President-Chief Financial Officer Kathy Mikells reported that her company is beating the competition.
“Relative to competition our geographic footprint is pretty advantaged,” Mikells said. “We’re about 35 percent larger in North America than the rest of the industry.
“This quarter we saw a 6-percent increase in performance chemicals products and those carry a higher margin. So those are some of the more systemic things that help to drive improvement relative to competitors.”
