Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board at ExxonMobil Corporation, Darren Woods, said the company’s strategy is to make sure it is a central partner when national oil companies and other resource holders want someone to develop the resource effectively, efficiently, and sustainably.
Woods said the company wants to ensure that when someone needs such a partner, “that the first name to come to mind is ExxonMobil and that we bring those unique capabilities.”
The CEO said he has tremendous confidence that this is going on.
Visual Capitalist, a news company for investors, has shown that national oil companies are among the top earners in the industry. Its data shows that Saudi Aramco has the highest market cap in the world among oil and gas companies, with US$2 trillion, nearly eight times the size of ExxonMobil’s US$257.3 billion, the second placeholder.
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In a LinkedIn post in April, Special Advisor to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Alessandro Blassi said NOCs manage the vast bulk of oil and gas reserves.
Woods said he is looking forward to leveraging business opportunities with NOCs in the future. He said he has enormous confidence that, based on what’s in the pipeline for ExxonMobil, it will become more effective.
“If you look at the work we’ve been doing with our organisation, the changes that we’ve made in the structure, consolidation of capabilities across the corporation… One of the changes we announced on April 1 was a technology organisation that combines the technical skills and capabilities and the engineering capabilities across the corporation,” he said.
Effectiveness and concentration of technology, Woods explained, are going to be a “really important part” of being a valued partner with NOCs around the world.
Guyana happens to be considering forming a NOC ahead of its offshore auction expected later this year. If it does this, the country would be taking the role of a passive investor. Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo had said government started considering this when it was approached by Middle Eastern companies that are eager to become strategic partners.
The government has not identified frontrunners in this regard. Where ExxonMobil is concerned, authorities have not decided yet if it will permit the oil major to participate in the auction since it is wary of allowing the basin to be monopolised. The Vice President has noted, however, that leaving out ExxonMobil, and other companies that already control acreages in the basin, could reduce the competitiveness of the auction.
