ExxonMobil Corp plans to triple its oil production capacity in Guyana over the next five years, as part of a global strategy to concentrate capital on low-cost, high-return assets, a senior company executive said on Thursday.
Speaking at the 41st Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, Neil Chapman, Exxon’s Senior Vice President, said the company expects to invest US$28 billion to US$30 billion annually in capital expenditures through the end of the decade, prioritizing projects with break-even costs under US$35 per barrel.
“That means if the price of oil is $35 or lower for the next 20 years continuously…we’ll still generate a 10% return on all of our projects,” Chapman said.
Exxon’s most attractive projects in Guyana and the Permian, Chapman said, have costs of supply that are “way south of $35”.
Exxon has ramped up production offshore Guyana in recent years, averaging 626,000 barrels per day (b/d) in the first four months of 2025, according to government figures. Three floating production vessels are in operation presently, with another set to start up in the third quarter. The company plans to increase that number to eight by the end of the decade.
Tripling output in Guyana would help Exxon meet its global production target of 5.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030, which Chapman said is the highest level since its operations in Saudi Arabia were nationalized in the 1970s.
Chapman described Guyana’s offshore developments as among the most attractive in Exxon’s portfolio and said Exxon is uniquely endowed to address the complexity of extracting oil from miles-deep reservoirs.
“The problem is you don’t know where to inject, because interpreting what that reservoir looks like is through seismic…and when you have seismic, these sound waves sent into the Earth, historically, it takes two plus years to process the information,” Chapman said.
To tackle this challenge, Exxon relies on proprietary computing technology to accelerate seismic data processing. Chapman said the company has reduced the time needed to analyze seismic data from two to three years to as little as two to three months using one of the world’s largest and fastest computers. That system was recently replaced with an even faster model, four times more powerful.
“That’s a unique technology that we have, that no one else has,” Chapman said.
Exxon leads the Stabroek Block consortium in Guyana alongside Hess and CNOOC. The block has become one of the company’s most significant growth drivers amid continued global demand for low-cost oil.
