Was recently at an all hands meeting with an executive and executive commented than exploration hasn’t found oil for us in 20 years. Wow! Sounds like we are better off acquiring more fields than looking for oil ourself.
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We can all agree Guyana was pure luck and if executives had their way we wouldn’t have drilled and found the oil. Anything else that qu’exploration can claim to have found? I don’t think so.
The problem in EMEC was no real "leaders" or "technical experts". Just mostly game players and big bonus collectors. The way to fix XOM exploration is to hire outside, proven oil finders as leaders and a few seasoned explorers from other operators.
Upstream is on a steady decline. Exploration is gutted, and the dynamic, aggressive leadership on that side is not there.
Still our brilliant leadership refers to our ‘portfolio’ ……consisting of the Permian and Guyana. One super-mature, one rapidly running out of opportunities.
@tqu+1uCvAnG8 you're almost right.
Joker: Guyana discovery was not exploration success in last 20 years. I think the story went like this:
In 2000s EM with al their wisdom decided that Guyana was no good. They were just obligated to drill in Guyana before the lease expired due to much older contractual obligation. They went about contractual drilling reluctantly and found oil pure by luck (not by their great insight).
Let us not call Guyana expioration success - just call it what it is a lifeline handed to EM to survive.
Call the BTC. They will help out.
I think that exec is missing some information - there were a few oil discoveries made by EM in Guyana in the last 20 years. You can Google it if you don't believe me.
Exploration got gutted in 2020 though, and what's left of the org definitely isn't equipped to find much of anything going forward. EM will have to buy into reserves or just decline and run out eventually.
See XTO, Denbury and Pioneer (and Mobil) as examples. Exxon couldn't find oil if it was marked on Google maps!