MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil expects 2021 capital expenditures to decline 11-25% from 2020 levels as the company focuses on projects with lower breakevens amid an uncertain price environment, reported S&P Global with reference to company executives' statements during a fourth-quarter earnings call Feb. 2.
Company guidance now shows 2021 capital expenditures to range from USD16 billion to USD19 billion, in sharply from a full-year 2020 capex spend of USD21.4 billion.
The guidance assumes a Brent price floor of $50/b and downstream margins at ten-year lows in 2021, however the company retains flexibility to further reduce capex while maintaining its dividend should prices fall below this level, chairman and CEO Darren Woods said.
S&P Global Platts Analytics forecasts Dated Brent prices to average at USD56.30/b in 2021 and at USD54.10/b in 2022, up from a 2020 average of USD41.65/b.
Approximately 90% of ExxonMobil's 2021-2025 upstream development portfolio has a cost-of-supply of USD35/b Brent or below, according to company filings.
The company's 2020 capex spend was down USD9.8 billion from 2019 levels and around USD12 billion shy of its original target prior to the historic oil price collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic last spring.
ExxonMobil posted a fourth quarter net loss of USD20.1 billion, including a total impairment charge of USD19.3 billion, bringing its total losses for the full year 2020 to USD22.4 billion, down from a 2019 profit of USD14.3 billion. The company said the impairments were an effort to trim "less strategic assets," specifically dry gas resources in the United States, western Canada and Argentina.
The bulk of the impairment charges were in the company's upstream portfolio, which accounted for USD18.5 billion in losses, USD16.8 billion of which was in US assets. The remaining impairment charges were found in non-US downstream and chemical operations, and corporate and financing.
Output from ExxonMobil's Permian Basin assets climbed around 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2020 compared with 2019 as drilling rates increased 20% year on year despite a pullback in capex spend, the company said. Drilling and completion costs in the basin were approximately 15% below 2020 guidance and more than 25% below 2019 levels.
Given current price outlooks, Permian production is expected to grow by around 700,000 boe/d by 2025, Woods said, noting that sustained Brent prices of above USD50/b could see the company produce an additional 100,000 boe/d from the basin.
Global production volumes for full year 2020 reached 3.76 million boe/d, down 191,000 boe/d, or 5%, from 3.95 million boe/d in 2019. The bulk of this decline was in gas production, which was down 923 MMcf/d from 2019. Total liquids production, in contrast, was just 37,000 b/d lower in 2020 than the year prior.
ExxonMobil announced the creation of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, a new business unit focused on advancing carbon capture and sequestration technologies. The move is aimed streamlining the company's preexisting efforts in the space to capitalize on emerging market demand for carbon storage, Woods said.
"(The world) is unlikely to meet the goals of the Paris Climate agreement without focused action and innovation on carbon storage," Woods said. "We are beginning to see a broader recognition of the importance of (CCS) technology," he added, noting that government policy actions have created frameworks for establishing CCS and that there is money looking for opportunities in the space.
As MRC informed earlier, last year, Exxon Mobil Corp announced it will lay off about 1,900 employees in the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic batters energy demand and prices.
We remind that ExxonMobil has undertaken a planned shutdown at its cracker in Singapore. The company halted operations at the cracker for maintenance on September 14, 2020. The cracker was expected to remain off-line till end-October, 2020. Located at Jurong Island, Singapore, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 1 million mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 450,000 mt/year.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020).
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world"s oil and about 2% of the world"s energy.
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