MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil on Tuesday launched the sale of shale gas properties stretching across 27,000 acres in the Appalachian basin of Ohio, which is part of an ongoing divestiture of US assets, reported Reuters with reference to the company's confirmation.
The top US oil producer is marketing 61 wells that last year produced around 81 million cubic feet per day equivalent (mmcfd) of natural gas, according to a marketing document viewed by Reuters. The sale includes another 274 wells operated by other companies.
A sale could value the assets at around USD200 million based on current natural gas prices and existing production from the wells, a person familiar with the matter said.
"ExxonMobil is providing information to third parties that may have an interest in the assets, but no agreement has been reached and no buyer has been identified," said spokeswoman Sarah Nordin. Operations are continuing, she added.
The company in 2020 took about a USD20 billion writedown on properties, primarily purchased with subsidiary XTO Energy a decade earlier. It removed gas assets in Appalachia, the Rocky Mountains, Oklahoma, Texas and elsewhere from its development plan after the writedown.
The Ohio properties produced around 250 mmcfd of gas in 2017 and are among assets that Exxon put on the market as it focuses development in Guyana, offshore Brazil and Texas's Permian Basin shale field.
The company three years ago set a goal of raising USD15 billion from asset sales, and last year accelerated its marketing efforts as energy prices recovered from the pandemic.
As MRC informed previously, in mid-January, 2022, Exxon Mobil Corporation’s Baytown refinery in Texas continues to produce at reduced rates after a fire broke out at a reformer feed hydrotreater on Dec 23,202. The Baytown refinery is one of the largest refining and petrochemical facilities in the United States, with a crude processing capacity of 560,500 barrels per day. The fire took place at the refinery’s hydrotreater unit, which had been closed due to a leakage in the bypass line. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
Exxon's Baytown facility is home to a chemical plant, an olefins plant and the country's fourth-biggest oil refinery, with capacity to process 560,500 bpd of crude.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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.
MRC